If a surreal paranoid nightmare comedy from the guy behind Midsommar and Hereditary sounds good to you, get ready for a rare moment of enjoyment. It’s the trailer for Beau Is Afraid!
The latest from Ari Aster feels just as much like it’s something that would have come from a Charlie Kaufman script in the mid-’00s—and how could that not be a positive? Joaquin Phoenix stars as a man trying to visit his mother. On the way, he freaks out, gets hit by a car, and seems to at least perceive himself as being held captive before escaping into a world of playful artifice. Parker Posey, Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Richard Kind, Patti LuPone, Zoe Lister-Jones, and Michael Gandolfini co-star.
Boutique distributor A24’s official synopsis doesn’t add anything to that, so we’ll be going in pretty fresh when we definitely see this in theaters on April 21.