Beau Is Afraid

A profoundly anxious middle-aged man attempts to travel home to his mother and is prevented by an escalating series of catastrophes, each more surreal and humiliating than the last.

Aster, after Hereditary and Midsommar, made a divisive film: a picaresque nightmare comedy about guilt, maternal control and Jewish anxiety, with Joaquin Phoenix as a man to whom the worst possible thing always happens.

It is not conventionally frightening. It is a horror film about the texture of dread itself, and about a mother who has made her son's entire existence a punishment.

The animated forest sequence, the attic, and Patti LuPone as the mother are the standout passages.

It flopped and it is the most ambitious thing Aster has made. Whether it is a masterpiece or a self-indulgence is the entire argument, and both sides are sincere.