Beau Is Afraid

A24 | Release Date: April 14, 2023

6.7	USER SCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 80 Ratings

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CincomApr 26, 2023

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This movie is overly long. There are parts of it that are very funny but the biggest problem this movie has is its main character. Beau is ineffectual, bland and boring. He's a human being whose spark has been drained from him due to his life circumstances. You feel bad for him but you also don't want to spend 3 hours with the guy. At no point in this movie do you care enough about the character of Beau that you want to see him actually get to any sort of destination. Nor does Beau develop enough as a character that makes his odyssey worth watching. His world is filled with terrible people who do terrible things to each other. Your time is important, use it elsewhere.… Expand

1 of 2 users found this helpful11

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the_shiversJun 20, 2023

Pretentious wankery. Creative? yes. Ambitious? Quite! But if this is the end result, why bother.

1 of 2 users found this helpful11

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judahjsnApr 24, 2023

I'm someone who thought Ari Aster was the most interesting director to come along since PTA. I had to see Beau opening weekend for this reason. But I walked out of this movie an hour in. It's insufferable. Sadistic torture porn. Maybe it wasI'm someone who thought Ari Aster was the most interesting director to come along since PTA. I had to see Beau opening weekend for this reason. But I walked out of this movie an hour in. It's insufferable. Sadistic torture porn. Maybe it was going somewhere but I'll never know and I don't care. If this is what Aster is doing now I'll start thinking of him as off brand Spike Jonze.

Hereditary and Midsommar were not exactly easy viewing but the constant building of anxiety was balanced by humor, aesthetic beauty and breaks in the tension. This felt like an unrelenting dental drill. One long, shrill note. And unlike Aster's previous films the score wasn't good and the cinematography was ugly. Most settings looked like sound stages and the colors were bleached out. The only thing this film could be saying is an attempt at communicating the pain of living with high anxiety and mental illness. It made its point within 30 minutes. I didn't need any more.

Oh, and all love to Joaquin Phoenix but his lack of enunciation is getting worse every film and at this point he's basically unintelligible.… Expand

2 of 5 users found this helpful23

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easterfieldsApr 17, 2023

The initial conceptual idea of this film was done before and 1000x better. "Enter the Void", which I have yet to see any comparisons drawn to "Beau Is Afraid," is similar and infinitely better. The first act was brilliant. From that pointThe initial conceptual idea of this film was done before and 1000x better. "Enter the Void", which I have yet to see any comparisons drawn to "Beau Is Afraid," is similar and infinitely better. The first act was brilliant. From that point forward, it takes a nosedive in narrative fluidity and I often found myself bored by the same essential loop occurring over and over and over. I love a slow burn and can be very patient if the story is engaging enough. I actually loved "Skinamarink" for example, which is a definitive slow burn film. Here, I kept hoping for a payoff that is hinted at numerous times, but unfortunately would never come. In fact, this 3 hour film could be cut in half, to 90 minutes, and I'd still feel it's way too long. I think the film (and director) believes its being clever and deeply contemplarive but unfortunately it's just too self indulent for its own good.… Expand

3 of 10 users found this helpful37

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LickinDungApr 21, 2023

Some cool imagery... That's about it for the positives. Non cohesive story that I'm not really sure went anywhere. It could be my brain isn't big enough to comprehend this movie but I did count three different snores in the theater. HighlySome cool imagery... That's about it for the positives. Non cohesive story that I'm not really sure went anywhere. It could be my brain isn't big enough to comprehend this movie but I did count three different snores in the theater. Highly not recommended.… Expand

1 of 4 users found this helpful13

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Experiment626Apr 26, 2023

Not my cup of tea. It goes nowhere at a snails pace. The movie is way too long. There are some very long sequences that served no purpose. Acting was fine. Story wise it just isn't there. Not a fan of throwing in outlandish concepts /Not my cup of tea. It goes nowhere at a snails pace. The movie is way too long. There are some very long sequences that served no purpose. Acting was fine. Story wise it just isn't there. Not a fan of throwing in outlandish concepts / visuals for the sake of it.… Expand

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

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hnestlyontheslyMay 22, 2023

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Beau is Afraid had all the indications of being something that I should’ve skipped to spend time with my family or play poker or whatever: Joaquin Phoenix, coming off of his Oscar for Best Actor chose this film by the darling indie director Ari Aster, whose work has been documented faithfully at HOTS over the years. What could go wrong? feels like more of a dare than a question when talking about this movie. To call it a character study is to excuse the fact that there is only the loosest of plots, in the sense that Aristotle tells us all action must flow from necessity and there was no need for really any of this movie to have happened. The entirety of my experience in theater was thinking about how the fact that four people had excused themselves from my invite hadn’t given me enough of an indication of how much of a commitment this would be. I went in patting myself on the back for abandoning Wife and Creature at home at the blushing age of 7PM expecting to be back at 9:30, maybe 10 at the latest. I had groceries to pick up, maybe even a cheeky radler to toast the new week, and it was only about two and a half hours in when I started to wonder idly how they were going to tie up all of the loose ends that I took my phone out to ask Wife if maybe I had booked myself for a double feature without realizing it, which is when she texted back, “I’m so sorry it’s not close to being done.”

As someone who has sat through Babylon and Avatar: The Way of the Water somewhat recently, I am no stranger to longish movies that people accidentally find themselves and then sheepishly exit around the 120 minute mark. I’m sure the sense of alienation and ennui I felt in the final third of this movie has a lot to do with having to experience it alone, without a fellow victim. That’s not to say there weren’t lots of other people there. One woman who sat in front of me laughed loud enough to make up for the rest of our stunned silence, one of those aggressive laughs that feels like it’s trying to cow the rest of us into submission, persuade us of the genre of Ari Aster’s lack of self-restraint. The last time I felt like I needed persuasion of whether something was funny or not was The Dead Don’t Die, and the last time I felt like I was the person breaking out into uncontrollable awkward laughter (maybe for the wrong reasons?) was Jon Stewart’s Rosewater. I wasn’t inclined to leave, but thinking back on it, I wonder if my night would’ve been dramatically improved if I had shouted FIRE FIRE FIRE and evacuated the theater, if the cost of never being allowed into that movie theater again would be equaled by the exquisite pleasure of not knowing how Beau is Afraid ends. I’m still not sure.

Justin Chang at NPR communicated all of the disappointment and perplexity that one need mention about Beau is Afraid. He, in his infinite wisdom, is able to see four distinct acts: the apartment, the recovery, the forest, and the childhood home. That’s kind of him, because the alternative was my dark and stormy assessment of the film on my drive home, shouting at the shadows in my car and cursing the fact that I might never encounter another soul who regarded his time so worthless that he had seen to the end of Beau. I think in some ways this movie hasn’t just spoiled itself for me, but it has retroactively reached into the past and stolen other movies by the same author, the same actor and made me reassess whether they were enjoyable as well.… Expand

0 of 1 users found this helpful01

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