History Film / BeauIsAfraid

** Beau and Elaine have sex [[spoiler:that ends up killing Elaine]] to Music/MariahCarey's "Always Be My Baby". The lyrics of the song take a specially dark meaning considering it mirrors Mona's obsessive relatioship with Beau.

* MyBelovedSmother: Beau's mother has a horrible, nearly incestuous, relationship with him that is full of guilt and manipulation to keep him in line. It extends to a meta level that a viewer could easily miss upon first viewing: one of the production companies that is shown during the pre-movie credits is ''Mona's company "MW"''. Mona has power over Beau on even a higher level than the narrative itself.

** Beau and Elaine have sex [[spoiler:that ends up killing Elaine]] to Music/MariahCarey's "Always Be My Baby".

* ThousandYardStare: Beau has one after he gets the call his mother has died.

* FaceDeathWithDignity: [[spoiler:The last we see of Beau; after he desperately pleads for his mother to help him in his trial and gets no response, he stops fighting and stares off into the distance, seemingly accepting his fate moments before his boat capsizes.]]

** Grace writes "Stop Incriminating Yourself" on the napkin and later tells him to turn on Channel 78 on the television, [[spoiler: which shows CCTV footage of Beau which, when he fast-forwards it, shows scenes and settings from the final act.]].
** Another instance foreshadowing the ending, moments before Toni [[spoiler: kills herself]], she remarks how Beau [[spoiler: has already failed his test.]]
** After Grace re-enters the house to the commotion going on in her son's old room, the TV is paused on [[spoiler:an empty arena, ultimately where the big ending trial happens]].

** When Beau sees the hobos starting to take the elevator to get to his apartment, one of them briefly turns back and look straight at him. [[spoiler: This exact same hobo can be seen among the poster of Mona's employees, heavily implying that she was already conspiring against Beau back then.]]
* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: Inverted in the original short--the janitor who tells Beau "you're fucked, pal" is played by none other than Aster himself.

* FullFrontalAssault: ''"Birthday Boy Stab Man"'' is a psychotic butt-naked homeless man running around stabbing people on the street.

* HorrorComedy: Ari Aster initially wrote and described this movie as a "four-hour nightmare comedy", and he stuck with that. The humor in this comes from the especially dark and morbid situations Beau finds himself in. Even with him clearly being a NervousWreck and ManChild, he's somehow the OnlySaneMan of the cast, with every other character acting so off-the-wall ''strange'' and unrealistic in dream-like worst-case scenarios, it's somehow both hilariously weird, and off-putting and creepy.
* HotSkittyOnWailordAction: Exactly ''how did'' [[spoiler:Mona conceive the twins with that thing in the attic? It's penis-shaped, but so much bigger than her that trying to do it the obvious way wouldn't be feasible, and the appendages it uses to kill Jeeves don't seem like she would survive [[NaughtyTentacles those]] either. She implies the act was so vile it forever tainted her feelings on her HalfHumanHybrid sons.]]

* MarijuanaIsLSD: Zig-zagged. Toni and a friend of hers forces Beau to smoke weed and he enters into a pretty nasty bad trip for the rest of the day. Toni claims that the joint she gave him is laced with "three things" but she doesn't specify what and she and her friend, who also smoked it, are apparently fine afterwards.

* MoreDakka: Jeeves' primary method of dispatching his targets is a submachine gun, and does not care about conserving bullets. [[spoiler:This backfires on him twice - once when he falls on the submachine gun and turns his shoulder and a person who grabbed him into a pile of gory mush, and again when he encounters Beau's father to no avail.]]

The film was in development by Aster since the early stages of his career. His 2011 short film ''Beau'' served as a basis for parts of the film, and a draft of the film's script dated to 2014 circulated online. It was officially announced by [=A24=] in February 2021 (with ''Disappointment Blvd.'' being its announced title, solely to muddy the waters about its connection to the leaked script).

* MaleFrontalNudity: Plenty, from the aptly named "Birthday Boy Stab Man", to Beau himself, and even [[spoiler: a giant monster penis]].

%%* ShellShockedVeteran: Jeeves.

Beau (Phoenix) is an extremely anxious man who is trying to visit his smothering, mysterious mother ([=LuPone=]). However, after being besieged by random, distressing events, he is run over by a seemingly affable couple, Roger (Lane) and Grace (Ryan), who take him home with them and nurse him back to health. The strangeness of Beau's past and present collides as he tries to get home to his mother.

''Beau Is Afraid'' was released on April 14, 2023[[note]]delayed from an original planned release in 2022[[/note]], and the trailer can be watched [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuiWDn976Ek here]].

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:Beau is ultimately murdered by the mother he has spent the entire film, and all of his life, desperately trying to please. After both a lengthy life and lengthy runtime of [[TraumaCongaLine one horrible event after another]], he is "rewarded" with mass public humiliation and an {{undignified death}}, with [[HopeSpot almost every moment where it looked like he'd catch a break]] [[YankTheDogsChain eventually being ripped away and substituted with something even worse]].]]

* DaylightHorror: Many intense scenes in the first two acts take place in broad daylight, from Beau dealing with the crazy homeless people in his neighborhood, to [[spoiler:Toni killing herself in front of Beau by drinking paint]].

* AdvertisedExtra: Creator/RichardKind was listed as a major actor in the film, even though his big role doesn't happen until the last scene.

The film was in development by Aster since the early stages of his career. His 2011 short film ''Beau'' served as a basis for parts of the film, and a draft of the film's script dated to 2014 circulated online. It was officially announced by [=A24=] in February 2021 (with the title ''Disappointment Blvd.'' being its announced title, solely to muddy the waters about its connection to the leaked script).

