“Beau is Afraid”: Ari Aster’s baffling departure from horror

By: Leianna M.

If you’ve talked to a horror fan in the past five years, you’ve likely heard about Hereditary and Midsommar, known for their unsettling and genuinely terrifying plots. Ari Aster has dominated the horror scene for the past five years and given audiences instant classics. 

Now, Aster is back with Beau is Afraid. It plays out like a comedic tragedy: Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) is in his forties and deeply attached to his mother, Mona (Patti LuPone). He planned to visit her and misses his flight in the midst of terrifying circumstances. When he calls to tell her, she angrily expresses her disappointment and cuts the call. After Beau calls her back, a mailman answers and says that he found a woman crushed by a chandelier without her head. Beau is shaken by the loss of his mother and embarks on a traumatic journey to attend her burial service. 

Photo: A24

The first thing you should know about Beau is Afraid is that it clocks in at three hours long. It’s a long, long ride. Ari Aster isn’t exactly known for his brevity, but this film would have been much better cut down to two hours. The slow burn is very, very slow, peppered with metaphors, questions of reality, and moral gray area. 

The second thing you should know is that the movie is not particularly scary (especially compared to Hereditary), after which I slept with the lights on for two weeks). Instead of fear, Aster defines his style with creeping dread in all three of his films. I’ve experienced nightmares that Aster captures shot-for-shot. I felt validated by watching my recurring nightmares play out and enjoyed the first act for that reason alone. He has a masterful way of weaving trauma into a plot, and this was his depiction of trauma with a tragic comedy lens instead of a horror lens. It leads you to question which pieces of the story were real and which were imagined, but in an inventive way that doesn’t default to the “insanity” trope. Instead, you wonder which of Beau’s experiences are fabricated, symbolic, or factual. Regardless of their truth, all of the experiences are purposeful and integral to our understanding of Beau’s character.

The acting was also amazing. Phoenix captures the fumbling awkwardness of a lonely middle-aged man and LuPone gives a compelling performance with her voice alone. Young Beau is played by Armen Nahapetian, who looks uncannily similar to Joaquin Phoenix. His acting was also impressive as he mirrors adult Beau’s mannerisms and vocal tics perfectly.

My biggest complaint, however, is the pacing. It drags in some places, builds tension, slows down more, and speeds up in short bursts. I would have really loved “Beau” if it were an hour shorter, but it was too drawn out and tiring for me. The recurring themes of manipulation and morality behind “Beau” carry the story and are bound to be analyzed in film, literature, and psychology classes for years to come. 

I recommend the film for people who enjoy analyzing literature, patient viewers, and those with dark humor. One needs to enter the theater with patience and an open mind, especially during the attic scene (you’ll know when you see it).  Even though this missed the mark for me, Aster remains one of my favorite directors, and I recommend it for any curious Aster fans that want to compare the film to his previous works. I liked seeing which elements defined Aster’s style between all three of his films as he’s no longer boxed in the horror genre. Fans of purely scary movies can look elsewhere.

If you do decide that “Beau is Afraid” is still for you, be ready for three hours in the theater or wait for it to arrive on streaming services. “Beau is Afraid” doesn’t need the big screen or surround sound, but it’s always fun to be in a crowd questioning the movie as much as you do.

Rating: 2.5/5