History Film / BeauIsAfraid

** Her deceased brother's bedroom is a more subtle example, being a generally tidy room but with a wall full of posters, pictures and framed certificates. Unlike the fictional east-asian idols in Toni's room, her brother's posters are of real bands and musicians, such as [[Music/AmericanFootball Mike Kinsella's]] solo project Owen.

* CastingGag: This isn't the first time Joaquin Phoenix plays [[Film/{{Joker 2019}} a lonely mentally ill man downtrodden by an openly hostile society and has severe mommy issues]] .

* KavorkaMan: Despite the fact that Beau is balding, grey-haired, and covered with healing scabs from getting run over and stabbed, [[spoiler:when he and Elaine meet again after decades apart, she is immediately ready to get into bed with him]]. We never learn if she has any real feelings for him, so it could be she stayed sweet on him, or since she [[spoiler:brought up his mom (supposedly) owing her money before she dragged him off to bed, [[GoldDigger she might have thought having Mona as his mother meant he had more money than he actually did]]]]. Of course, considering he's the [[spoiler:son of some kind of a penile monster and [[OutWithABang having sex with Beau literally kills Elaine]] (and causes her to instantly freeze up in rigor mortis when it usually sets in after ''hours'' of already being dead), it's also possible there's [[SuccubiAndIncubi a supernatural reason]] for her to be attracted to Beau.]]

* DroolHello: [[spoiler:When Beau tries to take a bath, he feels a few drops of something land on him from the ceiling. He looks up and finds an intruder hiding there, with the drops having been from anxiety[=/=]overexertion-induced sweat.]]

* FaceDeathWithDignity: Downplayed with [[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 moments before his boat capsizes. Judging by his [[ThousandYardStare glassy, weary expression]], he's not exactly at peace about his fate, but he does seemingly finally accept how utterly hopeless he is.]]

Beau Wassermann (Phoenix) is an extremely anxious man who is trying to visit his smothering, mysterious mother Mona ([=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.

* StackedCharactersPoster: The movie poster shows Beau at vastly different ages, including kid and an old man versions stacked upon another.

* FreezeFrameBonus: When Beau arrives at his mother's house and looks at all the pictures, he comes across a photo of his mother that's a collage of all her employees [[spoiler:and everyone he has ever interacted with is on there.]]

* LeaveTheCameraRunning: The entire end credits hold on the shot of the [[spoiler:empty arena after Beau's trial]].

* 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 an even higher level than the narrative itself.

* TheUnfavorite: Toni struggles with living in the shadow of her deceased brother, so much so that she can only bring herself to partially vandalize his room before [[spoiler:[[DrivenToSuicide committing suicide]].]]

* AlternateUniverse: The film's version of 2022 contains a number of differences from our reality, including there existing a US city and state named Corrina, the US being involved in a military conflict with Venezuela, Moviefone still maintaining its now defunct call-in service, and there being no references to the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic.
* AmbiguouslyEvil: Roger, the husband of the family that accidentally ran over Beau outwardly seems like a very affable guy. However, small things pop up that make you question how good he really is. He is never seen taking the mysterious pills that he makes rest of the family take; he's casually dismissive of Beau having reopened his stab wounds despite ostensibly keeping Beau under his care so he can recover; and his insistence that Beau cannot leave gradually begins to take a sinister tone. Then there's the fact that his "helper health monitor" is later revealed to be a [[spoiler:''TrackingDevice'' (which allows Jeeves to track him down later), complete with a stun option that electrocutes the wearer.]] Then there's also the fact that [[spoiler:Grace slides Beau a secret message that she is clearly hiding from Roger, and then later whispers to Beau the TV channel that lets him know there are cameras hidden in the house that are monitoring him. His face is also on the poster of Mona's employees towards the end of the movie, all but confirming that he was just another agent in Mona's attempts to control Beau's life. If you take it completely literally at least.]]

* DarkReprise: The pop ballad "Always Be My Baby" by Mariah Carey, the song that plays while Beau and Elaine have sex, takes a much more sinister tone considering it reflects Beau relationship with his mother Mona, who takes the MyBelovedSmother trope to the extreme.

