Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) lives alone in his run-down, insect-infested apartment.  Having overslept and almost missing his flight back to the family home, he gets further delayed when his keys are stolen from his door and his luggage is missing.  Desperate not to disappoint his mother, Mona (Patti LuPone), Beau resolves to make the important journey home, but he is unaware of the nightmarish odyssey which he is about to embark on. 

Ari Aster returns to A24 with his third written and directed feature, Beau is Afraid, the boldest and most polarizing swing to date from one of today’s most established and recognized provocateurs of this new generation of filmmakers.  Running an already punishing 179 minutes, the episodic journey never slows for a second so that it feels more like ten, sweaty, anxious hours.  That is, surprisingly, not to be taken as a mark against the film as this is also Aster at his most comedic; the film could hardly be classified as “slow cinema” but in its horrifying maximalism, it never is lacking some element of the craft to be taken in by the audience. The carefully structured film starts off with an incredibly solid forty minutes that invasively pry into Beau’s life.  With Phoenix’s trust in his director, and our trust in Phoenix, we are finally ready to leave the apartment with Beau and face whatever terrors are about to unfold as we travel through this not-so-safe world.  

The film is a culmination of its director’s young but bold career and seems like a large, but still natural, next step for Aster; audacious, but not biting off more than he can chew.  While only his junior feature, Aster has already established a style and tone about his work, and Beau is Afraid contains many of his signature hallmarks that make up his unique visual style from decapitation, bodily harm resulting in mutilation, the de-stigmatization of male nudity, and camera flourishes such as a flipping the image by 180° to disorient the audience.  It is also the most in-depth analysis to date from the director about how the absence of a mother figure can impact the development and adjustment of the child.  Without the overt benefit of the supernatural to lean on as Toni Collette was afforded in Hereditary (2018), LuPone’s ultimate shedding of the burden of her son feels much sharper and more sinister because it comes from inside her and she is not being acted on by any demonic forces or influences. 

As for its actor, who has a longer resume than Aster, it is hard to say it is as full a culmination for Phoenix, but Beau is comprised of elements of some of his most important roles.  That being said, Beau is still very much his own character and Phoenix is not simply returning to the well and imitating what we have seen before; rather, the stripped-back nature of the role allows us to see an intensification of those feelings and emotions he has put on display before.  Freddie Quell from The Master (2012) who longs for a parental figure, Theodore from Her (2013) who longs for love, and Arthur Fleck from Joker (2019) who has a simmering rage at being beaten down by society all come to mind first before giving way to recollections of Bruno Weiss who longs for a better life in The Immigrant (2013) and the comedic timing of gum-shoe Doc from Inherent Vice (2019) who is similarly stuck on the track of an increasingly ridiculous saga, and finally, some finishing notes of Commodus in Gladiator (2000) who also was seeking parental approval, though instead of inhabiting a seat of power, he is now in the center of the colosseum and the object of the ravenous and rapturous crowd’s entertainment. Despite being in almost every scene, Phoenix is in a very reactionary and passive role as a man with little to no control over even the most mundane aspects of his life. A lesser actor would have been swallowed whole by the script, but Phoenix fights back at every instance, and when Beau gets knocked down, he never stops to wallow for long. The gumption may not always come from within, often another terror has prompted the poor man to get up and move, but Phoenix is never content to just sit back and let the action carry him along to the end. 

For the first forty-five minutes or so of the film, Phoenix is the only actor we truly see on screen.  He inhabits a bustling and wild city so he is not alone in the frame, but everyone in the faceless masses is just adding texture to the anxiety-inducing world in which he lives.  Aster reteams with frequent collaborator, Pawel Pogorzelski, on the camera, and his unwavering lens is all-too-happy to witness the raw terror that Phoenix is living in on screen.  From the frantic noises emitted from tenets and neighbors on the street, to warnings of a brown recluse spider infestation, and a serial stabber loose in town, there is much to be frightened of and Lucian Johnston’s editing of what could easily topple into a stagnant, largely single-location sequence takes on incredible life and vigor.  The line between what is real and what is imagined has already been unreconcilably blurred as disembodied voices and noises haunt the film, but Phoenix acts as a lighthouse beacon for the audience through it all so that if we follow him, we will not be lost in the narrative to come.  The irony, and also some of the humor, then comes in because Beau is too anxious and afraid of what he may find if he follows this same path himself. 

