This week brought us the big reveal of Ari Aster’s return to filmmaking in the Joaquin Phoenix-led Beau Is Afraid, and now, we officially have a rating for the director’s latest flick. The A24 feature has been given an “R” for “strong violent content, sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use, and language.” While the film may be a slight departure from Aster’s horror-heavy past projects Hereditary and Midsommar, an absolutely bonkers trailer released this week warned audiences to expect the unexpected in Beau Is Afraid. The rating doesn’t come as a shock as both of the filmmaker’s previous projects were also stamped with an “R,” with each film shocking audiences with horrific imagery that’s still stuck in our heads.
While Aster may not be going all out on the horror in Beau Is Afraid, as the trailer revealed, we can expect a mixture of fantastical and scary in a movie about family, the past, the present, and the future. The feature centers around a middle-aged man named Beau (Phoenix) who, as we see in the opening moments of the trailer, has a complicated relationship with his mother stemming from his childhood. We learn that he’s preparing to visit her, but that his journey is interrupted after he’s hit by a car. What happens next is a trippy, time-hopping story that sees Phoenix both aged and de-aged as Beau travels through the years in a mix of live-action and animation.
Along with Phoenix, who will soon be returning to his critically celebrated titular role in Joker: Folie à Deux, the film also stars an incredible lineup of A-list talent including Nathan Lane (The Birdcage), Amy Ryan (The Office), Pattie LuPone (American Horror Story), Parker Posey (Dazed and Confused), Kylie Rogers (Home Before Dark), Denis Ménochet (The French Dispatch), Stephen McKinley Henderson (Dune), Michael Gandolfini (The Many Saints of Newark), Hayley Squires (In the Earth), and Zoe Lister-Jones (Life in Pieces).
As for the creative team, Aster once again collaborates with Midsommar and Hereditary’s Pawel Pogorzelski and Lucian Johnston with the former serving as cinematographer and the latter as film editor. A man of many talents, Aster also penned the script for Beau Is Afraid, just as he did for his other two feature films.
While Beau Is Afraid may not have the same disturbing imagery as Hereditary and Midsommar, we can be sure that it will be an in-depth look at the horrors of family dynamics gone horribly wrong as that’s Aster’s specialty. You can check out the trailer for Beau Is Afraid below and get ready to see the “R” rated film when it lands in theaters on April 21.