Joaquin Phoenix is seen in Beau is Afraid’s brand-new poster at four distinct ages. This April, the next movie from Hereditary and Midsommar filmmaker Ari Aster, will hit theatres. Beau is Afraid is said to as a surrealist horror movie set in an alternate present and was originally titled Disappointment Blvd. The movie, which follows Aster’s trend of directing pictures on the effects of loss, will star Joaquin Phoenix as a man who, after the death of his mother, returns home only to battle a strange otherworldly force that might linger for decades.
Earlier today, A24 unveiled a brand-new poster for Beau is Afraid on their official Twitter account. The updated version of the poster improves upon the first, which merely featured a young Phoenix’s figure against a blue background. This time, four distinct representations of the actor, ranging in age from a young kid to an elderly man, are grouped together, with the figure that depicts the actor at his current age looking bloodied and battered. The fact that the company’s shared Twitter tweet has the tagline “you’ve been waiting a lifetime” adds to the overall spooky impact. View the complete poster below:
Beau is Afraid” follows Joaquin Phoenix’s aging process
Phoenix, who won the Oscar for the role of the Joker, is joined by a cast that is full of fascinating actors. Three-time Tony Award winners Nathan Lane and Patti LuPone are among them, as are Amy Ryan from The Office and Only Murders in the Building, Christopher Guest comedy mainstay Parker Posey, Michael Gandolfini from The Many Saints of Newark, and Richard Kind from The Watcher. Young Beau is played by Armen Nahapetian from Daybreak in the movie.
The movie was filmed in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, a suburb of Montreal, over the course of several months in 2021 by Aster, who also authored the script. He initially stated that his subsequent movie, the 2019 cult horror Midsommar starring Florence Pugh, a future member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will be a four-hour nightmare. He hasn’t formally said that he still plans to adhere to that run time.
Given that an official trailer for the film will be released the following week, a much more detailed look at the plot and characters of the film will probably be made public shortly. There aren’t many specifics on Beau is Afraid’s story as of yet. The image begs the fascinating issue of whether Beau will actually travel across time like in the classic Kurt Vonnegut novel Slaughterhouse-Five, or whether the movie would only pretend to cover several decades.