The next major sequence finds Beau in a bit of a safety net, though eventually the disguise will fade and reveal Grace (Amy Ryan) and Roger (Nathan Lane), two kindly folks who take in and care for an injured Beau to be more akin to the fairy tale witch in the woods than purely benevolent.  Narratively, it is a massive tonal shift and the editing and camera work all match giving this second extended sequence its own identity where everything is overly manicured to the point where it feels discomforting in a terribly different way than the slummy apartment from which we just came.  While Phoenix’s Beau is still the sun in which the story revolves, Ryan and Lane give great performances as the couple with unsettling kindness; though it is a kindness they extend to everyone except their own daughter, Toni (Kylie Rogers).  The couple was quick to welcome in Beau to their home and tend to him after suffering a car accident, and it is revealed that Jeeves (Denis Ménochet), the squatter in a small trailer parked on their lawn, is a retired soldier suffering from PTSD who served in their son’s unit.  Quick to medicate and sedate, the dotting couple operates out of a feeling of guilt and are seemingly unaware of Toni’s manipulation as she taunts Beau into acting out – something the obedient-minded man is unwilling to do – until she tries to force him into rebelling and results in a tragic accident.  Recognizing all too late that her daughter has been suffering and placing her guilt and blame onto Beau, Grace sends Jeeves after Beau on a frantic, moonlit chase through the woods. 

In the woods, he stumbles upon a traveling, artistic commune, The Orphans of the Forest, who are rehearsing their latest play.  He is invited to sit and watch, and as the play continues, mesmorizingly narrated by an Angel (Maev Beaty), Beau begins to realize that it is about him and his life – his past, and his future.  It is an impressive sequence, a real feather in the cap of production designer Fiona Crombie who had no easy task in creating a multitude of distinct environments for this film, as well as animation supervisors Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña whose previous credits include The Wolf House (2018).  This interlude allows audiences to catch their breath after all that has happened and gear up for the insanity yet to come, and while it does run a little longer than it needs to, the artistry of it all is more than enough to keep us satisfied even if the action has been driven to a halt.  What makes this sequence really stand out from the rest of the film, apart from its style, is that it is one of the only hopeful moments in the entire film.  It shows a life that Beau could have had, and it inspires him to start taking control over his own life, convincing him that it is not too late. 

This vision of the future contrasts Beau’s memories of the past.  Delivered to us in fragments, the younger Mona (Zoe Lister-Jones) struggles to rear Beau as a child (James Cvetkovski).  The boy acts out in the simplest of ways, refusing his mother, as she shrieks over him like a harpy before punishing him with time-out alone in the dark attic.  Eventually, she wins over the boy by force and fear, so that by the time he is a teenager (Armen Nahapetian), he is incredibly submissive to her demands and even more incredibly socially maladjusted.  On a vacation, he meets a girl his age, Elaine (Julia Antonelli), who is in a similarly domineering relationship with her own mother.  While it may have started out as a way to rebel against her mother’s will, Elaine learns to appreciate Beau’s peculiarities as he walks down the buffet table explaining a unique reason why he cannot eat any of the foods on offer, or his insistence that medically he must remain a virgin as his father died during intercourse with his mother when he was conceived.  The brief relationship clearly imprinted itself onto Beau as he kept the polaroid of Elaine into adulthood, and when he sees her as an adult (Parker Posey) on the news report confirming the death of his entrepreneur mother, the allure of reuniting with her is more inspiration to leave his apartment as if the threat of further disappointing his mother was not enough. 

Operating for much of its pre-production hype cycle, the film was known by its working title Disappointment Boulevard, but the final cut finds that working title far more fitting than Beau is Afraid. The central struggle of the film slowly reveals itself to be a chicken or the egg scenario between Beau and his mother; was Beau always a scared and meek person which ignited the ire of his mother, or in his mother’s panic at raising the boy alone and ascribing some – if not all – of the blame for his father’s passing on the boy, did she turn the child into someone she could only ever hold in contempt. When Beau does make it to the family home, the film refocuses more fully on this dynamic, but for the two hours that came before it, Aster seems to have set up a film examining modern paranoia about the world around us. The housing market has priced everyday people out creating a renting culture with landlords who could not be bothered to put in the work to keep their buildings in a liveable state. There are murderers on the streets and rampant drug use with no solution besides incarceration or leaving those afflicted left to rot on the sidewalks of the cities that failed them. There is no funding in the communities that need it most, even if they are nestled up against sprawling capitalist meccas, and a brutal police force is sent down to keep the rabble in line with the law. As a society, we are becoming over-medicated with drugs clashing in our systems and ready access to clean water becoming another avenue to line the pockets of the oligarchs. We live with a government that is all too happy to send its soldiers to war, but they do not support them when they return from combat bearing the scars of their leader’s sins. The free practice of the arts has been shunned away as there is no room in capitalism for something without a price tag. All of this is happening and yet it is an apparent mystery why a generation of youth have such a pessimistic outlook on the future and without access to mental health care to help them overcome these thoughts, suicide has become the second leading cause of death in younger teens under fifteen years old, and the leading cause for their older counterparts under nineteen. With all of this happening, Beau – and we – have every reason to be afraid! That Aster, then, turns this into a film about a boy and his mother is a little, well, disappointing, yet viewed separately the third act is not without merit as it provides a very unique outlook to this larger endemic through the scale of this personal relationship. 

