‘Beau Is Afraid’ and I Am Disappointed: A Spoiler Free Review
A Totally Reel Review
Rate It Out of Eight
3/8
Watching Hereditary alone, at night, is to this day one of the most horrifying movie experiences I have ever had. I don’t like horror but I’ll still watch anything A24 puts out. That said, I almost wish I hadn’t seen Beau Is Afraid. It feels like a half-baked first draft that’s full of extraneous detail that haven’t been edited out yet. I do want to preface that I respect Ari Aster for his imagination and mastery of the horror genre, but a movie this ambitious is going to be divisive and personally, it wasn’t for me. Clearly A24 is happy to throw money at Ari Aster (this is their most expensive movie yet), but that doesn’t necessarily mean they should. This felt overly indulgent and built up momentum was never sustained through the slow and inconsistent pacing. Beau Is Afraid felt like four distinct movies wrapped into one, but only in the last one is there any stakes or real danger. It also doesn’t help that Beau is purposely written to be an emotionally stunted man-child. That said, Beau Is Afraid is not without some highlights in the first half, despite the bloated script.
Creative, Outrageous, Funny, but Ultimately Not Engaging
I actually really enjoyed the first half of Beau Is Afraid and I do want to applaud Ari Aster for taking risks. There’s a distinction between movies I enjoy watching and movies that I appreciate for the craft (the best can do both). This movie falls into the latter — his movies are not exactly lighthearted, but at least during Hereditary and Midsommar I was intrigued by the mystery and invested in the characters as shit hits the fan in the third act. This time, I do enjoy the first two distinct stages of the movie (can’t go into detail but those who have seen it will know). The first one was fascinating to watch about this perverse hypothetical world that’s so different from our own. Movies are so fun in part because we temporarily live in realities so different from our own.
As far as acting, I can’t complain about any of the performances. I have a few thoughts on how Beau is written as a character, but Joaquin Phoenix did the best he could with what he had. A lesser actor might’ve made Beau an even more unbearable narrator. Also want to credit the casting director for casting Armen Nahapetian as young Beau — the first time I saw the trailer for this movie I thought he was CGI Joaquin Phoenix (or perhaps I’m still traumatized from Alex Garland’s Men). Amy Ryan and Nathan Lane both bring some much needed energy as Grace and Roger, one of the reasons the second part of the movie was so much fun.
By the time we get to the third part, though, the movie starts to drag (at this point, we’re probably nearing the two hour mark). The creative choice Ari Aster makes at this section of the movie is beautiful and visually breaks up the movie, but ultimately it starts to bog down what plot there is even more. We’re transported away from Beau’s journey to a 20-minute tangent. Throughout much of the movie, there is a general idea of Beau’s purpose as he embarks on this journey, but there are never concrete stakes that make us invested. Not to mention that Beau’s character is… a stunted shell of a man. He’s clearly meant to be a stand-in for the audience as he reacts passively to the world around him. I don’t mind movies that are 3 hours long if they have either complex characters or fast pacing, and as you guessed, this has neither. An example that comes to mind in contrast is Damien Chazelle’s Babylon which was similarly divisive — though long, it felt like a nonstop ride with an incredible score, costumes, sets, and fleshed out characters.
Ari Aster himself acknowledges that elements of the movie are outrageous — they’re not meant to be realistic or make sense. Very early on it’s established that a) Beau is perhaps not the most reliable narrator and b) he lives in a world very different from our own. For the first half to two-thirds of this movie I’d say he succeeded at his task.
“The task is, ‘Can we do something this stupid and have it be on any level engrossing?’ I don’t know. But that was the hope.” Ari Aster
A Continuation of Aster’s Previous Works
After having a day to fully process what the hell I had watched (at this point I should just coin it the Ari Aster effect), it’s clear that Beau Is Afraid continues to explore themes of relationships, loss, family, and guilt. In that sense, this movie is much more similar to Hereditary than it is to Midsommar and I kept thinking of Toni Collette’s “I am your mother” scene throughout this movie for comparison. The people in his movies take Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss a little too literally and let’s just say Mother Gothel from Tangled has some competition for Most Manipulative Mother. I do want to make a quick shoutout to the marketing team for this: https://perfectlysafe.co/.
Those who have seen the movie will appreciate this. The dedication of the marketing team to create a LinkedIn page and employee profiles for a fictitious corporation is admirable.
Ultimately, Beau Is Afraid is anything but straightforward and that includes the ending; there are probably dozens of interpretations online already but I’ll let you see and decide for yourself. Ari Aster has made it clear he won’t spell it out for audiences.
And now, for some Letterboxd reviews (follow me if you’d like @xusarah1):
