"... but he's just going to his mom's house." - BTS videoclip

"“I wanted to make a movie that was like a video game but where your character can’t do anything and none of the buttons work,“ Aster, who delivered smash horror hits with his first two features, Hereditary and Midsommar, tells TIME."

— Times

"“Guilt, shame, paranoia, Freudian mom issues—you name it, Aster slaps it up there on the screen, with Phoenix as our jittery naif, stumbling from one traumatic episode to the next,” TIME film critic Stephanie Zacharek wrote. “It’s the most magnificent act of oversharing you’ll see all year, a banquet of all the TMI you can eat, just for the price of a ticket.”"

— Times

"Love Beau or hate it, chances are that when you walk out of the theater you’ll be asking yourself, what exactly is this movie trying to say? According to Aster, it couldn’t be more straightforward. “I worry it’s too obvious. Like, it’s right there. There’s nothing to talk about,” he says, without actually letting on to what the answer is. “You bury a lot of details, but they’re all details you’re burying in service of filling out the thing that it obviously is.""

— Times

"”It’s unpleasant in all the ways that our world is unpleasant,” Aster says. “But the dial is turned up a notch.”"

— Times

"”I learned this term ‘chicken fat,’ which is the idea of jamming the background with as many gags as possible,” he says. “And part of the fun for me was how many details we could cram into the frame. It was a big distraction in pre-production just coming up with really stupid names for things, titles for fake movies and names for fake products and fake band names…You see names of bands like ‘Anal Puke,’ ‘Death By Anal,’ ‘Murder By F-ck,’ ‘Butt Finger.’"

— Times

"”You’re in the shoes of this person, moving through him—but it’s less about tracking his course than experiencing his memories, his fantasies, his horrors,” Aster said in commentary included in the film’s production notes. “The movie is Beau’s experience of life.“"

— Times

"”Aser has previously described Beau Is Afraid as a “Jewish Lord of the Rings,” a comment he clarifies with the explanation, “The tongue was in the cheek, obviously, but this movie is very Jewish and it’s three hours long.“"

— Times

"The Greeks come into play as well, with odes to Oedipus Rex, Medea, and, of course, The Odyssey, assuming a significant role in Beau’s hero’s journey. “Greek tragedies always really made me laugh because the gods in those plays are so petty and so ridiculous,” Aster says. “They’re always punishing people for not honoring them in the right way. And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s very Jewish. That’s like the most Jewish thing.'”"

— Times

"The film’s dreamlike third act, in which Beau finds himself as star and subject of a mysterious theater troupe’s play, allows him a brief glimpse at what his life could be if he broke free from his mother’s stranglehold. “He’s put under hypnosis, walks into the play, and imagines what could happen if he were a more active agent in his own life,” Aster said in the production notes."

— Times

"By the end of the film, Beau discovers that Mona is not really dead and instead elaborately faked her own death simply to see if he would react in a way that she deemed appropriate. “Their relationship is complicated because Mona gives so much love—the uncontrollable kind that can move mountains but also create anger and resentment between giver and receiver,” Armen Nahapetian, who plays a 12-year-old version of Beau in a flashback sequence, said in the production notes."

— Times

"But, in the end, it’s all for naught. The movie’s final scene, in which Beau stands trial by kangaroo court, reveals that, at least in his own mind, Beau has ultimately been judged guilty of everything he has feared he is guilty of all along."

— Times