Review: ‘Beau Is Afraid,’ starring Joaquin Phoenix

April 14, 2023

by Carla Hay

Joaquin Phoenix in “Beau Is Afraid” (Photo by Takashi Seida/A24)

“Beau Is Afraid”

Directed by Ari Aster

Culture Representation: Taking place in 2022 (with some flashbacks to the early 1990s), in fictional U.S. cities, including one named Wasserton, the dramatic film “Beau Is Afraid” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Latinos and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A never-married, 47-year-old bachelor has to reckon with his volatile and co-dependent relationship with his widowed mother, who became a successful business mogul.

Culture Audience: “Beau Is Afraid” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Joaquin Phoenix, writer/director Ari Aster, and movies that blur the lines between fantasy and reality for the characters.

Armen Nahapetian and Zoe Lister-Jones in “Beau Is Afraid” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“Beau Is Afraid” is an experimental fever dream about parent/child issues and mortality. Ari Aster fans expecting a horror movie will be disappointed. Joaquin Phoenix’s acting is stellar, but this three-hour film is too long and too weird for some viewers.

“Beau Is Afraid” writer/director Aster previously wrote and directed 2018’s “Hereditary” and 2019’s “Midsommar,” which were two unsettling horror films that had a straightforward narrative. Out of all three movies, “Beau Is Afraid” is the most wildly imaginative but also the least appealing to a general audience. There are some gruesome and violent scenes in “Beau Is Afraid,” but it is definitely not a horror film.

It’s a psychological portrait that is often hallucinogenic, but the themes of love and loss are never far from the surface. The movie is called “Beau Is Afraid” because paranoia, mental illness and physical danger always seem to be ready to pounce on the protagonist and other characters at any given moment. And what makes Beau afraid could be real external threats or anything from within himself.

The movie’s title character is Beau Wassermann (played by Phoenix), a lonely and disheveled 47-year-old bachelor who has never been married and who lives alone. Viewers know that Beau is 47 because it’s mentioned several times later in the film that Beau (who has no siblings) was born in 1975, and that the “current” part of the story takes place in 2022. There are several flashbacks in the movie, most notably when Beau is in his mid-teens. Armen Nahapetian plays the role of teenage Beau.

The movie’s opening scene is supposed to show Beau’s birth, from his perspective as a newborn. Viewers hear his mother’s panicked voice because she couldn’t hear her baby crying. The doctor in the room repeatedly slaps the baby until he starts crying. It sets the tone for much of what happens to Beau in the movie, because life just keeps giving him one proverbial slap after the next.

Middle-aged Beau currently lives in a run-down and dingy apartment building in an unnamed big city that resembles New York City. (“Beau Is Afraid” was filmed in New York state and Montreal.) Beau lives in a dangerous neighborhood filled with criminals, hustlers and other street people, causing mischief and mayhem outside at all hours of the day and night.

Early scenes in the movie show that human life is not valued where Beau lives. While walking home one day, he sees a small crowd gathered around a high-rise building where a man on the roof looks like he’s going to jump. The crowd is encouraging the man to jump, while some people are gleefully filming everything with their camera phones. Outside the building where Beau lives, a dead man’s decaying body has been left to rot on the street.

How dangerous is this neighborhood? Every time Beau goes to his apartment building, he has to be on the lookout for a man covered from head to toe in tattoos. This unnamed man (played by Karl Roy) chases Beau and tries to get inside the building. Beau has to outrun this menacing person and quickly lock the front door of the building behind him. No explanation is given in the movie for who this man is and why he has targeted Beau.

Beau is in psychiatric therapy and has been prescribed medication. In a session with his psychiatrist Jeremy Friel (played by Stephen McKinley Henderson), Beau says that he has big plans to visit his mother the next day, because it’s the anniversary of the death of Beau’s father, who passed away before Beau was born. Beau is taking a plane trip to visit his mother Mona Wassermann, who lives in Beau’s hometown of Wasserton. (The name of this hometown in the first big clue that Beau’s reality might not be what it first appears to be.)