The film was in development by Aster since the early stages of his career. His 2011 short film ''Beau'' served as a basis for parts of the film, and a draft of the film's script dated to 2014 circulated online. It was officially announced by [=A24=] in February 2021, with ''Disappointment Blvd.'' being its original title.

* ExtremeDoormat: Perpetually anxious, meek Beau, who never says anything unkind to anyone no matter they've treated him and does all he can to keep his head down and make nice with others at his own expense. Part of it is him being a NiceGuy who doesn't want to rock the boat, but most of it is clearly from growing up under the thumb of his clingy, controlling, hard-to-please mother.

* CosmicPlaything: Deconstructed. Beau plays a very passive role in the entire chain of events, as he'd effectively been brought up to all his life.
* CountryMatters: Three pointed uses of the word - first used by Elaine to describe her mother, used again by Elaine to ask Beau if he would call his mother a "cunt," and then used later on [[spoiler:to absolutely devastating effect by Mona to really make sure Beau knows how little she cares about their relationship]]:

** [[spoiler:As

* TheDogBitesBack: [[spoiler:Subverted, not that it does much good in the long run. After a great deal of physical stress and injury since the car accident, and a series of shocking and traumatic revelations getting dropped on his head by Mona with little breathing room, Beau snaps. He clamps his hands around Mona's throat and begins strangling her with a cold look of rage on his face, but comes back to his senses and let go, only for her to keep staggering away and fall through a glass display, seemingly dead for real this time. Beau wanders out of the house in shock and finds a boat to set off in, [[HopeSpot seemingly about to end the movie free from his mother's control and surveillance once and for all]]. However, it then turns out that Mona didn't die -- but any remaining affection she might've had for him sure did, though. Now that she feels fully justified in her resentment, she watches him panic, plead to her for his life, and die, all with a look of TranquilFury.]]

** Protagonists with intense family trauma and anxiety issues.

* GagPenis: One of the more disturbing examples of this kind, combined with [[spoiler: OurMonstersAreWeird. Beau's father is some kind of non-human entity that's a living set of a penis and balls several times bigger than a grown human with a nasty little face on it, a creepy inhuman voice, and CombatTentacles that can easily pierce through bone and brain. It's... not clear exactly [[HotSkittyOnWailordAction how Mona conceived the boys with this thing]].]] It's '''so''' bizarre that on seeing it the first time and realizing that's what it is, after the classic horror movie build-up to a scary reveal [[spoiler:of something spooky in the dark attic]], it's probably going to pull a laugh as a knee-jerk reaction out of shock and the absurdity of the situation if nothing else. Fitting the horror-comedy tone of the movie, [[spoiler:the unsettling aspects of the creature, it killing Jeeves, and realizing this thing is the only company Beau's brother has had for decades, keeps it from being ''too'' silly, and more surreal, gross, and upsetting.]]

** Something that deserves special mention is the way that [[spoiler: she responded to Beau not being able to come see her the day he was scheduled, because his apartment keys were stolen in the unsafe neighborhood he lived in and he's been getting threatening notes. Refusing to believe his reasons were legitimate, she convinced her maid to let herself be killed and beheaded to fake Mona's gruesome death to guilt-trip Beau for not coming, then has her lawyer beat Beau over the head with more guilt-tripping to make him hurry up to the funeral ''after he got hit by a car and stabbed''. '''''All of which Mona knows about because she's watching him.''''' It's monstrously petty for two reasons: first, she faked a gruesome death for herself and watched her mentally ill son's reaction to it to see how he reacted, deciding in the end it wasn't good enough and he doesn't return her devotion despite how she's seen all the pain he goes to to try to make it to her the same as the viewers have; then on another layer, Beau's brief flashback shows that the particular maid she used in her ploy spent time tucking him into bed as a boy and he responded to her in a much happier, affectionate way than with Mona. Mona had enough money to arrange for a convincing fake body or even find someone outside her household to use, but given how entitled she feels towards Beau's unconditional love for taking care of him and how outrageously vindictive she gets, it comes off more as her killing her son's old babysitter out of spite as another way to "punish" him]].

* AbusiveParents:
** Beau's mother, Mona. Manipulative and narcissistic, as well as a creepy Oedipus-like attachment to her son. She's also revealed to be delusional, [[spoiler: blaming Beau for a multitude of problems and believing that he doesn't care about her due to being late for her funeral, despite the fact that she would have known that Beau was held up by Roger and Grace due to the fact that they work for her and had set up cameras recording that he was in their house.]]

* FanDisservice: [[spoiler:Beau's childhood crush Elaine dies while climaxing on top of Beau, and we see her stiff body with a mid-orgasm expression on her face.]]

* SomethingElseAlsoRises: Ari Aster has confirmed that [[spoiler:Beau's boat explosively capsizing in the end was crafted as a metaphor for ejaculation -- a fitting end to a character with decades of sexual repression]].

** Finally, [[spoiler: Beau is trapped in a motorboat whose motor explodes, causing the boat to violently capsize. He unfortunately doesn't die instantly from this, as we then see the boat shake for about a minute until it finally stops.]]

* NeverTrustATrailer: The first trailer creates a rather different impression of the movie than what you'll actually get. While it definitely displays the surrealism the movie holds, it implies a rather more upbeat adventure than the movie proper.

** It makes an appearance just before or as something bad happens (the intruder over the bath, Beau desperately gulping water just as the strangers break into his flat, the flood in the play, and [[spoiler:the trial] are just a handful of examples).