* DecompositeCharacter: In the 2011 short movie, it's revealed at the end that [[spoiler:Beau's mother is not only the one who stole his keys, but she's also some sort of weird furry monster. In this movie Mona is also conspirating against Beau, but there's nothing monstrous (literally speaking, at least) about her. The monster this time is his alleged father.]]

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The first few scenes when we meet Beau is at the therapist's office, where he clearly has issues discussing his relationship with his mother.

** 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]].

** At Mona's funeral, her headless body is laid to rest in a dress with her hands folded on her chest. Beau stops and pauses to stare at it for awhile, which on first viewing you'd assume is him naturally needing time to process the sight of his mother's body. [[spoiler: Beau later reveals to Mona he figured out when he saw it that she wasn't dead because [[DistinguishingMark the birthmark]] on "her" corpse's hands, which he remembered as being on the hands of the maid who helped take care of him and treated him kindly]].

** Played straight with [[spoiler: Mona. While giving her MotiveRant about how hard she has tried to take care of Beau and force herself to love him despite her own (supposed) less-than-stellar upbringing and what she had to do to conceive [[HalfHumanHybrid him]] with his disgusting inhuman father, while ranting AbusiveParent Mona seems to come to the realization herself that she does in fact hate Beau and tells him as much to his face. This leads into the above attempted choking, and the choking and hate epiphany together suggests Mona came to Beau's "trial" with her mind already made up to have him declared guilty and executed.]]
* HonorThyParent: Beau's dedication to Mona. His relationship with his mother is strained, to put it mildly. He is reluctant to answer her calls, has recurring bad dreams about her, and his therapist zeroes in on his issues with her for the bulk of their sessions, but Beau pushes down his own discomfort to visit Mona on a monthly basis, never says a bad word about her, grieves terribly when he learns she's dead, and on learning her body won't be buried and laid to rest until he comes, Beau does everything in his power to go to her funeral and pay his respects. He's sincerely distraught to the point of tears from at the idea Dr. Cohen plants that Beau is "humiliating" his mother and not letting her go to rest by not being there for the funeral. To a lesser extent, Beau shows the same filial respect for his DisappearedDad: he never knew his father, who died the night Beau was conceived, but has a photo of the man in his apartment that he greets like it was the genuine article. [[spoiler: Neither turns out very well for him in the end: the man in the photo is ''not'' his father, his dad is alive but a giant terrifying penile monster that reduces Beau to hysterics. His mother is also alive and at first presents herself as loving him despite everything she's put him through, but is unimpressed by his devotion to her and keeps a long, petty catalog of reasons he's a bad son. In the end, she repays his attempts to honor her by having him literally put on trial and drowned before her and a stadium of onlookers, and never shows any flicker of remorse or doubt about the execution or her own actions that brought them to this]].

* KavorkaMan: Despite the fact that Beau is a balding, grey haired, and covered with healing scabs from getting run over and stabbed, [[spoiler:when he and Elaine meet again after decades apart, she is immediately ready to get into bed with him]]. We never learn if she has any real feelings for him, so it could be she stayed sweet on him, or since she [[spoiler:brought up his mom (supposedly) owing her money before she dragged him off to bed, [[GoldDigger she might have thought having Mona as his mother meant he had more money than he actually did]]]]. Of course, considering he's the [[spoiler:son of some kind of a penile monster and [[OutWithABang having sex with Beau literally kills Elaine]] (and causes her to instantly freeze up in rigor mortis when it usually sets in after ''hours'' of already being dead), it's also possible there's [[SuccubiAndIncubi a supernatural reason]] for her to be attracted to Beau.]]

* LeaveTheCameraRunning: The entire end credits holds on the shot of the [[spoiler:empty arena after Beau's trial]].
* LoggingOntoTheFourthWall: The MW Corporation has real-world social media accounts that interact with fans and encourages them to be "brand ambassadors" with exclusive merch and newsletters to screenings of the movie.