Dr. Friel asks Beau: “Are you going there with realistic expectations?” Beau doesn’t answer the question. Dr. Friel then asks Beau, “Do you ever wish your mother were dead?” A horrified Beau says no and wonders why the doctor would ask that type of question. Dr. Friel says that it’s possible to love someone and also wish that this person were dead. The two feelings don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

In case that therapy session scene didn’t make it clear enough, the rest of “Beau Is Afraid” makes it abundantly clear that Beau has overwhelming “mommy issues.” In psychiatric Freudian terms, Beau would probably diagnosed with having an Oedipus complex. He’s a man-child who has an unhealthy attachment/fixation on his mother and what she wants him to do with his life. Issues related to Beau’s love life are also largely influenced by how he feels about his mother.

Viewers never find out if Beau has a job. As revealed later in the movie, his mother Mona is a successful and wealthy business mogul. Her line of work won’t be mentioned in this review, because it’s revealed in one of the movie’s more emotionally powerful scenes. It’s enough to say that Mona raised Beau to be very afraid of germs. He was taught not to eat many different types of food that most people eat but which Mona told Beau was “unsafe” for him to consume.

Before he goes to visit his mother, Beau buys a small white ceramic figurine of a mother holding her baby. On the bottom of the figurine, Beau writes this inscription: “Dear Mom, I’m sorry this is the anniversary of Dad’s death. Thank you. I’m sorry. Love, Beau.” This mother/child figurine is a symbol that shows up later in the movie. Viewers also find out fairly early in the movie that Beau has unusually large testicles. His genitals are used as a sight gag in several of the movie’s more outlandish comedic scenes.

Strange things start happening to Beau almost immediately. The night before he goes on his planned trip, while he’s trying to sleep, someone slips hand-written notes underneath his door to ask him to turn down his loud music, even though Beau isn’t making any noise. The next day, he oversleeps and wakes up in the afternoon, only two hours before his plane flight is supposed to leave.

And things get worse from there. In the rush to pack his suitcase, Beau forgot to include his dental floss. He leaves his suitcase in the hallway and his keys in the front door as he goes back in his apartment to get the dental floss. When he returns to the hallway, he sees that his keys and his suitcase have been stolen. The rest of “Beau Is Afraid” is an endurance test for Beau (and for viewers who won’t like this type of movie), as more odd things keep happening to Beau while he tries to find a way to see his mother.

While out on the street, Beau gets accidentally hit by a car driven by a grieving mother named Grace (played by Amy Ryan), who takes him to her suburban home instead of to a hospital. Grace’s surgeon husband Roger (played by Nathan Lane) gives Beau medical treatment. The couple’s sulking daughter Toni (played by Kylie Rogers), who’s about 16 years old, grows increasingly resentful that her parents have let Beau stay in her room, while Toni has to sleep on the couch in the family’s living room.

Grace and Roger are in emotional pain from the death of their young adult son Nathan, who died in Caracas, Venezuela, while he was serving in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. Nathan’s tall and large Army buddy Jeeves (played by Denis Ménochet), who witnessed Nathan’s death, is staying with Grace and Roger too. Jeeves is mute, mentally ill, and prone to attacking people randomly. (It’s implied that Jeeves has post-traumatic stress disorder.) Later in the movie, Toni and Toni’s teenage friend Penelope (played by Hayley Squires) take a drug-induced car ride with Beau.

Beau’s domineering mother Mona is portrayed by Zoe Lister-Jones in Beau’s teenage years, and by Patti LuPone in Beau’s middle-aged years. Viewers see the personality change between the younger Mona and the older Mona. This change is one of the reasons why Beau has so many unresolved issues with his mother. Aside from Phoenix’s tour-de-force acting in “Beau Is Afraid,” LuPone gives a standout performance in the short time (less than 20 minutes) that she’s in the movie.

Another character who is seen in different time periods is Beau’s love interest Elaine Bray, who is about the same age as Beau. Elaine and Beau first met as teenagers when he was on vacation with his mother at an unnamed resort, where Elaine was staying with her own domineering mother. As an adult, Elaine ended up working for Mona. Julia Antonelli has the role of teenage Elaine, while Parker Posey has the role of middle-aged Elaine.

