Ari Aster turned heads at Sundance 2018 with his incredibly realized neo-horror film “Hereditary.” The following year he polarized movie fans with his love/hate statement “Midsommar,” a film I was lukewarm on, upon initial viewing, until I finally caught up with the 3-hour director’s cut at home and had a total 180 opinion reversal.
After giving us this one-two punch, Aster has already begun working on his next movie. Interviewed by the Associated Students Program Board at UC Santa Barbara last June, the filmmaker discussed what might be coming down the pipeline for him and while he didn’t go into detail about this new movie, Aster did say that it would be a 4-hour “nightmare comedy.
Now we’re hearing via [Discussing Film] that Joaquin Phoenix is set to star in this mysterious new movie which now goes by the title of “Beau is Afraid.” In 2011, Aster directed a short film titled “Beau.” Described as a “surrealist horror film set in an alternate present,” Phoenix’s character would play an “extremely anxious but pleasant-looking man who has a fraught relationship with his overbearing mother and never knew his father.” When his mother dies, he makes a journey home that involves some wild supernatural threats.
Watch Aster’s short “Beau” below: