Beau is Afraid

In cinemas now

The latest film from writer-director Ari Aster (of Hereditary and Midsommar fame) sees the American director given the auteur treatment by A24. With a $35m budget, Beau is Afraid is the celebrated production company’s most expensive film to date and that, along with its gratuitous runtime, is enough to suggest that they are all in on Aster and his particular brand of horror.

I’ve griped so much in the past about modern cinema’s penchant for self-aggrandisement that it almost feels reductive to charge Beau is Afraid with that criticism. Nonetheless, it’s hard to indulge Aster’s 178-minute fever dream and not come away feeling as if the whole thing would be more resonant if it was at least an hour shorter.

If you were to consider the film as being comprised of three distinct acts, its hard to argue that the first – in which Joaquin Phoenix’s anxiety-riddled man-child embarks on a manic quest to visit his overbearing mother – is a riotous success. Beau is Afraid is loosely based on a 2011 short and these origins are clearly observable throughout its opening salvo, with Aster once again demonstrating his flair for dark, unsettling comedy via the medium of Amy Ryan and Nathan Lane’s scene-stealing side characters.

Unsurprisingly, Phoenix is a joy as a character that is essentially the living embodiment of anxiety, with many of Beau is Afraid’s darkest gags likely to feel more than a little relatable to anyone who, like myself, has experienced this fitfully crippling condition. Indeed, the film is really at its best when it documents how Beau’s mind emboldens seemingly inconsequential events to the point where they feel both seismic and life-threatening, something which is more prevalent throughout its opening hour.

Not everything that follows after this point is disappointing (Pawel Pogorzelski’s cinematography is often joyous, as is the animation work done by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña), but it often feels narratively amorphous. Beau’s eventual showdown with his mother (played menacingly by both Patti LuPone and Zoe-Lister Jones) does redeem proceedings somewhat, but it’s a surrealist slog to get to that point.

Aster and Phoenix deserve credit for drawing attention to the pitfalls of anxiety, and Beau is Afraid does possess an irrepressible allure, but it’s hard to ignore the notion that there is a better, more compact picture in here than the final product.