Beau is Afraid is sure to test the mettle of Ari Aster legion of devoted fans

All great artists must eventually reach a creative crossroads at which they are forced to decide whether to sell their souls and continue to give the people what they want, or take the more difficult journey down a path that sees them push their creative boundaries and growth, whatever the costs to their popularity.

At just 36-years-old and with two critically acclaimed and financially successful horror films — Hereditary and Midsommar — to his name, you might think that celebrated horror groundbreaker Ari Aster isn’t quite yet a candidate for such a crossroads moment. His new film Beau is Afraid, a three-hour, sprawling surreal nightmare starring Joaquin Phoenix is however, definitively a crossroad moment for Aster and one that is sure to test the mettle of his legion of devoted fans.

It’s already been a viciously divisive film among US and UK critics, most of whom have endured its length and lack of narrative focus, only to emerge from the experience with vitriol, ridicule and permanent wtf grimaces etched on their foreheads. That’s a shame because Aster’s new film is the kind of big-idea, ambitiously creatively freewheeling and memorably hallucinatory big screen experience that mainstream audiences — battered into submission by blockbuster franchise fare with little in the way of plot, facile self-help platitudes that pass for big ideas, and bombastic overlong CGI sequences which overcompensate with spectacle — are increasingly starved for in the post-Covid movie universe.

It’s a film that’s almost impossible to satisfyingly describe and absolutely demands to be seen before you then engage in furious debates about what it all might mean and whether it should have been allowed to exist in the first place. After several days of post-screening contemplation, I’m of the opinion that, while it may not be a perfect film, it’s the kind of singularlyrealised, head-scratching and perplexing but ultimately, artistically rewarding experience that the cinema needs more, not less, of.

The plot, such as it is, goes something like this: Beau Wasserman, an agoraphobic, socially inept, middle-aged loser is dreading his upcoming visit to his overbearing mother. His anxiety, neurosis and demonically overactive imagination soon trap him in a Kafkaesque nightmare. A series of increasingly absurd and surreally unfortunate events seem — sent by either his own psyche or the cruel amusements of fate — to ensure that he won’t be able to complete his journey and will inevitably yet again suffer the humiliation of disappointing his mother.

This bitter cosmic joke about Jewish mothers and their sons soon spins into chaotic, unbearably uncomfortable, dark psychological terror before turning into the ultimate visual expression of a guilt trip, filtered through the distinctively horrifying lens of Aster. He presides over the mania like a mad modern Homer, tweaking the Odyssey for a post-pandemic audience still dealing with the claustrophobia and suffocating anxieties of the Covid-19 dystopia we’ve all just managed to emerge from.

Beau is afraid of everything and as seen through his eyes, the world is a constantly terrifying place full of lunatic, naked, murderous homeless men; deadly spiders; unhinged grief-obsessed parents looking to replace their dead sons; traumatic, untrustworthy memories from his past; and of course his always present, unpleasable and disapproving mommy dearest who waits for him at the end of his descent into the seven circles of hell, and would give Norman Bates’ mother a serious run for her money in a face off.

As the trials of the luckless Beau gain exceeding levels of weirdness, Looney Tunes style anarchy and maniacal heights of medium and genre mish-mashing, Aster never allows the audience to get to the point where they might feel comfortable enough to be able to decide whether all of this is real or imagined. He’s aided in this confidence trick by Phoenix’s supremely nuanced performance, which we’re never quite able to trust but also can’t help be sucked in by and which only helps to make us as confused as Beau is about what the hell is going on.

Some may argue that Aster’s epic tragicomedy may have been more effective without the inclusion of its third, mind-bending and sometimes frustrating third hour. Having made a total commitment to taking the creative road less travelled, Aster isn’t able to suddenly take his foot off the brake and the film wouldn’t quite be the over-the-top, go-for-broke head-trip that it needs to be to evoke the chaos of its hapless protagonist’s mental meltdown, without its insane but unforgettable final chapter.

While even his most diehard fans may find Aster’s visual excesses increasingly tiresome and his extended macabre mind-mapping of the age-old Oedipal premise that it’s all mommy’s fault — somewhat obvious and exhaustingly hammered home; others may hopefully realise that the director is enough of a singular talent to enjoy watching in full, unfettered imaginative flow, even if we may never quite know where he’s going to leave us and what it all might mean. That’s OK though because there are some things that you just have to see to believe and in this imaginatively lacklustre cinematic moment, Beau is Afraid is definitely one of them.

Beau is Afraid is on circuit now.