Beau Is Afraid
A24 | Release Date: April 14, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
63
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 51 Critic Reviews
Positive:
28
Mixed:
18
Negative:
5

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
60
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeMay 21, 2023
I think Beau Is Afraid is best described as an amusingly patience-testing shaggy dog story that asks: “What if your mother could hear all those unspeakable things you tell your therapist?” Parts of it are hilarious. Other sections sag. Some will find it insufferable. Read full review
60
CineVueTom DugginsApr 28, 2023
An uncategorisable odyssey of sub-Freudian nightmares that goes hard on suffering but soft on narrative intrigue. Read full review
60
BBCNicholas BarberApr 21, 2023
Viewers are sure to be impressed by Aster's prodigious imagination and technical skill, amused by his gallows humour, and amazed by some of the outrageous images he puts on screen. But whether they will be enthralled by the film is another matter. Read full review
60
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzApr 19, 2023
Aster, who also directed the excellent “Hereditary” and the somewhat less excellent “Midsommar,” has the audience where he wants it — off-kilter, uncomfortable, bewildered. It’s his comfort zone, but not ours. Whether you enjoy this kind of manipulation will go a long way toward deciding how much you like the film. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangApr 14, 2023
Beau Is Afraid offers arresting confirmation of Aster’s talent and fresh evidence of his limitations. It’s a big, wildly ambitious swing of a movie, one that seems eager to liberate itself and its characters from the conventions of form and genre. But that more expansive energy is at odds with and ultimately constrained by the story’s mother/man-child dialectic. Read full review
60
Little White LiesHannah StrongApr 12, 2023
It’s not an entirely unpleasant journey, but the film does have a jarring, unfinished feel to it, and while the detail-oriented might find it novel to unpack its myriad cinematic homages, and Aster’s ambitious execution is worthy of celebration, ultimately it’s an uneven ride, particularly given the incredible talent involved. Read full review
58
The A.V. ClubJordan HoffmanApr 10, 2023
The movie starts with the volume cranked to 10, then never takes a breath. At three hours it is unbearable. Yes, this is meant to be a “bad trip” of a movie, taking you inside the experience of someone undergoing a crisis, but there’s a limit. And then it’s revealed that this grown man has mommy issues. For that you made me sit through all this noise? Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreApr 21, 2023
Performances aside, there just aren’t enough “Mommy Issues” here to justify the tedium of a movie that challenges you and wears you out but doesn’t deliver a payoff satisfying enough to make it worth this much of your time. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithApr 20, 2023
I respect a film for being as daring, original and personal as this one is, but by the third act it starts to feel like an extended therapy session about mommy issues. The final sequences are more embarrassing than exhilarating. Read full review
50
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreApr 20, 2023
It packs the screen with witty details, features some brilliantly directed sequences, sets up downright baroque punchlines, and is anchored by an incredibly game performance by Phoenix. But ditching the genre framework doesn’t make it feel more honest — its self-deflating comedy is, ironically, that of someone afraid of being taken seriously. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayApr 19, 2023
The sad truth is that, for all his ambition, cinematic prowess and hyper-confessional candor, Aster doesn’t stick the landing. Instead, he’s made a movie about unresolved ambivalence that itself goes confoundingly unresolved. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla DargisApr 13, 2023
Despite these attractions and in spite of Phoenix’s aura and his focus — and how he plays with the character, opening Beau up a wee bit with flickers of yearning and teasingly humanizing fissures — it is tough to care about a mouse who matters so much less to the filmmaker than the shiny mousetrap where he’s imprisoned you both. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeApr 11, 2023
Three hours doesn’t feel at all reasonable for such an uneven collection of sketches. Read full review
40
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerApr 19, 2023
The episodic nature of Beau's misadventures serves as both distraction and bloat, a metaphorical cavalcade that lacks the acerbic agility of many of its predecessor. Read full review
40
The New YorkerRichard BrodyApr 18, 2023
To set up the movie’s cagey diminution of the protagonist, Aster diminishes the protagonist’s world, too—he suppresses Beau’s identity in the interest of stoking synthetic effects and inflating a hollow and shallow spectacle. Read full review
40
TimeStephanie ZacharekApr 11, 2023
It’s the most magnificent act of oversharing you’ll see all year, a banquet of all the TMI you can eat, just for the price of a ticket. Though when you think about it, shouldn’t Aster be paying us? Read full review
40
The GuardianPeter BradshawApr 10, 2023
Joaquin Phoenix is on really uninteresting form, playing to his weaknesses as an actor as he gives a narcissistic performance of pain, sporting a permanently zonked expression of anxiety and torpid self-pity at the misery that surrounds him. Read full review
40
The TelegraphRobbie CollinApr 10, 2023
The issue here isn’t the moment-to-moment loopiness. It’s that the film’s cumulative unmanageableness soon starts to look like a put-on – Aster seems much more interested in pushing the limits of his audience, rather than his own. Read full review
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