The film ends with Beau escaping his mother’s grasp, fleeing the estate house in a dingy, only to be steered into a colosseum where he will sit trial. The family lawyer, Dr. Cohen (Richard Kind), presents scenes from Beau’s past – some of which we have seen in the film, others which are new to us – and posits that because Beau skirted the responsibility to help and support those in need and instead greedily accepted the kindness of strangers without anything to offer in return, he should be punished. It is an interesting scene, and its composition is mostly still, placing us in Beau’s position especially as the credits roll and Aster refuses to cut to traditional black. By keeping the colosseum in the frame, he puts his audience on trial, asking us to recall and reckon with our own instances of inaction. He dares us to sit in reverent silence while we think back on our own shortcomings – to leave early would only prove our indifference – but it is not a truly fair charge to levy against us. Much like M. Night Shyamalan‘s Knock at the Cabin (2023), he places the burden of systemic change on the individual, and not even the individuals in power. It is a skewed placement of blame that makes both films come to uncomfortable and somewhat unsound conclusions. 

This is Aster’s prickliest film to date, and its most easy comparison would be the more eccentric works of David Lynch when he studies the terrifying nature of society. They differ, however, in that many of Lynch’s films start off grounded before devolving into a nightmare whereas Beau starts off in a panic before slowly coming into focus. Aster starts off more with similar paranoia about the human species as held by Darren Aronofsky – the opening scene in Beau’s apartment greatly channels the dinner scene in Aronofsky’s Mother! (2017) – before adopting some of the “journeymen through the unknown” aspects of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s cinema such as El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973). None of those directors, Aster included, make what can be considered easily digestible cinema, and while art has always been used to challenge, it does beg to question if we have put too much importance into pursuing the “purest” vision of the writer/director that it now does more harm than good. It is a controversial stance, but looking at Lynch’s work, he operates best when he is working within the confines of another’s script; The Elephant Man (1980) and, yes, even Dune (1984) in which he shares writing credits are some of the only stories in which he is able to pull together an actual cohesive and coherent ending. To share a writing credit here could have made all the difference in how accessible the film could be. That second set of eyes could have helped form the metaphor of the mother as the system a little more solidly so that there is no feeling of aimlessness in the first two hours that concluded with a disconnected final hour. The film would not even need to lose the personal feel or the distinct Aster style, but it is often said that writers can be too precious when it comes to editing, and Beau is Afraid certainly joins the ranks of the many bloated and esoteric works that came before it. There is still a confidence in the filmmaking, though, and Aster, like his contemporaries, is unafraid to leave it all on the screen and leaves it up to his audience to either accept or reject what he is doing.  

Beau is Afraid is a big swing from one of today’s hottest directors. It is at once a commitment to and a rejection of his style, meaning that those looking for a more traditional horror experience may find themselves feeling a little colder toward the film, but there is a clear connection to the themes and motifs which inspired his previous two features that brought him such wide acclaim. With a standout performance from Phoenix and a wildly engaging ensemble around him, Beau is Afraid is immediately captivating despite its confounding nature. The initial reaction to how the story unfolds may feel as if the film ran out of steam, but it is more a case of a rough shifting of the gears between the segments. Much like how Aster has a fascination with match cuts, the chapter breaks of this odyssey quickly transport the narrative into what feels like an entirely new world, and while it is a jarring structure, there is still a thread that runs from the first frame to the last. Even for those who will reject Aster’s film – and the director gives us plenty of opportunity to reject his ideas, either in part or whole cloth – it will be impossible to walk away from this film unaffected in some way.