* LongLostRelative: [[spoiler: Beau's dream about his mother forcing a younger version of himself up in the attic is revealed to not be a dream, but a traumatic memory of her locking away his identical twin brother as a small child. Beau was young enough that he repressed all memories of having a brother, and when he tries to bring up the dream in therapy at the beginning his therapist (a crony of Mona's) doesn't want to discuss it with Beau, implying Mona went to some lengths after the incident to {{Unperson}} the twin. His name is never mentioned. When Beau temporarily reunites with him in the attic, the twin is so broken and Beau so terrified with ''so much'' else on his plate, they don't even exchange words with each other]].

* 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.

* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: After his keys and luggage is stolen, Beau vividly imagines a knife-wielding intruder barging down the hallway and kicking his apartment door open. Also [[spoiler:defied. With the surreal, dream-like tone of the movie, how off the characters act, and the strange new drugs Beau is taking, it's easy to think some or all of it is in Beau's head as hallucinations or paranoia, like the strange warning he gets slipped by Grace that she doesn't acknowledge and the secret channel on TV that's revealed to be watching him that no one remarks on. It turns out to instead be a ''Film/TheTrumanShow''-type elaborate conspiracy by Beau's manipulative, gaslighting mother, who faked her death by having her maid killed and nearly all the major characters turn out to be working for, blindsiding poor Beau with the extent of Mona's cruelty and manipulations.]]

* YankTheDogsChain: After Beau [[spoiler:strangles his mother, seemingly killing her]], he escapes her house and commanders a motorboat out into the open ocean. You'd think he finally escaped all the insanity of his past life and put an end to the source of all his trauma. [[spoiler:He is so wrong.]]

* KangarooCourt: [[spoiler: Beau's trial is clearly set up to be one. With Dr. Cohen being given more or less complete control over the entire event to condemn Beau. When Beau's attorney tries to defend his client against the ridiculous accusations being made about him, Cohen simply has him thrown to his death]].

* OffingTheOffspring: [[spoiler:Rewatching footage of Beau's "betrayals" of her after realizing she hates him, Mona becomes so [[TranquilFury furious]] her grip breaks the metal railing and she ignores Beau shouting desperate appeals to her, coldly allowing her own son to be executed and slowly drowned to death under a boat.]]

* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: [[spoiler:Mona, being the billionaire evil mastermind that she is, paid off her loyal housekeeper to be her headless body double -- and quite handsomely, too, enough that "her entire extended family quit their jobs on the same day and won't ever have to work again."]]
* ShellShockedVeteran: Jeeves served with Toni's brother in Caracas and is shown prone to sudden attacks of rage, implied to be from PTSD. He's introduced punching the window of his trailer and also tries to attack Beau when he was having a bad trip, with Roger having to subdue him with several syringes of tranquilizers. After [[spoiler:Toni's suicide]] Jeeves spents the rest of the movie trying to hunt down Beau, likely beliving him to be responsible for it.

* StressVomit: Beau does this after [[spoiler:he discovers Elaine worked for his mother]] in a news segment about his mother's death -- projectile-style, [[VomitIndiscretionShot on-screen]] all over Toni's laptop.
* StunnedSilence: From Beau after he [[spoiler:strangles his mother]] and walks out of the house with a hilarious shocked expression on his face.

* SymbolicGlassHouse: Mona's house is a gigantic mansion with large glass panels on most of the walls. Befitting a woman who has suffocated Beau since he was a kid and continues to obsessively watch him [[spoiler:including faking her own death so that she could continue to spy on him, and kept the penis monster that's apparently his father in the attic.]]

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** 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]].

* AdaptationalHeroism: In the 2014 script, the Orphans of the Forest were a murderous cult that brainwashes orphans by making them believe that certain celebrities killed their parents, turning them into assassins. In the movie they are just a weird, but benevolent theater troupe.

** [[spoiler: Toni [[DrivenToSuicide kills herself]] by drinking paint.]]
** [[spoiler: Elaine [[OutWithABang dies mid-orgasm]] on top of Beau.]]

** [[spoiler: Toni drinks an entire can of paint in the midst of an emotional breakdown and promptly drops dead from poisoning.]]

