Beau Is Afraid: Ari Aster / Joaquin Phoenix nightmare comedy gets a new poster

Three weeks ago, we got a look at the first poster for the A24 film Beau Is Afraid, a “nightmare comedy” from Hereditary (watch it HERE) and Midsommar (watch that HERE) writer/director Ari Aster. That poster showed the character Joker Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix plays in the film as a young boy. Now a new poster for Beau Is Afraid has arrived online, and it shows Phoenix’s character not only as a young boy, but also at three other ages in his life. You can examine the new poster at the bottom of this article.

A24 will be releasing Beau Is Afraid sometime in April. Details on the plot of the film are being kept tightly under wraps, but we’ve previously heard that Beau Is Afraid is a feature expansion of Aster’s 2011 short film Beau. We’ve also heard it described as being “a surrealist horror film set in an alternate present”, although Aster seems to disagree with the horror label. Thus the “nightmare comedy” description. The story supposedly goes like this: An anxious man learns of the death of his mother under mysterious circumstances and upon traveling home makes an alarming discovery about his past. During his journey, he runs into various crazy supernatural threats.

According to Discussing Film, those threats could be “some of the craziest ideas that Ari Aster has ever came up with”. They also heard that Beau himself is “an extremely anxious but pleasant-looking man who has a fraught relationship with his overbearing mother. Their relationship is affected by the fact that he never knew his father.” In addition to all this, Beau Is Afraid has also been described as “an intimate, decades-spanning portrait of one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time.”

So it’s really difficult to picture what exactly is going on in this movie. Thankfully, A24 has confirmed that a trailer for Beau Is Afraid will be unveiled next Tuesday, January 10th. That should shed some light on the subject.

Phoenix is joined in the cast by Nathan Lane, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan, and Parker Posey.

Are you a fan of Aster’s previous movies, and are you looking forward to Beau Is Afraid? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.

Here’s the new poster: