Film Shapes

Ohhhhh, the humanity! I try not to pile on a film, especially if the people behind it mean well, and sure, everyone's entitled to a 5 nil drubbing now and then, but this one severely tested my patience. I haven't seen Hereditary or Midsommar , writer/director Ari Aster's previous two features, so I didn't know what to expect. Beau is Afraid is based on one of the director's shorts, Beau , from 2011, and how he went from a 7 minute runtime to an eyeball-burning 180 (or near enough) is pretty astounding. Possibly the most egregious issue is that it starts so well. The first quarter (and a smidge) of the film is darkly funny, clever and brutally promising. At the natural break point between the first and second acts, a thought popped into my noggin *There's nowhere to go from here* and I was unfortunately bang on. Oddly, it looks like there are four acts in the film, each one exponentially decreasing in quality. Joaquin Phoenix does his best with the material but...