* BreakingTheFourthWall: A particularly meta example that's easy to miss on your first viewing. During the standard reel of all the production companies that helped produce the film, one is a company called "MW," and it even is listed before the last real production company listed. [[spoiler:When Beau finally reaches his mother's house near the end of the film, he sees a display of everything her company has done. At this point, you might notice that his mom's company logo looks rather familiar. It's "MW," for Mona Wassermann, his mother's name. Mona's hold over Beau is so great that it extends to the production of the very movie he is in.]]

* AmbiguouslyEvil: Roger, the husband of the family that accidentally ran over Beau outwardly seems like a very affable guy. However, small things pop up that make you question how good he really is. He is never seen taking the mysterious pills that he makes rest of the family take; he's casually dismissive of Beau having reopened his stab wounds despite ostensibly keeping Beau under his care so he can recover; and his insistence that Beau cannot leave gradually begins to take a sinister tone. Then there's the fact that his "helper health monitor" is later revealed to be a [[spoiler:''tracking device'' (which allows Jeeves to track him down later), complete with a stun option that electrocutes the wearer.]] Then there's also the fact that [[spoiler:Grace slides Beau a secret message that she is clearly hiding from Roger, and then later whispers to Beau the TV channel that lets him know there are cameras hidden in the house that are monitoring him. His face is also on the poster of Mona's employees towards the end of the movie, all but confirming that he was just another agent in Mona's attempts to control Beau's life. If you take it completely literally at least.]]

* AmbiguouslyJewish: Beau and Mona are both clearly based on Jewish stereotypes, and there are some strong allusions that suggest they're meant to be Jewish. Mona has a rabbi at her funeral (though it's not a traditional Jewish funeral), and Creator/PattiLupone is frequently typecast as Jewish characters [[note]]though she's not Jewish in real life[[/note]]; Mona is an ''exaggerated'' version of a JewishMother; Beau is a suffocated only son who is deeply neurotic.
* ApartmentComplexOfHorrors: As part of the CrapsackWorld, Beau lives in a crappy apartment building where he's repeatedly accused of LoudOfWar, which causes his neighbor to bang on his wall and keep him awake. He then oversleeps, nearly misses his flight, and goes outside with his luggage, where he's met by a guy who screams at him, "You're fucked, pal!" It gets stolen from the hallway, he can't find his key, so he has to leave it open, and when he goes outside, a lot of homeless people flood his apartment and take it over. When he gets back in, it's been trashed and a man is still hanging from the ceiling.

* BitchInSheepsClothing: It's established right in Beau's first scene with his therapist that he doesn't have the best relationship with his mother, but why is not explained due to Beau's reluctance to speak badly about her and he is genuinely torn-up by news of her death, enough that he must have some love for her. The movie is long enough that by the time you see her on-camera in flashbacks, she comes off as a normal enough parent spending time with her son and offering advice, her love for Beau is emphasized by Dr. Cohen's phone call and eulogy, and Beau [[DueToTheDead has been trying so hard to reach her funeral]], it's almost enough to make you forget anything might have been amiss... And then he does reach the funeral, where it's revealed Mona [[spoiler:faked her death and put him through all this to "test" him, guilt-trips him about coming "late" to her funeral while casually having Elaine's body disposed of (with the air of having had more than one body disposed of by her household before), and plays audio of his private therapy sessions she's been listening to.]]

* BreatherEpisode: the night Beau spends with the Orphans of the Forest, a traveling avant-garde theater group. They welcome him kindly, and he spends most of the time in a haunting but harmless fantasy as he loses himself in their play.

* CosmicPlaything: Deconstructed. Beau plays a very passive role in the film's entire chain of events, as he'd effectively been brought up to all his life.

* CrapsackWorld: The city and state of Corrina seem to be a cartoonish exaggeration of American cities as portrayed in fiction, with deranged homeless people stabbing strangers in the streets and crowds urging suicidal people to jump off buildings, and Beau is at the center of it all.

** The catalyst that sets off the plot is when Beau's mother is killed off-screen by a falling chandelier.
** [[spoiler: Toni kills herself by drinking paint.]]
** [[spoiler: Elaine dies mid-orgasm on top of Beau.]]
** [[spoiler: Jeeves is killed by a penis-shaped monster stabbing him in the head with one of its appendages.]]

