When it comes to sheer, off-the-chain creativity, you can find few better conduits of such a thing than within the ranks of A24. From White Noise to Bodies Bodies Bodies to Tusk to The Green Knight to their crown jewel of Everything Everywhere All at Once, it’s near impossible to suggest that any film studio embraces the creative spirit quite like A24 does.
And few have taken advantage of such a mandate quite like Ari Aster has; with the likes of Hereditary and Midsommar having established themselves as modern classics under Aster’s eldritch masterminding, the filmmaker’s name can get any horror aficionado excited these days.
His latest project, Beau Is Afraid, is no exception, and that’s even without considering the starring presence of Joaquin Phoenix, its pitch as a psychedelic nightmare epic, or accusations that this polarizing bizarro-fest is a “career killer,” which obviously just makes the idea of seeing this film all the more attractive.
But with Aster’s filmography having built up to a feature that came out of something much further than left field, now seems appropriate to ask the question of how the filmmaker’s brain manages to spawn such ideas in the first place, which one Redditor was all too happy to do during a Reddit AMA with Aster himself.
And his answer was the perfect blend of “of course,” “…oh,” and “preach it, brother.”
For those of you who that don’t harshly pursue the realm of personal creativity, let it be known that Aster’s answers is perhaps the single best representation of the world’s collective creative process we’ve ever seen. But any artist will also tell you that once the piece reaches its final form, as Beau Is Afraid has now done, the collateral concussions are worth it.
Beau Is Afraid will release to theaters on April 21.