Beau Is Afraid comes to us quivering with critical buzz. The writer-director, Ari Aster, has made some electrifying contributions to the horror genre in recent years with his first two films, Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019). And his star this time out, the strange and wonderful Joaquin Phoenix, is certainly a man who knows his way around weird. So this movie's gonna rule, right?
Well, we'll see. The picture does have some of the savage imagery we expect of Aster—especially in the first half, when we pay a visit to an unnamed city that's clearly hell-bound and hopeless, with defective citizens fritzing out on every corner. This is the Aster effect we seek.
