After delivering the back-to-back horror sensations, Hereditary and Midsommar, Ari Aster is back with Beau Is Afraid. Starring Joaquin Phoenix as the titular character, the film eschews the more traditional horror trappings of Aster’s previous work and instead goes for a marathon-length Freudian nightmare that’s confounding critics.
At two hours and 59 minutes, Beau Is Afraid is either a psychological tour-de-force, or an overly self-indulgent slog that’s punctuated with brilliance, but not enough to justify the runtime. The critical reactions are all over the map, which you can see for yourself below:
Peter Debruge, Variety:
In “Beau Is Afraid,” Aster tracks his titular antihero from birth to death, from psychoanalysis to this cheeky subversion of Freud, where the child assumes responsibility for his parents’ trauma, rather than the other way around. But he’s crammed so many ideas into this unwieldy container, the film capsizes. In retrospect, “Hereditary” did too, but we forgave it because its finale was frightening, at least. Here, wrapping with an anticlimax seems to be Aster’s idea of a joke.
Robbie Collin, The Telegraph:
It’s reminiscent, in a way, of Southland Tales, Richard Kelly’s sweepingly bizarre follow-up to Donnie Darko, which drew deafening boos at its disastrous Cannes premiere in 2006. But Kelly’s film (which is now enjoying something of a cult revival) always felt like it had been made with the best of intentions: it was an ambitious but muddled big swing from a young auteur earnestly running with his newfound creative freedom. Beau is Afraid, on the other hand, seems like Aster sat down one day and said to himself: right, I’m going to make a Southland Tales.
Nick Allen, RogerEbert.com:
Did you ever hear the one about the boy who feared his mother? “Beau Is Afraid” tells this joke for three gobsmacking, sometimes exhausting, always beguiling hours. At the center is a fascinating performance from Joaquin Phoenix, who actualizes what it looks like for a boy to suddenly stop growing up and merely age into a graying body. Phoenix makes his mouth tiny as if he were still suckling, and his voice intensely frail. His eyes, often used to signal a primal nature, have never seen looked so soft. His character will prove to be far too innocent for this world.
Jordan Hoffman, The A.V. Club:
The newest entry to this ignoble pantheon is Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid, an insufferable three-hour slog that would make Terry Gilliam say “reel it in a bit, would ya?” It is juvenile and pointless, loud and abrasive, and not anywhere as clever as it thinks it is. There are, however, individual moments sprinkled throughout that genuinely hum with greatness.
Nick Schager, The Daily Beast:
Eliciting laughs of an astonished sort, the willfully unhinged Beau is Afraid is like a funhouse-mirror plunge into Aster’s psyche, where M.C. Escher, Philip Roth, Grant Wood and The Purge all crazily cohabitate. No matter its many inspirations, though, the auteur’s latest is a true American original, and proof that, while the hype surrounding him may have been early, it wasn’t wrong.
David Fear, Rolling Stone:
Beau Is Afraid may or may not be autobiographical — Aster isn’t saying, nor should he if he ever wants to attend another Thanksgiving dinner. But there are clearly some issues its creator is working through in this epic tale of an Oedipal wreck. And though this may share a certain anything-goes absurdity and deliriousness with another recent A24 hit, the fact that the studio has now given us that Oscar-winner’s evil twin is itself a riotous hoot. This is the anti-Everything Everywhere All at Once.
David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter:
Three hours that definitely put the odd in odyssey, Beau Is Afraid could be said to suffer from the same bloat, wandering through bizarre detours of varying effectiveness before arriving at a wonderfully overripe operatic climax elevated by Patti LuPone as the Lydia Tár of single mothers. But even if its pacing is uneven, this is a movie of undeniably impressive big swings.
David Ehrlich, IndieWire:
This unmoored epic about a zeta male’s journey to reunite with his overbearing mother eventually stiffens into what might be the most terrifying film he’s made so far. Mileage will vary on that score — the scares are typically less oh shit Toni Collette is spidering across the ceiling and more oy gevalt, Joaquin Phoenix’s enormous prosthetic testicles are causing me to squirm under the weight of my own emotional baggage — but anyone who would sooner die for their mom than answer the phone when she calls should probably mix a few Zoloft into their popcorn just to be safe.
Beau Is Afraid opens in theaters on April 21.