Beau Is Afraid (2023)

Aster's delirious three-hour guilt trip expands his obsessions into surreal shapes and may be his scariest film, boldly exploring the horrors of unconditional love and inherited trauma.

Aster delivers an ambitious three-hour black comedy that is original and cements his reputation, with wicked humour and a viscerally uneasy tone throughout Beau’s surreal odyssey. The indulgent length and unconventional storytelling may test some viewers’ patience.

Aster’s audacious third feature is hailed as a stunning exploration of mother issues and a superb showcase for Joaquin Phoenix, blending tension, humour and pathos with meticulous tonal command. The epic odyssey structure and vivid production design create a nightmarish yet nuanced world.

Aster’s ambitious black comedy is praised as ballsy filmmaking anchored by a superb Joaquin Phoenix, delivering unpredictable dark vignettes and new emotional notes. The middle section with the theatrical troupe is noted as the weakest stretch in an otherwise thrilling, original odyssey.

Aster's film is a viscerally anxious, gallows-humour odyssey of Murphy's Law gone nightmarish, with standout set-pieces and Phoenix's exceptional performance. The second half loses its way in surreal fantasy, but the overall result remains a jaw-dropping, if uneven, trip.

The exhausting three-hour slog is juvenile and abrasive with some great individual moments and committed acting, but ultimately irritating by design and lacking stakes.

The review calls the film an ambitious but scattered psychodrama undermined by a one-note lead performance and excessive length. It praises the premise involving Joaquin Phoenix’s anxious journey but finds the execution uneven overall.

The critic views the film as a torturous solipsism centered on guilt, mother-son dynamics, and paranoia, with some sharp jokes but little empathy or social depth beyond Beau's neuroses.

The critic finds Aster’s third feature an overlong, episodic fantasia that fails to generate momentum or psychological depth despite its surreal elements and length. Phoenix’s performance as the guilt-ridden protagonist and the production design provide some pleasures amid the scattershot approach.

The film is a building panic attack of absurd misfortunes and blackly funny discomfort, anchored by a strong Phoenix turn. Its self-indulgent three-hour bloat and lack of structure in the second half disappoint fans expecting tighter horror.

Aster’s raging Oedipal phantasmagoria centers on a wholly committed Joaquin Phoenix as a guilt-ridden loner on an odyssey. The film confirms the director’s talent but also reveals his limitations in a guilt trip to nowhere.

Aster traces tragedy to birth itself in this wildly inventive, deeply personal absurdist odyssey, with mesmerizing stylistic flourishes and a spectacular meta finale that pulls the threads together.

The film is an amusingly patience-testing shaggy dog story about a hapless man's tortuous journey to see his mother, full of Oedipal angst and surreal episodes. Parts are hilarious while others sag or feel insufferable.

Aster's ambitious dark comedy is a bold, uneven but impressive Freudian odyssey fueled by anxiety and Oedipal angst, with standout committed performances from Phoenix and LuPone.

Ari Aster’s supersized tale follows a terminal sad-sack who endures a long, eventful journey to visit his monstrous mother. The critic finds the three-hour head space claustrophobic, assaultive and ultimately enervating despite some respect for the filmmaking craft.

Aster has produced a dud that is a tedious, self-indulgent mess abandoning cerebral horror for navel-gazing introspection. Joaquin Phoenix's neurotic performance and the film's absurd, dream-like elements fail to engage.

Joaquin Phoenix plays a simpering man-child in Ari Aster’s runaway arrested-development epic. The indulgent three-hour running time reflects what happens when a technically gifted artist receives too much creative freedom.

The critic finds the film a bold, ambitious, and highly original experiment that blends a personal metaphorical exploration of a mother-son relationship with dark comedy and surreal elements. They single out Aster's writing and direction for creating an unpredictable, entertaining, and confounding journey full of stunning imagery and humor.

Aster's fearless, labyrinthine third feature is a stunning, unknowable and immersive opus that is both great art and a great artifact. Phoenix gives one of his best performances as the guilt-ridden protagonist on an epic journey full of emotional gulfs, weirdness and invention.

The critic praises the film's ambitious, surreal, chaotic world and Joaquin Phoenix's performance, calling it big, weird, and kind of wonderful, while noting its length and Freudian themes.

Aster delivers his most divisive and uncompromising work yet—an overstuffed, feverish fever dream of anxiety, Freudian symbolism, and dark humor that is weird, scary, funny, and life-affirming in its ambition.

The film is an overlong, exhausting and sometimes indulgent three-hour odyssey through the protagonist's anxieties and mommy issues, structured like a Kafkaesque novel. Phoenix delivers a fearless, uninhibited performance in a divisive movie bound to become a cult favorite for Aster fans.

Aster's ambitious but undisciplined three-hour epic is a slog that fails to connect emotionally despite strong cast moments and surreal elements; it leaves viewers distant from Beau's plight.