A quick look at the cast list for Beau Is Afraid reveals that Midsommar director Ari Aster could be setting up his creepiest twist since Hereditary. Ari Aster’s movies are not for the faint of heart. Ever since the director went viral in 2011 with the short film The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (a taboo-breaking black comedy whose shocking twist has to be seen to be believed), the filmmaker has gone out of his way to disturb audiences with darkly funny psychological horror stories. Hereditary includes a particularly infamous act one twist that left cinemagoers reeling.
Similarly, even Midsommar’s most ridiculous elements didn’t stop the movie’s brutal opening scene from hitting viewers like a truck. However, Beau Is Afraid’s trailer implies that Aster could be setting up his creepiest twist yet, and this is only reaffirmed by a look at the upcoming A24 horror movie’s cast list. In Beau Is Afraid, Zoe Lister-Jones plays the title character’s mother. The problem is Joaquin Phoenix plays Beau, and Lister-Jones is eight years younger than him. While it is not yet clear why Beau’s mother is played by an actor younger than Beau’s actor, the answer is likely to be something unsettling judging by Aster’s pedigree.
Why Beau Is Afraid Cast A Younger Actor As Beau’s Mother
Phoenix’s character will be depicted at all ages throughout the movie, with a young version of the hero and a decrepit, ancient Beau appearing in Beau Is Afraid’s trailer. As such, Lister-Jones may only be playing the mother of Beau’s young self, a theory reinforced by the glimpse of her and a young Beau sitting together near the end of Beau Is Afraid’s trailer and the fact that another actor provides her voice during a phone call. While Lister-Jones is the only actor who appears in the role during Beau Is Afraid’s trailer, she is not the only actor credited as “Beau’s mother” among the movie’s cast.
The iconic Patti LuPone provides the voice of Beau’s mother during a phone conversation featured in Beau Is Afraid’s trailer. At 73, LuPone is roughly the right age to play Phoenix’s mother. However, Lister-Jones’s version of the character receives the most focus in Beau Is Afraid’s trailer. This could be a case of “playing Gertrude,” where the psychosexual relationship between a male character and his mother is played up (a la many adaptations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet) by casting an actor the same age or young as the character’s mother.
Beau Is Afraid Won’t Be Conventionally “Realistic”
Given the discomfiting weirdness of Aster’s earlier movies, it seems likely that Beau Is Afraid will see Lister-Jones play Beau’s mother in his youth, and the uncanny makeup effects used to age up Phoenix’s character might be applied to her for some scenes. While LuPone voices an older version of the character, the only version of Beau’s mother seen onscreen throughout Beau Is Afraid’s trailer is the younger one played by Lister-Jones. For Beau Is Afraid to make as much of an impact on horror fans as Hereditary and Midsommar, Ari Aster’s latest psychological horror needs to offer viewers something truly strange, and the movie’s casting implies it will do just that.
