Editor's Note: The following contains descriptions of sexual assault that some readers may find disturbing.

The Big Picture

  • Ari Aster's films frequently explore complex themes of motherhood, even in his early short films.
  • In Hereditary, the protagonist's journey as a grieving mother becomes entangled with the occult and leads to her tragic demise.
  • Midsommar follows a young woman who experiences a devastating loss and later finds herself acting as a maternal figure within a cult, which may lead to further heartache.

Ari Aster is confusing and horrifying audiences yet again with this year's Beau is Afraid, and it's yet another movie from the auteur filmmaker with quite a few things to say about motherhood. This is a theme that is practically omnipresent throughout the acclaimed writer/director's work, being extremely prominent in both of his past features — the horrifying Hereditary and the malignant Midsommar. Complex motherhood is a concept that even exists in Aster's earlier short films, making the thematic element a common plot device in virtually all the filmmaker's works.

Many of Aster's Short Films Offer Anecdotal Looks at Motherhood

A family pose for wedding photos in The Strange Thing About the Johnsons
Image Via American Film Institute 

Aster's early career in short-form narratives is fascinating, mainly because none of them can really be considered horror stories in the same way that Hereditary and Midsommar are. Don't mistake that as they aren't all kinds of bizarre and disturbing, because they certainly still are. Most of the shorts also have something to say about motherhood.

One of the few somewhat positive depictions of motherhood comes in one of the filmmaker's most negative stories, that being The Strange Thing About the Johnsons. Created by Aster when he was still a film student, the sophomore short film is a very clever and extremely unsettling twist on domestic sexual abuse in a family unit. Typically, the perpetrators of such an inhumane act are one of the parents, but Aster flips that idea on its head by having the son figure as the abuser. For an undisclosed amount of time, Isaiah Johnson (Brandon Greenhouse) has been forcing his father, Sidney Johnson (Billy Mayo), into a sexual relationship, repeatedly threatening and even raping his father at various points. When Isaiah's mother, Joan (Angela Bullock), discovers the perverse acts, she naturally assumes that Sidney is the one who started the abuse but learns in the end that Isaiah has been the true manipulator the whole time. The short ends with a violent confrontation between Isaiah and Joan, where the mother kills her son and is left as the only surviving member of her thought-to-be happy family. It's one of the few times in Aster's work where the mother is closer to a protagonist than an antagonist.

Mother and Son hugging in Munchausen
Image Via Invicta Films

Aster's silent film Munchausen starts as probably the most uplifting story Aster has ever made. It seems to be a heartfelt story of a young man (Liam Aiken) who is finally growing up and becoming a man by succeeding in college and finding love. This is much to the chagrin of the boy's mother (Bonnie Bedelia), whose staunch over-protectiveness of her baby boy has led her to go as far as to subtly poison her son to keep him at home. If that wasn't already too far, her dark deed eventually ends up killing her beloved child.

Basically is essentially a 14-minute-long rant from an aspiring actress, Shandy Pickles (Rachel Brosnahan), as she recounts her charmed but hectic life. Motherhood isn't a central theme in the short, but we do get bits and pieces of it when Shandy recounts how annoyed she is with her depressed mother lying around the house. Clearly, the spoiled main character resents her mother for reasons beyond our comprehension.

Finally, Beau, the precursor and inspiration for Aster's most recent feature, also introduces some motherhood-related themes, some of which made their way into Beau is Afraid. The short, like the film, centers on a neurotic man who is deathly afraid of the unusually hostile world around him, but he does have his doting mother to rely on when things get hectic.

'Hereditary' Presents Every Mother's Nightmare

Toni Collette screaming in 'Hereditary'
Image via A24

The scariest thing about Ari Aster's horror masterpiece Hereditary is that it didn't receive a single Oscar nomination, and that's especially infuriating for Toni Collette's jaw-dropping performance as Annie - an artist mother who is given the impossible responsibility of grieving for her mother and her daughter simultaneously. Annie was estranged from her now-deceased mother, unaware of her mother's connection to a cult and obsession with demonology. She's also becoming increasingly detached from her puberty-bound teenage son Peter (Alex Wolff) and socially ostracized daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro). Before Annie can even think about reconnecting with her children, tragedy strikes when Peter drives Charlie from a party, and she is accidentally decapitated. Annie learns this and partakes in one of the film's most effective scenes, where she is screaming her lungs out after finding Charlie's body in the car.

This moment serves as the catalyst for Annie's real feelings about Peter to take shape. By her admission in a dream sequence, Annie says that she never wanted Alex to be born, thinking of him as a mistake. Even though she wasn't much closer to Charlie, she still felt she had a better connection with her and is willing to do anything to bring her back. That's how Annie gets wrapped up in the complex world of ghosts and possessions, leading the grieving mother to get possessed herself. Be it the will of a demon or the true desires of Annie, she chases Peter around the house with every intention of killing him. Annie's journey reaches a tragic end when she saws off her own head, a grotesque mirror of her soon-to-be reincarnated daughter's death.

Dani in 'Midsommar' Never Gets the Chance to be a Maternal Figure

Dani (Florence Pugh) having a panic attack in 'Midsommar'

Midsommar doesn't have a literal depiction of motherhood, but it does show a strong maternal figure who is brought to her lowest point by an unthinkable tragedy. The catalyst for the film's events and the main character of Dani (Florence Pugh) occurs when her sister Terri (Kauda Csanyi) appears to be going through a mental health episode. When Dani tries to reach her, it's already too late, as Terri has killed herself and Dani's parents with carbon monoxide poisoning.

The unthinkable tragedy sends Dani into a deep depression, just like Annie in Hereditary. She may not have become a mother, but she still served as a mother figure to her younger sister, and she feels like she failed completely when she took her own life and her parents' lives. Cutting to the end of the film, Dani gets a second chance to be a maternal figure to the film's murderous cult, though this will likely lead to more death and heartache for the emotionally battered protagonist.

Beau Has Every Reason to Fear His Mother in 'Beau is Afraid'

Ari Aster's latest is also certainly his strangest and is also the one that arguably examines motherhood more poignantly than any project he's tackled before. The character of Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) revolves around his mother, so much so to the point where he doesn't even realize it. Most of Beau's memories of his mother (Patti LuPone) are positive, with her mostly being a caring figure who taught him valuable life lessons. His perception of her turns out to be monumentally false in the film's climax, when he learns that she's been spying on him, lying to him about his father's death, and faking her own death to manipulate her mentally struggling child emotionally.

The reason? Beau slept in and missed his flight to come to visit her. That one completely innocuous event is what caused this mother figure to snap and bring out all the years of resentment she harbored when raising her ill child. Beau is constantly told that his medical conditions have molded him into an unsatisfactory human, but in reality, his mother is the one who caused years of torment that ultimately pushed him away.

Beau is Afraid is now available to watch on Paramount+ with Showtime in the U.S.

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