Count Olivia Rodrigo as one of the many moviegoers disturbed by Ari Aster’s “Beau Is Afraid,” which A24 released in theaters earlier this year. Speaking to fellow musician Phoebe Bridgers for Interview Magazine ahead of the release of her sophomore album “Guts,” Rodrigo admitted she had to walk out of “Beau Is Afraid” because it was so terrifying.
“I’m a big thriller girl, but I watch a few scary movies here and there,” Rodrigo said. “I convince myself that I see shit after I come home from watching ‘Insidious’ or something. Also, I watched that new Ari Aster movie ‘Beau Is Afraid’ and I got so scared. I literally had to walk out of the theater. I have never had such a visceral reaction to a movie in my life. It felt like a bad acid trip.”
“That is the scariest movie I’ve ever seen, but I was laughing the entire time,” Bridgers replied.
“That’s the only reasonable reaction,” Rodrigo said. “Your body just can’t process it. You have to laugh.”
“Beau Is Afraid” divided critics and audiences and only grossed $11 million worldwide, well below the worldwide grosses of Aster’s previous features, “Hereditary” ($82 million) and “Midsommar” ($48 million). The film stars Joaquin Phoenix as an anxiety-ridden loner who sets out on an odyssey home to reconnect with his mother.
“I do hope people return to it,” Aster recently told Empire magazine about the film’s divisive response. “It’s definitely a film that I think benefits from going back. I don’t think you quite know what it is until you’ve gone all the way through. I imagine that the second viewing would be hopefully rich in a way that the first one can’t. It’s designed to be wrestled with. I consider the film to be a picaresque, and I think part of that tradition is a certain irreverence towards the integrity of any sort of narrative structure. The film is designed to kind of shapeshift a lot.”
Aster added, “I would say that it’s the film I’m proudest of. I think it’s the best filmmaking that I’ve done. I love the film, and I really hope that people continue to find it.”
Elsewhere in her Interview Magazine discussion, Rodrigo had more praise for “Twilight,” calling it “an impeccable work of cinema.”
“I’ve been obsessed with it since I was so young,” she said. “My mom found all of these drawings of vampires that I did when I was literally 4 years old. I’m like, ‘God, I was manifesting this from such a young age.'”
Rodrigo’s new album, “Guts,” releases Sept. 8.
