Movie · 2023 · Comedy, Adventure, Fantasy · 2h 59m · R · English
Curator score: 4.4/10 (615.8K ratings)
From his darkest fears comes the greatest adventure.
Overview
Following the sudden death of his mother, a mild-mannered but anxiety-ridden man confronts his darkest fears as he embarks on an epic odyssey back home.
Ratings
Curator score: 4.4/10
IMDb: 6.6/10
Letterboxd: 3.42/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 67%
Metacritic: 63
TMDB: 6.7/10
Director
Ari Aster
Production
A24, Square Peg, IPR.VC, Access Entertainment
Cast
Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane, Kylie Rogers, Denis Ménochet, Parker Posey, Zoe Lister-Jones, Armen Nahapetian, Julia Antonelli, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Richard Kind, Hayley Squires, Julian Richings, Bill Hader, Alicia Rosario, James Cvetkovski, Catherine Bérubé, Stephanie Herrera, Bradley Fisher
Curator Review
Verdict
A delirious, anxiety-soaked odyssey that turns dread into spectacle. It’s messy, overlong, and intentionally abrasive, but for viewers who like surreal comedy, psychological horror, and maximalist filmmaking, it’s a singular experience.
Best for
fans of surreal dark comedy
viewers who enjoy psychological horror with absurdist humor
people open to long, fever-dream narratives
audiences who like bold, divisive auteur cinema
Skip if
you want a tight, conventional plot
you dislike extreme tonal swings
you prefer restrained realism
you have low tolerance for discomfort or grotesque imagery
Overview
Beau Is Afraid is less a story than a panic attack rendered at feature length. Ari Aster takes a deeply anxious protagonist and drops him into a world that feels governed by guilt, paranoia, and nightmare logic, where every encounter can turn into humiliation, danger, or farce. The result is frequently funny, often exhausting, and impossible to mistake for anything else.
Worth noting
What makes it work is the commitment to its own emotional reality. Joaquin Phoenix plays Beau as a man so overwhelmed by fear that even ordinary movement feels like a battle, and the film keeps finding new ways to externalize that inner collapse. It’s sprawling and self-indulgent, but also visually inventive and weirdly compassionate toward its damaged central figure.
Bottom line
This is not an easy recommendation for everyone, and that’s part of the point. If you want a clean genre ride, look elsewhere. If you want a major studio-scale art film that behaves like an unwell dream, it’s one of the most memorable releases of its year.
Top Letterboxd reviews
gillianb (4★) · 21118 likes
wow his dad’s a huge dick.
luna (4★) · 14708 likes
forget beau bitch i was afraid!!!
drewphillips09 (5★) · 13230 likes
Sooo my grandpa ate half a quart of paint today thinking it was yogurt
Jamie Jirak (4.5★) · 8175 likes
Don't worry, the "funny" Ari Aster movie is still a three-hour waking nightmare.