The first trailer for Beau is Afraid, the latest horror from Hereditary director Ari Aster starring Joaquin Phoenix, is here.
After years of creating skin-crawling short films (if you haven’t seen The Strange Thing About the Johnsons, you need to), Ari Aster entered the horror scene with 2018’s Hereditary, a trauma-inducing, instant classic that declared him a force to be reckoned with.
He returned the next year with Midsommar, a gruesome, good-for-her daymare. It’s been more than three years, and we’ve yet to see anything else from the director.
In 2023, he’s coming back with Beau is Afraid, starring Joaquin Phoenix – and we’ve just got the first trailer.
Beau is Afraid gets first creepy trailer
You can watch the first trailer for Beau is Afraid below:
The movie (originally titled Disappointment Blvd.) has been billed as a “surrealist horror”, set to be “an intimate, decades-spanning portrait of one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time,” as per Empire.
Phoenix’s character is also said to be an “extremely anxious but pleasant-looking man who has a fraught relationship with his overbearing mother and never knew his father.”
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You’ve been waiting a lifetime. #BeauIsAfraid trailer next Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/hkSoI2fALE
— A24 (@A24) January 5, 2023
If we’re looking for further clues, Aster made a short film in 2011 titled Beau. “A neurotic middle-aged man’s trip (to visit his mother) is delayed indefinitely when his keys are mysteriously taken from his door,” its synopsis read, which seems to match up with the new movie.
You can watch Beau in its entirety here, beginning around the 32-minute mark, although we’d recommend watching the full collection.
What remains unclear is the movie’s length – according to Aster, his next movie after Midsommar was set to be a “four-hour-long nightmare comedy”, as per Slash Film.
The filmmaker hasn’t given away much, if anything, about Beau is Afraid, but he told Le Journal du Dimanche: “I can tell you that collaborating with Joaquin Phoenix is one of the best experiences of my life. I am very proud of his performance and I love him with all my heart.”
Beau is Afraid is due for release in April 2023.