‘Beau Is Afraid’ review

The advice “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off” is often attributed to Coco Chanel. It means that you should streamline before going out in public. The same concept can be applied to film. If you’re a filmmaker, you should consider simplifying your movies before releasing them, or you’ll end up with something like “Beau Is Afraid,” the latest movie from horror director Ari Aster. The film starts out promising, but it quickly becomes overindulgent and confusing.

Ari Aster Has The Same Problem As Jordan Peele. Aster is known for his impressive first feature, “Hereditary,” which helped revive faith in mainstream horror. However, his grandiose sophomore effort, “Midsommar,” was confounding and disappointing. “Beau Is Afraid” follows a similar trajectory. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix as the title character, a mysteriously aged, nebulously ailed man living in an urban horror show. Aster builds tension in a satisfying way, but the film loses its way around the halfway mark when Beau flees into the woods and encounters a forest-dwelling theater group.

The latter half of the movie is an extravagant exercise in patience with no payoff. It feels indulgent and over-the-top. The film explores Beau’s inner turmoil around his strained relationship with his mother and his terminal solitude through the first of many extended cutaways. This one is animated, telling a ridiculously long what-if story about Beau finding, then losing, his soul mate and their children.

The movie also suffers from sloppy exposition about Beau’s yearning for family, followed by a psychosexual reunion with his mom and the appearance of a giant penis and balls. The film’s latter half is confusing and bizarre, with no clear direction. It feels like Aster is trying to feed audiences he doesn’t quite understand or the output of an artist who realizes they’ve reached a point where anything they create will be showered with praise.

This is a pattern for Aster and other skilled directors, like Jordan Peele, whose impressive first features helped revive the horror genre. Peele’s similarly ambitious second film, “Us,” never stuck the landing, opting for an increasingly frayed trajectory instead. His third film, “Nope,” also abandons sensical storytelling. These later works feel like attempts to feed audiences they don’t quite understand, or the output of artists who realize they’ve reached a point where anything they create will be showered with praise. Or maybe these filmmakers really are just not as good as we initially thought.

With “Hereditary” and “Get Out,” Aster and Peele have shown that they can deliver precise, impressive films. But their more recent efforts bear no semblance of that potential. When you put a filmmaker whose work you’ve come to trust on a pedestal, it gives them very little space to experiment or fail. Or when they do mess up, the narrative built for them has become so secured that audiences sometimes don’t even react when it’s just not true anymore.

Before releasing their next films, Aster and Peele should consider simplifying their stories and ensuring that they have clear direction and purpose. Otherwise, they risk losing the audience’s attention and respect. “Beau Is Afraid” is a prime example of a promising concept that hurtles off the rails on its way to a conclusion. If Aster and Peele want to continue making successful horror movies, they need to take a step back and focus on telling compelling stories that don’t rely on shock value and confusing plot twists.