Going into the weekend, I was beyond excited to see the new Ari Aster movie, Beau is Afraid, a three-hour anxiety ridden nightmare. There was also the new Evil Dead movie, Rise, and I was not that excited to see that one, despite the previews making it look decent, I did not enjoy the original two, and I had not seen the third one, but the first two Ari Aster films had me in love with his horrific stories. So I was beyond surprised when Beau let me down, and Evil Dead Rise was one of my favorite movies this year, and one of the better scary movies I have seen in theaters in the past couple of years.
Beau is Afraid starts out with Beau living in a major city that is in total anarchy. There are no rules, and crime and violence are rampant. He has a plan to go and visit his mom, but when he is about to leave, someone steals his keys and luggage. So now his mom is extremely disappointed that Beau will not make it for the visit, but the next time he calls his mom, a man answers the phone, and tells him that his mom’s head was smashed by a chandelier. Beau panics, and he takes his anxiety medication, but he does not have water, so he panics even more, so he runs out into the chaos to get some water, and after some chaos ensues, he gets hit by a car.
The people in the car take him in, and they raise him back to health partially, and they make promises to take him to his mom, but things keep coming up, and the trip is continually delayed. Finally, Beau realizes that he is actually being held hostage, and he escapes into the woods, where he runs into a traveling theater troupe that gives a very surreal play. Then Beau survives an attack, and he ends up at his mom’s house, and the movie continues to get weirder from there.
Evil Dead Rise is a tight 97 minutes. There is an opening scene of a possession and a couple killings, but then it goes to the family that the film centers on. Beth has come to visit her sister Ellie, and Ellie’s three kids, Caleb, Bridget, and Kassie. While Ellie and Beth are catching up with each other, Ellie’s kids go to get pizza, and when they are coming back, an earthquake occurs. This opens a hole in the parking garage, and Caleb crawls down into it, and he finds the Necronomicon, and the tapes of the preacher. When Caleb plays the record of the preacher reading the demonic incantation an ancient evil is awoken again, and this time it goes flying straight into the soul of Ellie. So when Ellie reenters the apartment, she starts to try to tear her family apart. When the family tries to escape, they find a possessed elevator and a broken staircase, so they must stay and fight with their other neighbors on the floor.
Three hours is a long run time for any movie, but if you have the right movie, it can really flow through it quickly, like Lord of the Rings, or the new John Wick, but Beau is Afraid dragged, which surprised me, because Midsommar is over two hours, and it flies by, but when I looked at my watch a little after half way through Beau is Afraid, and I realized how much time was left, I started to feel as anxious as he did. This contrasted starkly with Evil Dead Rise, which was only 97 minutes, and when I looked at my watch after an hour, I was surprised and a little sad that it was going to be coming to a close soon.
Beau is Afraid was centered on Beau’s anxiety and his issues with his mother. The question is, was the world Beau was living in really that lawless or was it just his anxiety blowing everything out of portion. It seemed like there was so much time in the movie where Beau was almost paralyzed due to his anxiety. His therapist gave him medicine, but even taking the medicine made him anxious. It was like there was almost always something in the world out to get him, and the worst-case scenario always happened.
The best part of the movie was the first act, when he was close to and inside his apartment. Everything about the set impressed me, from the eccentric people he had out in the streets, to the graffiti that was splashed across all of the walls. It was not quite the weird artistic cult settings that were in his other films, but there was still such an attention to detail that was amazing, and even the graffiti was so off-putting and felt sinister. It was great when Beau propped the door open to his apartment building, while he was going to get water, and then all the hooligans out in the street started to stream into his building, and he just sat there and watched in horror.
The horror elements in Beau are pretty dull, but in Evil Dead Rise the horror elements are strong throughout, and it skips out on the weirdness of Sam Remi’s original for the most part. The opening scene is one of the better ones for a scary movie. The cabin it takes place in is creepy in the daylight, and it sets the tone perfectly for what is to come. Towards the beginning of the movie, when they were building the tension, I had my hands grasped together, and I did not realize until I went to release them, how tight I had been holding them. There are not very strong jump scares, but there is almost always a presence of danger, and the people that are possessed look incredibly creepy, unlike in the original where they look more ridiculous.
This movie was incredibly gory, like so gory that everyone was soaked in blood at the end, they basically showered and bathed in blood. There was a woodchipper involved, so I mean showered in blood literally, and there was also an elevator that filled with blood, so I mean bathed in blood literally. An eyeball was bitten and spit into someone else’s mouth, and there were multiple scenes where the blood was splattering on the lens. Not to mention the numerous stab wounds, and there was even a cheese grater being used as a weapon. All of this added to the crowd dynamic. With each gruesome injury, the whole crowd’s reaction could be heard, and at one point someone was stomping their feet in reaction to something gross happening. I am not usually squeamish, and I definitely never gag during movies, but both Beau and Evil Dead made me gag. In Beau, there is a girl, and she starts chugging paint, and the noise and the visuals were too much. Then in Evil Dead, a girl starts having black goo ooze from the orifices on her face, and then she starts vomiting maggots and other gross bugs. I am not a big fan of maggots.
Although my expectations for these movies were totally flipped, I was still happy to get another Ari Aster movie. This was the original movie he wanted to make, before Midsommar and Hereditary, so those two movies led to him being able to make his passion project. It is undeniably well done, and it is still artistic, but it just did not hit home with me as much as I wanted, but I will still gladly be in line on opening night for his next feature. Evil Dead greatly surprised me, it did such a good job of balancing the horror with a small amount of comedy, and flinching and groaning with the crowd as gross things happened on the screen was awesome. It had some nods to Sam Remi, but ultimately, it made its own lane, and they said they are going to make more of these movies every couple of years, and they made a fan out of me today! Right now, I have it as the best film of this year. I am not sure it is actually better than John Wick 4, but it is undoubtedly more up my alley. The Ari Aster film is worth checking out (3 Stars), but I highly recommend going to see the new Evil Dead (4.5 Stars)!
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