Ari Aster Reflects on the Failure of ‘Beau Is Afraid’: “I Would Probably Tighten That Last Hour”

Say what you will about Ari Aster’s “Beau is Afraid,” but it certainly swung for the fences, and I thought its first two hours were fantastic.

Mixed reviews, an unenthusiastic moviegoing audience and that 3-hour runtime surely didn’t help. The big miracle here is that Aster, somehow, got his existential and near-plotless 180-minute mommy-issues movie made, and good for him.

While guesting on the latest episode of Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast, Aster tackled the failure of “Beau is Afraid,” and admitted that it just didn't connect with critics and audiences. Yet, he feels like a reappraisal might be happening.

I was pretty sad that it was so maligned […] it was a bummer. It lose money. Critically, I wouldn’t say it was reviled, there’s just no consensus whatsoever. I would say, now I hear about it more and more, it’s sort of being reassessed.

Although he’s quite fond of the film, he does have regrets about it as well, citing the last hour, which is sadly when the film lost me. If the first 2/3 of the film was an audaciously singular odyssey of controlled chaos, ‘Beau’ eventually loses its hypnotic hold.

There are things that I would do differently if I did it now. While I was making it I was really excited about how exhausting the film was. It was supposed to be exhausting and that last hour was a real gauntlet […] I would probably tighten that last hour, in a certain way

The last hour of “Beau Is Afraid” is part theater of the absurd, part mythological reckoning; an operatic unraveling of both character and narrative, where reality dissolves completely. Structurally, it abandons coherence almost entirely. What remains is a surreal courtroom-as-stage, a Kafkaesque trial. Whether it works will depend on your tolerance for films that spiral into abstract emotional territory.

I’m not sure if it was worth losing that much of the audience with that decision […] I think I ejected a number of people from the theater with that [last hour], maybe I could have used them.”

Last year, The Wrap reported that A24 lost $35M on ‘Beau.’ That’s a lot of money for a small-ish indie studio. Yet, they ended up greenlighting Aster’s next film, this summer’s “Eddington,” which is also struggling at the box-office.

What did you think of “Beau Is Afraid,” now that it’s been two years since its release? Has your opinion changed over time, or has it stayed with you in unexpected ways? We’d love to hear your thoughts—whether you loved it, hated it, or are still trying to make sense of it. Let us know in the comments.