* DecompositeCharacter: In the 2011 short movie, it's revealed at the end that [[spoiler:Beau's mother is not only the one who stole his keys, but she's also some sort of weird furry monster. In this movie Mona is also conspirating against Beau, but there's nothing monstrous (literally speaking, at least) about her. The monster this time is his allegedly father.]]

* DespairEventHorizon: [[spoiler:At the ending trial, when his lawyer is killed, Beau is left to fend for himself. He tries to appeal to his mother and her lawyer, but they refuse to accept any apology. Beau loses all hope and simply accepts his fate.]]

* TheDitherer: Beau's weak will and indecisiveness leads to him being pushed around and outright bullied for most of his life. Meeting up with Elaine at the dessert buffet and kissing her was one of his few moments of outright agency until the events of the movie force him to make some life-or-death decisions.

** At Mona's funeral, her headless body is laid to rest in a dress with her hands folded on her chest. Beau stops and pauses to stare at it for awhile, which on first viewing you'd assume is him naturally needing time to process the sight of his mother's body. [[spoiler: Beau later reveals to Mona he figured out when he saw it that she wasn't dead because the birthmark on "her" corpse's hands, which he remembered as being on the hands of the maid who helped take care of him and treated him kindly]].

* 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.

** In true Ari Aster head trauma fashion, Beau's mother Mona dies after a chandelier crushes her head, and we get to see the headless corpse at the open-casket funeral. [[spoiler:Though it isn't actually his mother but his babysitter who died.]]

* StressVomit: Beau does this after [[spoiler:he discovers Elaine worked for his mother]] in a news segment about his mother's death -- projectile-style, all over Toni's laptop.

* TheUnfavorite: Toni struggles with living in the shadow of her deceased brother, so much so that she can only bring herself to partially vandalize his room before [[spoiler:committing suicide.]]

* YouRemindMeOfX: Toni's bullying of Beau is shortly followed by Beau remembering his brazen, foul-mouthed second impression of his childhood sweetheart Elaine which is given an extra layer when Mona narrates over the juxtaposition, citing that Beau seems to be drawn to certain types of women.

* OutWithABang: [[spoiler:Elaine dies shortly having sex with Beau.]]

* SexSignalsDeath: Beau's mother tells him that his father [[spoiler:died the night Beau was conceived because of his genetics, at the instant he climaxed in her, and that as his grandfather and great-grandfather died the same way, the same may be true for Beau. When he has sex with Elaine, he's relieved to find that he's still alive after he orgasms -- it's actually Elaine that dies immediately.]]

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom:
** Beau's restless neighbor, who plays loud music during the night, ends up causing Beau to oversleep, get his luggage stolen, miss his flight, and call his mother, which sets the plot in motion.
** Perhaps the janitor, too, if he is indeed the one responsible for stealing and throwing away Beau's luggage and keys, causing him to miss his flight and call his mother.
** Given what we learn at the end of the movie, [[spoiler: it's hard to say if either character is really "unwitting".]]

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Played for uncomfortable laughs during the sex scene which, [[spoiler:Elaine's death]] aside, plays out pretty much exactly like you'd expect for two adult virgins, one of whom has been brought up from childhood to have a deathly fear of sex.

* RedHerring: [[spoiler:What with all the emphasis of only taking it with water and Beau initially not having water when he first takes it, one may expect that the new drug will turn out to have drastic side-effects on Beau, such as some or all of the unbelievable events of the film being revealed to be ThroughTheEyesOfMadness. Nope! No side-effects are ever pointed out, and the drug isn't even mentioned again as a plot point.]]

* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: Inverted in the original short--the janitor who tells Beau "You're fucked, pal" is played by none other than Aster himself.

* AdaptationalHeroism: In the 2014 script, the Orphans of the Forest were a murderous cult that brainwashes orphans by making them believe that certain celebrities killed their parents, turning them into assassins. In the movie they are just a harmless theater troupe.

** In Beau's fantasy during the Orphans of the Forest's play, he's separates from his wife and three sons by a huge ocean wave.

* TeensAreMonsters: Toni and her friend are teenage girls who are unstable and cruel, threatening Beau while drviing him and forcing him to smoke an unknown substance for theor amusement.