'Beau Is Afraid' director Ari Aster on the divisive reaction to his latest movie: 'I couldn't compromise on this one'

Francis Ford Coppola oversaw The Godfather trilogy; Robert Zemeckis took three trips Back to the Future; Christopher Nolan steered the Batmobile across a trio of Dark Knight pictures. Now, Ari Aster is bringing the curtain down on his own trilogy of A24-released "elevated horror" movies — a series that commenced with the 2018 Sundance sensation, Hereditary, continued with 2019's summertime hit, Midsommar, and concludes in typically peculiar fashion with the just-released Beau Is Afraid, the most expensive film of the director's still-young career and one that has inspired the most passionate debate, both pro and con.

Speaking with Yahoo Entertainment ahead of Beau's wide release, a contemplative Aster acknowledged that Beau represents a logical endpoint for this first phase of his filmography. "This movie really does feel like the end of the road as far as what I've been doing in these three films," the director explains. "I didn't really think of them as a trilogy until very recently. But they are kind of in dialogue with each other, and this one is like me sticking dynamite into whatever I was doing on the first couple and just blowing it up."

At the same time, Aster says that the Beau experience is also too fresh in his mind for him to promise that his next movie is going to be the start of something entirely new. "I'm still getting my own head around how to talk about it and look at it in the context of my other work," he says after a long pause. "When I was making it, I didn't think of it that way."

Certainly, the hot takes over Beau have exploded online since the three-hour opus had its first screenings on — appropriately enough — April Fool's Day. Aster's expansive narrative follows Joaquin Phoenix's hyper-paranoid title character as he journeys from his rancid apartment in an unnamed urban hellscape to attend his mother's funeral after she's decapitated by an errant chandelier. Head trauma factored heavily into Hereditary and Midsommar and it's just one of the elements that connects Beau to those previous installments in Aster's trilogy, along with family trauma and protagonists dwelling at the bottom of deep wells of grief.

But as Beau's fans have noted, this trilogy-capper stands apart from the previous two in terms of its eccentric sense of humor and opaque storytelling. Those same qualities are also providing ammunition to the film's critics, especially on social media where predictions were being made that the movie would get slapped with a rare F Cinemascore rating — putting it in the same company of such genuine disasters as Alone in the Dark and Disaster Movie as well as passionately-defended auteurist favorites like Jane Campion's In the Cut and Darren Aronofsky's Mother!. 

Ultimately, Beau didn't score that badge of honor, with its 926-screen count falling below Cinemascore's 1,500-screen threshold for a poll. (It's also possible that A24 solicited a Cinemascore grade and then declined to release the results.) And Aster also didn't need a specific letter grade to know that Beau wasn't going to be universally acclaimed.

"We always knew that it was gonna be divisive," he admits. "Early on, I decided that I couldn't compromise on this one. If I was gonna make it, it needed to be what it is. All I can say is that I love the movie: I'm so proud of it, I stand behind it completely and I hope it grows for people. Of course, you want people to like what you've made, but I had no interest in making something ingratiating with this one."

The divisive reaction over Beau is reflected in its box office returns: While the film scored 2023's best per-screen average when it opened in four theaters on April 14, the wide release numbers came in well below the starts for Hereditary and Midsommar, both of which have also enjoyed a healthy afterlife since their theatrical runs. Interestingly, some of the angrier responses to Beau specifically cite its cost, in much the same way that Elaine May's 1986 bomb-turned-cult-classic Ishtar was pilloried for its budget. But Aster doesn't necessarily believe that contemporary audiences are more forgiving of expensive blockbusters than expensive passion projects.

"I think the internet amplifies everything," he notes of that particular reaction to Beau. "The internet hasn't made anything better! But, you know, people also love their IP."

Speaking of IP, the long tail that Aster's films have traditionally enjoyed — especially with younger moviegoers — have built the director into his own brand name. A24's official shop carries a variety of Midsommar and Hereditary merch, and T-shirts emblazoned with the director's name are readily available at a number of online apparel stores. That's a status that Aster himself clearly isn't comfortable embracing.

"That doesn't sound good to me," he says when asked about the way his fans have elevated him to brand status. "That doesn't sound like something I would want." But he's also clear that Beau isn't intended to confound the audience that fervently embraced his previous films. "It's not as self-conscious as that. You just want to attend to what the movie is, and this movie was always changing shape and tone. It's meant to be a film that jars you."

"I didn't want to make a film that you could get your hands around easily," Aster continues. "I wanted it to be a case where if you get your hands around it, it's going to change. And the process of making it was hard because it kept changing on us. Once you become confident in one world, you're gonna move over to this new environment with new actors. And even then it needs to be cohesive even as it's changing. It really requires an open mind."

As part of that "open mind" philosophy, Aster has refrained from explaining the deeper meanings of Beau's journey. But he has acknowledged that Judaism is one key to unlocking the film's secrets, semi-jokingly describing Beau Is Afraid as a "Jewish Lord of the Rings." Even though Phoenix isn't Jewish, Aster calls their collaboration "a very Jewish one," noting that he didn't specifically set out to cast a Jewish leading man. "It's not like I went to the lab and said, 'I need these ingredients,'" he says. "But the theme of the mother replacing God is a very Jewish one."

Asked whether the rising wave of antisemitism in America and around the world is one of the motivating reasons behind Beau's paranoia in the film, Aster says he only became aware of that after shooting wrapped and he was in the editing room. "It only makes me happier and prouder to have made a film that feels so Jewish."

Beau Is Afraid is playing in theaters now.