Richard Kind has the role of Harold Cohen, the Wassermann family’s attorney, who is heard talking to Beau on the phone and is then later seen toward the end of the movie. Even though Harold is not a doctor, Beau keeps calling him “Dr. Cohen,” and this misidentification greatly annoys Harold. Bill Hader has a very brief cameo as a UPS delivery person. The movie trailer and other marketing materials for “Beau Is Afraid” show Phoenix made to look like an elderly man. It’s another character in the movie that’s exactly who you think it will be, once it becomes obvious that Beau has an Oedipus complex.

“Beau Is Afraid” has terrific production design for the locations where Beau goes to in the movie, but the story is going to be too confusing and too abstract for some viewers. It’s a fascinating, sometimes funny film (if you can tolerate offbeat and violent comedy), but it can also be long-winded and a little too pretentious. The best way to appreciate “Beau Is Afraid” is to know before seeing the movie (or at least figure it out within the first half of this film) that it’s about the dangers of not expressing true feelings for a loved one, and how those repressed feelings can do a lot of damage.

A24 released “Beau Is Afraid” in select U.S. cinemas on April 14, 2023, with a wider release in U.S. cinemas on April 21, 2023.

Review: ‘In the Earth,’ starring Joel Fry, Ellora Torchia, Reece Shearsmith and Hayley Squires

April 26, 2021

by Carla Hay

Joel Fry and Ellora Torchia in “In the Earth” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

“In the Earth”

Directed by Ben Wheatley

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed part of England, the sci-fi horror film “In the Earth” features a racially diverse cast (white people, black people and one person of Indian heritage) who mostly portray scientists during an unnamed pandemic.

Culture Clash: Two scientists encounter terror while they are walking in the woods. 

Culture Audience: “In the Earth” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching horror movies that are pretentiously abstract to cover up for a flimsy and repetitive plot.

Joel Fry and Hayley Squires in “In the Earth” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

It’s easy to see how “In the Earth” might be compared to the 1999 horror film “The Blair Witch Project,” because both movies are mainly about people possibly being trapped in the woods while an evil spirit might be on the loose. However, “In the Earth” is a much more incoherent film, with a lazy ending and too many scenes that drag monotonously with no scares. The movie has an over-reliance on strobe lights. It’s not terrifying. It’s annoying. Maybe the filmmakers thought the strobe lights would trick people into thinking that “In the Earth” was a good horror movie.

Written and directed by Ben Wheatley, “In the Earth” takes place in an unnamed part of England during an unnamed pandemic. There’s a very small number of people in the movie’s cast, so at least viewers won’t be confused by too many characters being in the film. What viewers will be confused by is why this pretentious and boring movie wastes a potentially good story concept on idiotic chase scenes and repetitive scenes that go nowhere.

“In the Earth” begins with Martin Lowery (played by Joel Fry) arriving at a place in a wooded area called Gantalow Lodge. He meets with a man named James (played by John Hollingworth), and they talk about an unseen doctor who’s handling lockdown procedures. It soon becomes apparent that the lodge is some kind of meeting place for scientists, although they don’t seem to be doing any real work. One of the first things that Martin says is that “Bristol took a bad hit after the third wave.”

Martin meets another scientist at the lodge named Alma (played by Ellora Torchia), who gives the impression that she’s all about work. Soon after they meet, Alma and Martin are in a room together when he sees some children’s illustrations of Parnag Fegg, a witch-resembling entity that’s part of local folklore. Parnag Fegg is described as “the spirit of the woods.”

Alma mentions that a few kids went missing in the 1970s. And because this is a horror movie, viewers are supposed to automatically think that Parnag Fegg could have had something to do with these disappearances. Or maybe it was the Blair Witch, because “In the Earth” rips off a lot of the same ideas as “The Blair Witch Project,” except for the “found footage” format.

After Martin gets a medical test to make sure that he’s not infected with the unnamed virus that’s plaguing the world, he finds out that he and Alma have to get some equipment from a scientist named Dr. Wendle, who used to be Martin’s boss. Martin isn’t too thrilled about it because he parted ways with Dr. Wendle on bad terms that he won’t talk about when Alma asks Martin why he no longer works with Dr. Wendle. Alma tells Martin that the only way they can get to Dr. Wendle’s place is to walk through the woods, and the trip will take two days. Of course it will take that long, because there has to be an illogical excuse for why this moronic movie is stretched into a tedious slog.

