"Beau Is Afraid" Review

Director Ari Aster and production company A24 collaborate for the third time with “Beau Is Afraid.” The black comedy, horror, epic, surrealist film (did I miss any?) marks Aster’s third feature film and A24’s most expensive production to date. As much as I wanted to walk out of the theater hailing this as another horror masterpiece from Aster, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t on the fence with the film.

I am going to preface this review by saying that it’s very possible that 10 different people can watch this film and have 10 very different reactions and interpretations; it’s simply that open-ended, strange and debatably nonsensical. This film is so divisive, in fact, that three people left my screening of the film at different points throughout the runtime. I still am grappling with what the film actually means, but I feel like I have an overall grasp of it. I’m just not sure if it entirely works.

Starting with the positive, Aster makes the known feel unknown and the natural feel unnatural. He takes very familiar people, places and things, and simply makes them feel unnerving and terrifying. There’s a certain amount of uncanniness to the world that is brought to life through Aster’s direction.

This is mainly due to the fact that everything that we see, as an audience, is completely from Beau’s (Joaquin Phoenix) point of view. Without giving too much away, Beau is presented as having extreme anxiety and paranoia. Due to this, nearly everything surrounding him is presented in a heightened, surrealist state. From people acting much more violent than they actually are to places appearing to be more dangerous than they should be, it becomes clear that Beau is an unreliable narrator.

Building off of that, “Beau Is Afraid” captures the feeling of anxiety and paranoia extremely well due to some excellent sound design, cinematography and Phoenix’s performance. Those themes are clear and present. However, the additional instances of grief, guilt and generational trauma end up being quite muddled in their overall presentation and execution thematically throughout the film, unfortunately.

Phoenix, an Academy Award-winner, is brilliant as always in the role of Beau. He’s performing stunts, he’s going through an incredible range of emotions and arguably most importantly, he makes Beau sympathetic. It’s no surprise given that Phoenix is one of the best actors working today, but it is incredible to see him once again carry a film effortlessly. Like “Joker,” he elevates a weaker script and character due to his prowess.

As I alluded to previously, this film simply does not make sense at points. While I do think that Aster purposefully made parts of the film make no sense, I feel like others get lost in translation and end up making little to no sense. I think this is mainly due to the fact that he tried to do too much with the film’s overall story and themes. He threw so much out onto the table, that only parts of the story’s construction work well.

Given how much is going on in the film, the three-hour runtime does start to feel taxing as the film progresses. Though I am not sure what needed to be cut in particular, there is an excellent two-hour film present somewhere in here.

Overall, Aster reached for the stars and then some with “Beau Is Afraid.” While I think a lot of the film’s themes and overall message get lost in translation, there’s still a lot to appreciate from a filmmaking perspective. I’m very glad that this film got made, and as I alluded to previously, I highly doubt there will ever be a film like this made again. I’d recommend this to anyone who loves the overall weirdness that A24 films such as “Men,” “Enemy” and “Lamb” all possess. However, I’d highly recommend skipping this if you don’t enjoy highly-interpretive, strange films in general.

7/10