63
Metascore
51 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 91ConsequenceClint WorthingtonConsequenceClint WorthingtonIt’s a huge, huge swing, and Aster skeptics will likely scoff at the egotism of it all. But for those of us who’ve been at the receiving end of a classic Jewish-mother guilt trip, Beau is Afraid will serve as affirmation, cinematic therapy, and the most relatably terrifying thing they’ve ever seen.
- 90TheWrapTomris LafflyTheWrapTomris LafflyAdmittedly, it’s all a bit much, an exercise in familial grief, inherited burdens and compressed feelings of guilt, but that excess is entirely the point of Aster’s longest and most ambitious film to date.
- 90The Daily BeastNick SchagerThe Daily BeastNick SchagerA true American original, and proof that, while the hype surrounding [Aster] may have been early, it wasn’t wrong.
- 90IGNSiddhant AdlakhaIGNSiddhant AdlakhaIt’s the kind of movie worth recommending for its ambition alone, merely to witness the audacious result of anxious self-loathing writ large across the silver screen, without an ounce of restraint. That it’s also a remarkably well-crafted horror-comedy is a cherry on top.
- 88RogerEbert.comNick AllenRogerEbert.comNick AllenBeau Is Afraid, an enveloping fantasy laced with mommy issues, is about being doomed from birth. It's Aster’s funniest movie yet.
- 83IndieWireDavid EhrlichIndieWireDavid EhrlichFew movies have ever so boldly explored how fraught the safety of unconditional love can be in such a cruel world, and even fewer — including Aster’s own “Hereditary” — have been so willing to sit with the irreconcilable horrors of trying to share that love with someone else.
- 58The A.V. ClubJordan HoffmanThe A.V. ClubJordan HoffmanThe movie starts with the volume cranked to 10, then never takes a breath. At three hours it is unbearable. Yes, this is meant to be a “bad trip” of a movie, taking you inside the experience of someone undergoing a crisis, but there’s a limit. And then it’s revealed that this grown man has mommy issues. For that you made me sit through all this noise?
- 40The TelegraphRobbie CollinThe TelegraphRobbie CollinThe issue here isn’t the moment-to-moment loopiness. It’s that the film’s cumulative unmanageableness soon starts to look like a put-on – Aster seems much more interested in pushing the limits of his audience, rather than his own.
- 40The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawJoaquin Phoenix is on really uninteresting form, playing to his weaknesses as an actor as he gives a narcissistic performance of pain, sporting a permanently zonked expression of anxiety and torpid self-pity at the misery that surrounds him.
- 25The Film StageFran HoepfnerThe Film StageFran HoepfnerBeau Is Afraid relies on subverting expectations so frequently that its twists become predictable, if not rote.