After all, the filmmakers don’t want Alma and Martin to drive to their destination because using a vehicle means that they would get there faster, and a vehicle would give them a better chance to escape when they inevitably get stuck in the woods. And whatever this “equipment” is, it must not be that large, because Alma has insisted that they have to walk to Dr. Wendle’s place, which means they’re not using a vehicle to bring the equipment back. Don’t expect “In the Earth” to answer basic questions that would make this movie more coherent.

And so, Alma and Martin, who are supposed to be intelligent scientists, start walking for a two-day trek in the woods with no camping equipment and no first-aid supplies. They also show no signs of bringing any phones or emergency communication equipment with them. And you know what that means in a badly written horror movie like this one: Someone’s going to get injured and they can’t call for help.

Whenever “In the Earth” can’t come up with anything clever or logical in the story, Alma and Martin pass out for unknown reasons and wake up to something that’s supposed to be horrifying. It isn’t long before this gimmick happens. Gunshots are heard, the strobe lights begin pulsing, and Alma screams. And the next thing you know, Martin wakes up and finds Alma unconscious. He’s able to revive her, but they discover that their shoes are missing. And only their shoes.

Alma and Martin act as if walking in the woods with no shoes is just a minor pesky problem that won’t interrupt their schedule to get to Dr. Wendle’s place. And sure enough, Martin gets injured when he steps on something sharp that gives him a big, bloody gash on his left foot. Because Martin and Alma were too dimwitted to bring emergency medical supplies, they can’t properly treat Martin’s foot injury.

Another gimmick that the movie repeats on a very irritating loop is using any injuries that Martin gets (yes, there are more that happen later in the story) as excuses to have gross-out close-ups of these injuries. These close-ups are intended to make viewers squirm, but they aren’t really scary. They’re just bloody and gratuitous. When Martin’s foot gets infected, it’s easy to predict what will happen.

During their barefoot walk in the woods, Alma and Martin encounter a disheveled and dirty man, who gives the impression that he’s homeless, because when he first meets them, he’s relieved that Martin and Alma are not park rangers who will report him. This stranger introduces himself as Zach (played by Reece Sheersmith), and he notices that Alma and Martin aren’t wearing shoes and that Martin has an injured foot.

And so, Zach invites them to his makeshift camp site, where he says he has spare shoes they can wear. He also has medical supplies to treat Martin’s wound. But predictably, Zach isn’t such a friendly stranger after all. And the movie goes downhill from there in some nonsensical scenes involving torture, chases in the woods and bizarre photo shoots. Martin accumulates enough serious injuries that would leave a person in medical shock and incapacitated in real life, but there he is running around as if he’s only got a limp.

Dr. Olivia Wendle (played by Hayley Squires) is eventually seen in the movie. The mystery of Parnag Fegg comes in and out of the story like a story angle in search of a cohesive plot. But viewers shouldn’t expect major questions to be answered by the end of the film. “In the Earth” doesn’t even have suspenseful chase scenes, because every time a villain corners a victim or victims, nothing really happens except some talking and people passing out when the strobe lights start yet again.

Viewers won’t learn much about the characters in the film and certainly won’t care much about them either. All of the actors in the cast are quite dull in their roles, although Torchia makes an effort to bring some emotional depth to her Alma character. It’s not saying much, because all of the characters in the film are hollow, with no backstories or memorable personalities.

The production design, cinematography and editing for “In the Earth” look like a poorly thought-out student film. It’s as if the filmmakers decided to throw in some strobe lights and psychedelic fever dream imagery all over the movie to try to pass it off as artistic horror cinema. There is absolutely nothing scary about this movie.

And worst of all, “In the Earth” has such an obnoxiously inflated tone of self-importance that it tries to fool viewers into thinking that they aren’t smart enough if they’re confused by anything in the movie. The ending is actually quite anti-climactic, and any explanation of what’s going on is badly filmed. “In the Earth” isn’t too smart for most people to understand. The reality is that it’s just a pointless movie that cares more about bombarding people with strobe lights than telling a good story.

Neon released “In the Earth” in select U.S. cinemas on April 16, 2021.

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