Joaquin Phoenix Undertakes an Epic Adventure in First Trailer for New Movie ‘Beau Is Afraid’

Joaquin Phoenix is teaming up with indie filmmaker Ari Aster for the new movie Beau Is Afraid.

On Tuesday, A24 released the official trailer for Beau Is Afraid, writer-director Aster’s first movie since 2019’s Midsommar, which appears to follows 48-year-old Phoenix’s title character Beau over a long period of his life.

The trailer showcases Beau as he rests at a vacation resort or pool as he seemingly remembers moments from his childhood before it cuts to the film’s main thread: Beau’s trip to return home to his mother is impacted by his fear that “it’s not safe” in the outside world.

Aster’s new trailer teases Beau’s journey as a frightful one — when he leaves his apartment building, people chase after him. He is hit by a car and seemingly held captive in someone’s home, before escaping through a window and embarking on a long journey that sees the film utilize animation to depict his long, winding adventure.

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An official logline for the film — which hints at Aster’s “bold and ingeniously depraved” style — reads that Beau Is Afraid is an “epic new odyssey” in which Beau, described as a paranoid man, undertakes a journey to “get home to his mother.”

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In July 2021, Phoenix was spotted filming scenes for Beau Is Afraid in Montreal, Canada, while the movie was under its working title Disappointment Blvd.

At the time, the plot of the movie was described as “an intimate, decades-spanning portrait of one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time.”
In 2020, Aster — who has previously dealt in psychological thrillers with 2018’s Hereditary and Midsommar — initially described Beau Is Afraid as a “nightmare comedy” that would hold a four-hour runtime during a conversation with University of California, Santa Barbara students, as reported by campus outlet The Daily Nexus.

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Aside from Phoenix, the film also stars Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Hayley Squires, Denis Ménochet, Kylie Rogers, Richard Kind, Armen Nahapetian, Zoe Lister-Jones, Parker Posey and Patti LuPone.

Beau Is Afraid releases exclusively in theaters April 21.