"For Ari Aster, life is one big sick joke. Or, rather, it can be.
In his wonderfully disturbing new movie, Beau Is Afraid, the writer-director finds a deep and perverse kind of comedy in the misadventures of its title character, a psychologically and sexually stunted man who embarks on a surreal journey to attend his mother’s funeral. As played by Joaquin Phoenix, Beau is a walking, barely talking bundle of nerves and anxieties – a paranoiac whose fears are constantly confirmed as he encounters-slash-endures one pitch-black gag after another, from discovering his mother’s death during a phone call with a UPS driver to losing his virginity to the soundtrack of Mariah Carey’s Always Be My Baby.
Unrelenting and juvenile, yet engineered with the sophisticated wit of a true student of cinematic history, Beau Is Afraid is a chortled gag of a movie. And its core sensibility – I’m laughing, but should I be? – easily bleeds into Aster’s real world." - Barry Hertz, The Globe and Mail
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