Aster is still flicking at his characters' raw nerves, to say nothing of ours, but for the first time, he seems to be doing it more for effect than anything else.īeau Wassermann, played by Joaquin Phoenix, is a middle-aged sad sack who, true to the title, is afraid of a lot of things. But Beau Is Afraid still strikes me as an audacious misfire. And I'm grateful that a company as adventurous as A24 is willing to give an ambitious director carte blanche to make the unhinged passion project of his dreams. Now, after sitting through Aster's latest, the three-hour horror-comedy fantasia Beau Is Afraid, my admiration hasn't dimmed, exactly it's the kind of freakish jumble only a gifted filmmaker could make.
Less scary but no less gripping was his nightmarish travelogue Midsommar, about a relationship that rots under the Scandinavian sun. I've been an admirer of his ever since getting scared out of my wits five years ago by Hereditary, with its mash-up of demonic possession and domestic turmoil.
Thirty-six-year-old writer-director Ari Aster makes deliberately paced, exquisitely crafted chillers about guilt, repression and super-messed-up family dynamics. Joaquin Phoenix's character is attacked, tortured, threatened, knocked unconscious and terrorized in Ari Aster's Beau is Afraid.
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