Film Review — Beau Is Afraid
Masterpiece? Pretentious drivel? Or is Ari Aster’s Oedipal psychological horror starring a one-note Joaquin Phoenix a bit of both?
It’s worth acknowledging upfront that Ari Aster is an admirably visionary director, whose uncompromised artistic vision results in singular work. I loved Midsommar (2019), even though a more amusing title might have been The Wicker Man: He’s Just Not That Into You. Despite owing a debt to Robin Hardy’s seminal 1973 masterpiece of folk horror, Aster managed to make his film stand in its own right.
On the other hand, I couldn’t understand the effusive praise for Hereditary (2018). Although brilliantly directed and acted, the script couldn’t make up its mind whether it wanted to be psychological horror, ghost story, possession story, or Satanic panic. Somewhere along the way, I stopped caring about the characters or finding it scary.
Aster’s ambitious new film Beau Is Afraid left me with a new clutch of frustrations. It concerns the eponymous Beau (a one-note but effective Joaquin Phoenix), a depressed man introduced with his therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson) discussing an impending visit to Beau’s overbearing mother Mona (Patti Lupone). Beau subsequently returns to his run-down apartment in what looks like a particularly seedy…
