The trailer for Ari Aster’s newest film, Beau is Afraid, was recently released and has everyone asking the same question: What the heck is this film about? Despite being an enthralling and chaotic trailer, the plot is still rather abstract. Due to the popularity of the director’s previous films, Hereditary and Midsommar, it’s no surprise that the details about his anticipated follow-up are vague and ambiguous. The trailer appears to show Aster departing from his mainstay horror genre and delving into the dark comedy category. However, the movie did just land an ‘R’ rating for strong violent content. After compiling everything known about the film, including the poster, the trailer, and Aster’s 2011 short film Beau, the puzzle pieces kinda start to fall into place. As far as the available information gets us, here’s what is going on in Beau is Afraid.
What Is Happening in 'Beau Is Afraid's Trailer?
A24 has synopsized its latest collaboration with Ari Aster as "A paranoid man embarks on an epic odyssey to get him to his mother." The IMDb page for the film describes it as "A decades-spanning portrait of one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time." These conflicting narratives just add to the overall confusion. But, a careful dissection of the trailer corroborates the former synopsis more than the latter. At the beginning of the trailer, we see Joaquin Phoenix’s balding and frumpy-looking Beau stating that he’s going to visit his mom tomorrow. He seems fearful to even leave his house, and when he does, he’s met with inexplicable obstacles that stop him from getting to his mother. It then transforms out of the mundanity of reality and into a fantastical world of surrealism. This world is lively, colorful, picturesque, and resembles the fake sets built for a play. Beau’s state of mind isn’t exactly reliable (he’s seen popping pills early in the trailer), so it’s hard to say whether it's all a paranoid delusion or a great, big metaphor.
Meet Ari Aster's First Beau
When the film previously entitled "Disappointment Blvd" was announced to actually be Beau is Afraid, many Aster fans started to look towards his short film Beau for clues. The 2011 short is a bare-bones, low-budget, first-draft version of the feature film set to come out this spring but provides a useful blueprint for the general themes of the story. They share the same starting point: a man about to leave to visit his mother. In Beau, he doesn’t even get out of his apartment before he cancels his trip. Beau is riddled with fear and paranoia that someone is stalking him, trying to break in and harm him. He isolates himself in his room and fills his apartment with booby traps. The fear and isolation become increasingly more intense as the short goes on, and he starts experiencing hallucinations in which he is pursued by monstrous creatures. The climax of the film comes when Beau finally ventures outside his room, determined to face whatever is causing him to feel so afraid. When he does, the viewer realizes that the source of his fear is not a physical thing but rather a mental construct he has created in his own mind to protect Beau from the truth about his mother.
What Does 'Beau Is Afraid's Poster Tell Us?
The poster for Beau is Afraid shows him in four different forms and generations. This could easily hint at the entrepreneur narrative as it follows him through the stages of his life. Each Beau is dressed in powder blue silk pajamas with his name embroidered, which implies success and money. Or, it’s all the different versions of Beau that he encounters in this parallel adventure-land reality he finds himself in. The oldest Beau and the cowboy-hat-wearing Beau seen on the poster only appear in the trailer inside the dream-like world. That would suggest that part of Beau’s journey to get to his mother includes coming face-to-face with every version of himself, perhaps something he's been avoiding. The poster also has a younger adolescent Beau in the forefront, who only appears in the trailer in shots on a beach vacation and having brief intense encounters with his mom at that age.
Ari Aster's Recurring Theme of Trauma
The opening line of the trailer is, “I am so sorry for what your daddy passed down to you,” Beau's mother says to him. This quote is in classic Ari Aster fashion, as his past two films also explore generational and familial trauma, and how it affects the child. Aster often uses metaphors to portray those themes, so perhaps the core of Beau is Afraid is a lot like the short film. All the physical barriers keeping Beau from visiting his mother just symbolize the impossible internal and emotional struggle of coming to terms with his grief and trauma.
The tagline for Beau is Afraid is, "From his deepest fears comes the greatest adventure." It’s fascinating to see how Ari Aster’s seed of an idea in Beau, a short film that subtly shows the human experience of being controlled by fear and the importance of facing them, became the epic, fantastical journey in Beau is Afraid. Aster has a history of exploring the aftermath of personal loss and how individuals choose to cope with it. His past work shows how trauma and grief can manifest in unexpected and terrifying ways and how the process of finding meaning and closure is full of twists and turns. This film is no different, but as the trailer proves, it’s shrouded in surrealist metaphors and shocking imagery. The grandiose visual and emotional scale of just the trailer alone implies that Beau is Afraid may be Ari Aster’s magnum opus for everything he’s been trying to say all along.