BEAU IS AFRAID : Wednesday 26th April 2023.

I saw the R18+ rated 'BEAU IS AFRAID' this week, and this American black comedy horror film is Written, Co-Produced and Directed by Ari Aster whose previous feature film making credits are 'Hereditary' with Toni Collette and Gabriel Byrne in 2018 and 'Midsommar' in 2019 with Florence Pugh and Jack Reynor. This film saw its World Premier screening in New York on 1st April, before it limited release to selected IMAX screens in LA and New York on 14th April, and before its wider release worldwide from last week. It costs US$35M to produce, has so far grossed US$4.3M and has garnered generally favourable reviews.

Beau Wasserman (Joaquin Phoenix) is the son of a famous and wealthy businesswoman, Mona (Patti LuPone). He grew up without a father, who his mother always maintained died during an orgasm on their wedding night and the first time they made love (which was also when Beau was conceived), a hereditary medical condition that effected his grandfather and great-grandfather too and which she claims was also passed down to Beau. As a teenager on a cruise trip with his mother, Beau (Armen Nahapetian) meets and falls in love with a gregarious out-spoken girl named Elaine Bray (Julia Antonelli). The two kiss and promise to remain virgins until they meet again as adults. 

Fast forward and now as an adult, Beau is paranoia ridden extremely anxious and living alone in a graffiti strewn down market apartment in a crime-ridden city where muggers, murderers, prostitutes and all manner of miscreants roam the streets 24/7. His therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson) prescribes an experimental drug for his anxiety and warns him to only take it with water. He has booked a flight to see his mother for the anniversary of his father's death, but sleeps through his early morning alarm after a neighbour keeps him awake half the night with their loud music, which thumps through the paper thin walls. After hastily packing, and exiting his apartment, he needs to go back inside momentarily only to discover minutes later that his keys and luggage have been stolen from his front door. Beau calls his mother to explain the situation and seek her advise as to the best solution, but she dismisses him.

Beau takes his medication, but panics when he discovers there's a water outage in the whole block. He anxiously runs across the street to a convenience store to buy a bottle of water evading a group of deranged homeless people who break into his apartment and lock him out. The next morning, having slept on construction scaffolding outside his apartment, he wakes to find his apartment has been turned upside down and trashed. He tries to call his mother, only to have it answered by a UPS driver who tells him that she was seemingly decapitated in an accident at home when a chandelier fell on to her crushing her skull into tiny fragments. In a state of shock, he takes a bath now that the water has been reconnected, only to discover an intruder hanging from the ceiling directly above the bath tub. The intruder falls and lands on top of Beau and after a violent scuffle in the tub, Beau is able to break free and runs naked out of his apartment and onto the streets, where he is hit by a passing truck, following an altercation with a Policeman during which he was held at gunpoint.

Beau comes round two days later in the home of a married couple, Grace (Amy Ryan) and Roger (Nathan Lane), a well regarded surgeon, who hit Beau with their truck. In their care is also an unstable veteran named Jeeves (Denis Menochet), who was their son's army comrade before he was killed in action. The couple have a highly strung and easily led teenage daughter named Toni (Kylie Rogers) who instantly despises Beau for moving into her bedroom and upsetting the balance she has in her life. Beau calls Mona's attorney, Dr. Cohen (Richard Kind) who chastises him and informs Beau that despite the Jewish custom to lay the body to rest as soon as possible, her last wish was not to be buried until he is present, and he had better get himself home immediately wearing a suit and with a eulogy planned. 

Beau repeatedly asks to book the next available flight back home, but Roger promises to drive Beau the six hours it will take to get to his mother's estate, but insists he rest at least one more day until he is healed a little more. Throughout Beau's stay in their home, Grace subtly hints to him that he is being watched and secretly tells him to switch to Channel 78 on the TV and warns Beau not to 'incriminate' himself. Channel 78 plays back the footage captured by concealed CCTV cameras around the property. On the day that Roger is to drive Beau home, Toni takes him to her brother's old room and attempts to force him to paint the walls in different colours. When he refuses, she ruthlessly berates Beau before drinking a can of paint, committing suicide. Grace walks in on Beau standing over Toni's body and violently blames him for her death. As Beau flees into the woods, Grace sends Jeeves after him.  

