Beau Is Afraid-2023
Director Ari Aster
Starring Joaquin Phoenix
Scott’s Review #1,538
Reviewed June 16, 2026
Grade: A
As a big fan of young director Ari Aster’s horror works like Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019), which blend horror with surreal dark comedy, I was eager to see his latest effort, Beau is Afraid (2023).
Since Aster writes, directs, and co-produces the film, this equates to creative freedom and usually a better product, with fewer opinions in the mix to ruin the director’s vision.
Production company A24 is one of my favorites since they champion independent and edgy projects and showcase Aster and other creative directors’ work.
Aster shifts gears from horror to dark comedy with the wacky and unsettling Beau Is Afraid, a bizarre telling of one man’s paranoid universe.
In a word, it’s a mindfuck, and the less one knows about it, the better. I knew almost nothing about it, which made me appreciate it more and left me gleefully ambiguous, sharing the main character’s anxiety.
Joaquin Phoenix plays Beau Wassermann, a mild-mannered but paranoia-ridden character, as he embarks on a bizarre odyssey to get home to his mother’s house, battling his greatest fears along the way.
Anything and everything bad happens to Beau. As he prepares to head to the airport for his flight home, he carelessly leaves his key and suitcase outside his dilapidated apartment, giving an unseen thief the chance to steal both.
This sets off a series of events that lead him to use automobile transport to reach his mother.
But are events like a neighbor leaving notes imploring Beau to lower his music and a pair of menacing teenage girls real, or only in his mind?
Once Beau makes it to his mother’s ritzy house, events go completely bonkers as a headless corpse lies in a coffin in his mother’s living room and his female childhood friend, Elaine (Parker Posey), resurfaces.
Following the plot is extremely daunting, though flashback scenes of Beau as a newborn and a teenager offer minimal help in explaining his anxiety. But some clues prevail.
What I enjoyed and admired most about this film is its unpredictability and its unhinged plot.
Sometimes it’s okay not to fully understand a film’s story if there is enough going for it to justify the confusion, and in Beau Is Afraid, there is.
The filmmaking alone is admirable.
The film has a unique look, a cross between muted and glossy, that I also noticed in Hereditary.
During one sequence, Beau scrambles across a street to get home before being bludgeoned by a killer slaughtering a woman. So much happens in the scene, even in the background, with people running around and acting crazy all at a very fast pace.
The glamorous Beau’s mother’s set is brilliantly decorated, complete with a spiral wooden staircase and a pond-like exterior water feature running in the background.
These interesting intricacies make the overall package beyond impressive to the keen viewer.
Phoenix, now a legendary actor, is brilliant in the title role. Handsome and dashing yet an iconoclast and cerebral, he’s the perfect choice to star in something so warped.
Unknown if he wore a ‘fat suit’ or gained weight and became ‘middle-aged looking,’ but the actor is astounding as a regular dude with neurosis.
Rumor has it that Phoenix and Aster got along famously, undoubtedly making the film so dynamic.
Special mentions to Patti LuPone and Parker Posey, who give terrific supporting turns as Beau’s mother and Beau’s childhood friend.
Ari Aster is one of the most extraordinary new voices in modern cinema. He rejects traditional stories and plot devices in favor of unique, macabre storytelling.
At nearly three hours, he even breaks the rules regarding what’s considered an appropriate length for his films.
One can perhaps compare him to Quentin Tarantino of the 1990s for offering a fresh perspective on film and infusing his films with surrealism and thought-provoking themes.
Beau Is Afraid (2023) is an example of how exciting modern cinema can be, with an ingenious, visionary offering.
