Movie review: Ari Aster's 'Beau Is Afraid,' starring Joaquin Phoenix, is stuck in a one-note nightmare
Of the many words used to describe the writer-director's previous two films --"Hereditary" and"Midsommar" -- timidity was never one of them. This is a filmmaker who has sent Toni Collette skittering across the ceiling and intricately arranged mutilated bodies the way some people make bouquets.
What has made Aster such a potent filmmaker, I think, is the lack of relief he offers audiences. His movies are nightmares without any possibility of waking. And just as much as one might spend"Midsommar" looking for an escapeway, the urge to open a window for just one breath of fresh air in"Beau Is Afraid" is considerable.
Back near his New York apartment, the city streets are an over-the-top hellscape, draped in garbage and graffiti, with mean-looking faces everywhere, including that loose maniac, Birthday Boy Stab Man, along with roaming hordes of vandals. We're less in the real world than some bonkers, not-funhouse-mirrors manifestation of Beau's fears. His anxiety might be called cripplingly extreme if it didn't appear to be well-founded by the state of things around him.
Much of all this is far more extended than it perhaps ought to be. But it's also crammed full with subtle gags in a meticulous and twisted tapestry of psychological torture. The way Beau keeps dropping through trap doors of narrative in a metaphorical movie realm will remind some of Charlie Kaufman, or maybe a particularly grim version of"Alice in Wonderland." But"Beau Is Afraid' is eminently unique to Aster, who fills his frames with sly jokes.
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