Running for his dear life, Beau gets knocked out when he runs headlong into a low hanging tree branch. Coming round and lost in the woods, he comes upon a traveling theatre troupe who call themselves 'The Orphans of the Forest'. He is invited to their dress rehearsal and becomes entranced by the play, imagining himself as the protagonist, who spends his entire life looking for his family after they’re separated by a great flood, only to be reunited with his three sons who step down from the stage to greet him. A man then approaches the aged Beau and informs him that he knew his father and that he is alive. The troupe is ambushed by Jeeves, where he slaughters several actors in the process, and now back in the present, Beau flees deeper into the woods dodging automatic machine gun fire.

Beau stumbles out of the woods and hitches a lift to his mother's home, only to find that he had just missed his mother's funeral, but that there is a video presentation playing inside the house. He falls asleep on a sofa and wakes up later that evening to the sound of a woman mooching around the house, having arrived late for the service. He realises that the woman is Elaine (Parker Posey) and they reconnect. They make their way to Mona's bedroom and have sex. Beau is terrified that he's going to die as soon as he ejaculates, but is ecstatic when he lives. However, Elaine is not so lucky as she has died mid-climax, her body seemingly frozen stiff. Mona then appears from the shadows and commands two house servants remove and dispose of the corpse, while revealing that she was not only still alive, and kicking, but watching the whole time. She derides Beau and reveals that his therapist works for her, sharing their sessions with her for years. He demands to know the truth about his father, and she takes him to the attic, where Beau learns that he not only has a secret twin brother who is chained up in a corner, but his father is actually a giant penis-shaped monster. At that moment, Jeeves breaks through a window in the attic and is killed by the monster. Beau escapes the scene down the access ladder and is dragged by his therapist into a lounge area where his mother further humiliates him. In a rare fit of rage, Beau grabs his mother by the throat and attempts to strangle her, before coming to his senses and releases his grip. Mona however, falls backwards and face first into a glass table where she lay motionless.

In a state of shock, Beau leaves the house and finds a motorboat on a nearby beach, taking it out into the sea. After entering a cave and emerging out the other end, the boat's motor begins to stall and he finds himself in a crowded arena, where he's put on trial by a still-alive Mona and Dr. Cohen on a podium acting as prosecutors. They show footage of numerous instances of Beau slighting his mother on a giant video screen while a cheap defence lawyer tries to push the case for Beau, but he is soon murdered by one of Mona's henchmen. Beau tries to fend for himself, but discovers that his feet are now glued to the boat. He attempts to appeal to his mother, but when she does not respond, he finally accepts his fate. The boat's motor explodes, capsizing it and drowning Beau.

Here Ari Aster's Beau has anxiety issues, paranoia issues and Mummy issues who seeks a therapist and a constant diet of pills to keep those issues at bay. Until one day and through no real fault of his own, Beau's world collapses in around him and its hard to distinguish what is real and what is not, as various potentially deadly encounters land directly in his path. A very dark comedy this film certainly is, but what's it's not is a horror film, and more of a psychodrama with a handful of thrills thrown in for good measure. Joaquin Phoenix appears in almost every scene which he handles with aplomb and never seems in doubt of the angst ridden direction that Ari Aster throws at him. The genre bending film won't be for everyone - but those who are satisfied by it are likely to elevate it to cult status in years to come, and even if it doesn't perform so well at the Box Office it will leave the viewer much to discuss and debate once the end credits have rolled. For me, I came out of the theatre feeling a little non-plussed by the experience and drained by the almost three hour run time, but also thinking that perhaps a second viewing is in order. 

'Beau Is Afraid' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.  

-Steve, at Odeon Online-