I’ve been a fan of writer/director Ari Aster’s work since his debut feature film Hereditary. I wasn’t even really much into horror movies before I saw that one, but it showed me what a creative horror movie could really do, with an intense feel and even some dark comedy if you have the right sense of humor. A year later, Aster’s follow-up Midsommar also greatly impressed me. Again, Aster’s movie had that oppressive, horrifying tone with a dark sense of humor. Now, four years later, Aster’s latest is out in the form of Beau Is Afraid, and this one was supposed to be more of a comedy with a more existential horror feel.
I almost skipped this one because my back was bothering me and I didn’t want to find out how much it was going to bother me to sit in a movie theater for a whopping three hour movie. But, I just couldn’t say no to Aster’s work since the trailer, that I watched all of once, was the sort of weird I sometimes really enjoy. Would this be one of those times?
Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix) is a paranoid man living in the worst neighborhood I have ever seen in any movie ever. His wealthy and overbearing mother Mona (Patti LuPone) runs a large corporation whose corporate logo is omnipresent in the world of the movie, even appearing as one of the production companies before the movie. Beau is supposed to go home for the anniversary of his father’s death, an incident that Beau was told happened at the exact moment of his conception, an incident that was a result of a heart murmur that Beau also apparently has. As such, Beau is a middle-aged virgin who is afraid of everything, and possibly for a good reason considering the world he lives in.
However, a freak chandelier accident kills Beau’s mother, and he needs to get home for the funeral, something that apparently will not happen until he gets there for some reason. To say Beau has a hard time returning home is putting it mildly: Beau is restrained from getting home in every way possible, even as he keeps trying. And this is more than just a car breaking down. He’s physically injured, no one really listens to him, and even friendly people he meets aren’t really helping him. All the while, Beau works to get home, whether he wants to be there or not.
OK, honestly, this one is really weird. I spent a good deal of time just trying to figure out whether everything happening around Beau was really happening or was just something in his mind. I’d be inclined to think the latter, but that weirdness never goes away and is likewise never really explained. This isn’t the sort of movie that explains things, and the result is a movie that is essentially one large existential nightmare for Beau, one where everyone he meets either ignores him or seems to threaten him. Whatever is going on with Beau, his emotionally abusive mother, even after she’s died, weighs heavily on him to the point where he can’t seem to get anything right.
And as such, I really can’t recommend this one. Phoenix gives his usual sort of performance, and there’s nothing wrong here, but, this movie is just far too long. I’m talking about a horror/comedy that has a supporting cast that includes Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Richard Kind, Parker Posey, and in a small role Bill Hader (who never faces the camera). There’s a lot of images that are fuzzy and hard to make out that I think was intentional, but the big problem for me is the length. At about the halfway point, Beau attends a play in the forest, and while I can see why it might have been thematically appropriate, I likewise thought it was emblematic of the movie as a whole: it went on for way too long. In a way, Beau Is Afraid reminds me of last year’s Men where I went to see the movie because I’m a fan of the writer/director’s work, but the difference was I ended up feeling satisfied with Men while Beau Is Afraid just didn’t work for me. It’s not bad or anything, but I just never found myself getting sucked into it. Beau is clearly a man with a lot of issues, but the movie itself is just too much for too long.
Grade: C
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