Review: Beau Is Afraid

Image courtesy of A24.

 

Director Ari Aster makes movies about people who come to realize that their fate is out of their hands and maybe always has been - the family in "Hereditary" and the characters who unknowingly join a cult for a ritual in "Midsommar" - and this is certainly true for the titular character of the extremely weird, unsettling, and often outrageous "Beau is Afraid." 

Joaquin Phoenix plays Beau, an awkward man-child who lives in an unnamed city that is so dangerous that he has to run across the street to a convenience store to buy a bottle of water, so as not to be attacked by the seemingly insane people who populate his street. A dead body lays on the street in front of his building for days, seemingly attracting no attention, while a shirtless man dances on a continual loop in front of the convenience store, and a completely naked man attacks random people, stabbing them.

Beau is planning on visiting his mother, who is only a presence via phone for most of the film, to commemorate the death of his father, who passed away before Beau was born. However, an incident in which Beau leaves his keys in his apartment door and suitcase in the hallway and comes back to find them gone causes him to miss his flight. His mother appears to be not particularly understanding, and this causes Beau all manner of agita.

Then, Beau gets some horrible news when he calls his mother back, and much of the rest of the picture involves his attempts to get to her house. First, an accident involving a bus and the naked man with the knife results in Beau being taken care of by a doctor (Nathan Lane) with a love for pills, his seemingly caring wife (Amy Ryan), and their spiteful daughter (Kylie Rogers), who quickly becomes an enemy. 

His travels lead him to a forest where a troupe of actors is performing some sort of play that, at times, appears to tell the story of Beau's life and, at others, the story of a man who lost his family in a flood and spent his life wandering to find them. Later, Beau makes his way to his mother's palatial home, and the scenes - both visually and in terms of tone - reminded me of David Lynch's work. There's also a scene in which he bumps into a childhood flame (Parker Posey), and the resulting sex scene is provides the biggest laughs in the film. I doubt viewers will ever think of Mariah Carey's "Always Be My Baby" the same way again.

Without giving too much away, suffice it to say that there's a confrontation that takes place between Beau and another character during this final series of scenes, including a visit to an attic that is both indescribable in terms of its strangeness, but also where "Beau is Afraid" starts to go off the rails a little. There's a final scene that one could describe as a (sort of) courtroom scene that leads to a somewhat unsatisfactory conclusion.

However, Aster is a real talent. His "Hereditary" was one of the most unsettling and frightening horror movies of recent years, and like the best in the genre, it used its horrors to tackle thematically interesting material. "Midsommar" was also pretty solid and used grief as an entry point into its horrific material. "Beau is Afraid" is significantly stranger than either of those films and what it's meant to be about - on the surface, it's a three-hour running joke about a man who never grew up due to being traumatized by his overbearing mother - is often nebulous.

Regardless, this is an ambitious effort and it's shocking that a film of this sort was bankrolled in a day and age where not only adult fare has become rarer, but also anything that is out of the ordinary - and "Beau is Afraid" is undoubtedly anything but ordinary. Phoenix gives a fascinating performance that is almost childlike, and the film is filled with arresting visuals. If "Beau is Afraid" isn't exactly the great movie that its creator imagined, it's certainly a good and a memorable one. There's nothing else quite like it.