‘Beau Is Afraid’ Review: Ari Aster’s Stunning, Unknowable and Fearless Opus
thewrap.comlove—requires a dedicated session with his blunt therapist (Stephen McKinley Henderson), who abruptly asks Beau, “Do you wish she was dead?” (Of course he doesn’t.
Or so he says.)And that same scene is soul-crushingly sad because the poor guy who worries about everything—from accidentally swallowing a little mouthwash to a stray spider terrorizing his derelict building—can’t even get a word as simple as “love” out at first try.
Everything is laborious in Beau’s trapped life. And how could it not be? When he’s been put through both the emotional and physical wringer since birth, a near-anarchic episode that sets “Beau is Afraid” in motion?While that opening birth sequence is purposely blurry with indistinct sounds—are those flashlights, firecrackers, guns or screams that we perceive in the background?—what follows in this bizarre stunner is anything but.
Swiftly, we are pulled into Beau’s immaculately realized present-tense world accompanied by a Bach Suite, where chaos, murder and grime run amok in alarming doses.
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