The first poster for Hereditary director Ari Aster’s deeply mysterious next movie changes the name of the project from Disappointment Blvd. to Beau Is Afraid. Released courtesy of A24, the poster puts the spotlight on what appears to be a CGI-conjured image of a young Joaquin Phoenix. Staring straight into our souls, there is something inexplicably unsettling about the image...which, based on the prior work of Ari Aster, is no doubt a sign of things to come. Check out the first poster for Beau Is Afraid below.
Plot details for Beau Is Afraid, which again was previously thought to be titled Disappointment Blvd., are currently in infuriating mystery. In fact, almost nothing is known about the project other than that it will follow Academy Award winner Joaquin Phoenix as a man who finds himself at the center of...something. Beau Is Afraid has been described in the past as "an intimate, decades-spanning portrait of one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time." Which doesn’t offer too many clues.
Written, directed, and produced by Ari Aster, Beau Is Afraid is expected to be a movie of the horror variety, with some reports claiming that it will begin as a character study of Phoenix’s character before exploding into supernatural terror. It is rumored that Beau Is Afraid will begin with Phoenix as an anxious man who returns to his childhood home after the death of his mother. A death that occurs under mysterious circumstances. Set in an alternate present day, Phoenix’s character is forced to confront his past, making an alarming discovery along the way, before suddenly horrors of the supernatural are upon him. No wonder Beau is so afraid.
Is Beau Is Afraid an Adaptation of Ari Aster’s Own Short Film?
Many of these details have likely been taken from Aster’s 2011 short film, Beau, which many now suspect Beau Is Afraid will transform into feature length. In Beau, a neurotic middle-aged man's trip to visit his mother is delayed indefinitely when his keys are mysteriously taken from his door. He is subsequently haunted by an increasingly sinister chain of upsetting events.
While we expect that Beau Is Afraid will be a horror movie thanks to Ari Aster’s previous success with the likes of both Hereditary in 2018 and Midsommar in 2019, it’s worth noting that the filmmaker has previously stated that he will not return to the horror genre just yet. “It might take me a few movies before I wind back around to [horror], but I love horror and I’m sure I’ll be back,” the filmmaker said before adding that “Head trauma will ALWAYS have a place in my films.”
So, will Beau Is Afraid be more of a psychological thriller than an out-and-out horror movie? Or is Ari Aster simply trying to throw us off the scent and maintain the mystery of Beau Is Afraid as much as he can?
One thing we do know for sure about Beau Is Afraid is that it will star a stellar ensemble cast led by Joaquin Pheonix. The supporting cast includes Nathan Lane, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan, Kylie Rogers, Parker Posey, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Denis Ménochet, Hayley Squires, Michael Gandolfini, Armen Nahapetian, Zoe Lister-Jones, and Richard Kind.
Beau Is Afraid is set to be released in 2023.