Beau Is Afraid is Ari Aster’s third feature film. Aster is the visionary director who gave us the horror masterpiece Hereditary. The film was packed with a superb storyline and excellent performances. Given that it was his first feature film what he had done with the film is outstanding. After delivering a terrific product, Aster returned with another horror film- Midsommar. A creepy horror tale which defied genre conventions and set new benchmarks. It redefined what the horror genre can be. While I’ll agree that the film wasn’t as good as Hereditary but it was powerful on its own. After more than 4 years, Aster has once again returned with another horror film for us but it seems like the filmmaker hasn’t quite hit it out of the park this time.
Beau Is Afraid Reviews Round-Up: Not Worth The Hype?
Mark Feeney
Boston Globe
“Cruelty and tedium, even with imaginative flair thrown in, doesn’t make for all that good a combination.”
Original Score: 1.5/4
Adam Graham
Detroit News
“”Beau is Afraid” is challenging, yes, but its reward is the way it uses art as a lightning rod. Love it or hate it, you’re not going to forget it.”
Original Score: B
Michael Phillips
Chicago Tribune
“Aster pulls off the occasional little miracle here and there…”
Original Score: 2.5/4
Ann Hornaday
Washington Post
“The sad truth is that, for all his ambition, cinematic prowess and hyper-confessional candor, Aster doesn’t stick the landing.”
Original Score: 2/5
Bill Goodykoontz
Arizona Republic
““Beau Is Afraid” ultimately left me cold.”
Original Score: 3/5
Richard Brody
New Yorker
“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.”
Jake Coyle
Associated Press
“Beau Is Afraid takes a long road to not get very far. That could, of course, be the point. But the simpering sad sack Beau — despite Phoenix’s typically committed and sympathetic performance — remains curiously void, stuck in a one-note nightmare.”
Original Score: 2.5/4
Barry Hertz
Globe and Mail
“Beau Is Afraid is not a movie for everyone – actually, it is a movie for very, very, very few. But I just happen to be part of that teeny tiny target audience. And for me, Beau Is Afraid kills.”
Anthony Lane
New Yorker
“Does Aster think we’re too slow, or too dumb, to pick up hints as we go? Some viewers will revel in such excess; I found it ever more wearisome…”
David Sims
The Atlantic
“Beau Is Afraid is abrasive and dense, but that’s to be saluted. Aster is cashing in on the success of his first two films to create something daringly vulnerable for a wide audience.”
Alissa Wilkinson
Vox
“It’s important to remember that Beau Is Afraid is not a puzzle to be solved or a mystery to be unlocked. That’s by design.”
Justin Chang
Los Angeles Times
“Beau Is Afraid offers arresting confirmation of Aster’s talent and fresh evidence of his limitations.”
Manohla Dargis
New York Times
“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.”
Tomris Laffly
TheWrap
“It’s an extraordinary and deliciously demented study of a tortured soul of clumped memories.”
Derek Smith
Slant Magazine
“With Beau Is Afraid, his third and easily most ambitious feature to date, Ari Aster traces, to more cosmic and absurd ends, how tragedy is birthed by, well, birth itself.”
Original Score: 3.5/4
Hannah Strong
Little White Lies
“It’s not an entirely unpleasant journey, but the film does have a jarring, unfinished feel to it…”
Original Score: 3/5
John Nugent
Empire Magazine
“What began as a comically exaggerated paranoid farce ends as an audacious slice of surreal, Charlie Kaufman-esque purgatorial art, likely to draw admirers as much as a sense of alienation.”
Original Score: 4/5
Nick Allen
RogerEbert.com
“Did you ever hear the one about the boy who feared his mother? “Beau Is Afraid” tells this joke for three gobsmacking, sometimes exhausting, always beguiling hours.”
Original Score: 3.5/4
Meagan Navarro
Bloody Disgusting
“Aster’s most divisive effort yet, but those willing to ride the wave of genre and mind-bending insanity will find themselves rewarded by a profoundly imaginative Kafkaesque odyssey as dementedly funny as it is often horrifying.”
Original Score: 4/5
Jordan Hoffman
AV Club
“[A] bad movie where every few scenes you have to admit that what’s happening right now kinda rules.”
Kristy Puchko
Mashable
“I can’t promise you’ll enjoy Beau is Afraid. I can promise it’ll f*ck you up.”
Nick Schager
The Daily Beast
“A true American original, and proof that, while the hype surrounding [Aster] may have been early, it wasn’t wrong.”
David Fear
Rolling Stone
“Though this may share a certain anything-goes absurdity and deliriousness with another recent A24 hit, the fact that the studio has now given us that Oscar-winner’s evil twin is itself a riotous hoot. This is the anti-Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
Stephanie Zacharek
TIME Magazine
“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?”
Hoai-Tran Bui
Inverse
“It’s a gonzo odyssey for our times, a rejection of mediocre cinema, and a paean for all the perverted weirdos out there. This one’s for you, sickos.”
David Ehrlich
indieWire
“A sickly picaresque guilt trip that stretches a single Jewish man’s swollen neuroses into a three-hour nightmare so queasy and personal that sitting through it feels like being a guest at your own bris (in a fun way!).”
Original Score: B+
Peter Bradshaw
Guardian
“Running at over three hours, Beau Is Afraid is a colossal recovered memory of mock Oedipal agony which is scary, boring and sad in approximate proportions of 1 to 4 to 2.”
Original Score: 2/5
David Rooney
Hollywood Reporter
“If the character invites more cringing pity than emotional investment, that’s more to do with the distancing effect of Aster’s surreal approach than anything lacking in Phoenix’s raw, gaping wound of a characterization.”
Richard Lawson
Vanity Fair
“Beau Is Afraid is big, declarative cinema. Irksome (or worse) as some of the film may be, it has a gravitational pull. I stayed seated in the dark, pressed into my chair, until the end credits were done rolling.”
Robbie Collin
Daily Telegraph (UK)
“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.”
Original Score: 2/5
Peter Debruge
Variety
“There will surely be a small contingent who embrace this as their new favorite movie, but three hours doesn’t feel at all reasonable for such an uneven collection of sketches.”
Beau Is Afraid is currently playing in theatres near you
If you still have any questions regarding Beau Is Afraid, feel free to ask in the comments below. For more content, stay tuned. As usual, like, subscribe and share our articles as we here are trying to build a community of people High on Cinema!
