Ari Aster’s film debut, Hereditary, was a smash hit from the get go. Hereditary ended up making $90.3 million dollars in the box office with originally a $10 million dollar budget to start. After this, the production company that funded Hereditary, A24, was willing to fund anything Ari Aster did in the future due to how beloved this debut film was to many horror fans. That success followed Aster into his next film, Midsommar, which made $48.5 million worldwide overall with a budget of $9 million dollars. Even though Midsommar didn’t have the same massive effect on horror that Hereditary did, the film is still beloved today and many people did enjoy it more than his debut film. So, with 2 horror darlings on his back it was kind of impossible that Ari Aster could make anything that wouldn’t do well. But Beau is Afraid showed that it was indeed possible for Aster to do.

Beau is Afraid was originally a short Aster had made before Hereditary. The short was just called Beau and instead stared Billy Mayo, who was part of another short film that Aster had made that same year that got very popular after the initial release about Hereditary called The Strange Thing About the Johnsons.  That short pretty much contained the start of Beau is Afraid, which involves the main character, Beau, getting ready to get a flight to go see his mother up until his keys go missing in his door and he is terrified to leave his place and tell his mother what has happened. The short is in some ways preferred rather than the movie due to it’s more straight forward approach in it’s storytelling, rather than Beau is Afraid which is almost 3 hour long experience which only gets more deranged the more it goes on.

The film follows Beau trying to see his mother who he thinks dies in order to be there at her funeral. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix who plays Beau extraordinarily well. Beau is played as this fearful, innocent man who is consistently pushed around by pretty much everyone in the film who accuses him of lying about different things over and over and over. The reason for this is because everyone that interacts with Beau throughout the movie is actually working for his mother, who never dies but instead sets up all these obstacles for Beau in order to prove he actually dislikes her and isn’t a good son.  This concludes with his mother putting Beau up for trial in order to take out all the context of previous scenes in the movie to have him executed.

This film, as interesting as it is,was not a hit in the same way his previous films were due to its length and its constant shifting of tones. Many audiences were turned off by this approach to telling the story therefore it took in $4.16 million internationally at the box office. However, I find the film interesting and I recommend still checking it out if you have never seen it because its a truly surreal experience. Even if you dislike it, you can’t say there’s anything else like it.