Warning: This article contains spoilers for Beau is Afraid.Starring Joaquin Phoenix in the title role in a film written and directed by Ari Aster, Beau is Afraid is full of strange moments and eccentric characters amid one man's journey to self-discovery, but nothing quite compares to the thing that Beau discovers in his mother's attic. Beau, whose anxiety warps his world into a dangerous and violent place whenever he leaves his apartment, has made the trek to attend his mother's funeral after her untimely demise from a falling chandelier. Beau and his mother have had a complicated and at times toxic relationship, filled with dysfunction from dark family secrets.
When Beau finds, to his surprise, that his mother isn't actually dead at all, but staged her death in an elaborate ploy to see how Beau would react, he uses the chaos of the moment to ask her about his father. She explains that if he wants to know what happened to a man, who as far as Beau knew had died before he was born, he needs to visit the attic. Suddenly gripped with fear at the prospect of learning the truth about his family's sordid past, he nevertheless makes the journey into the attic and discovers something both terrifying and incredibly confusing.
The Monster Represents Beau's Sexual Fear
When Beau finally pokes his head into the darkness upstairs, he shines a flashlight on a bearded version of himself chained in a corner and a giant penis connected to a set of equally large testicles. It roars to life as soon as it spots him with a mouth filled with sharp teeth and small, insect-like appendages that flail defensively. In one of the movie's most unexpected moments, Beau thinks he's going to come face to face with his father and instead, he finds a monster which, in the context of Beau is Afraid's main character, has several different meanings.
Beau's mother told him that his father died just as he finished Beau's conception, and if that wasn't haunting enough, she explained that his condition was hereditary. Knowing his father died climaxing was enough to scar Beau for life and prevent him from ever having sex for fear of a similar fate. The monster in the attic, therefore, can be interpreted in one of three ways; what his father meant to his mother (a literal "giant d***" for abandoning her to raise their son), what he has meant to Beau his entire life (something dangerous and life-threatening), and most critically, Beau's fear of his own sexuality.
Beau Has To Slay The Monster To Free Himself
In order to ever free himself from the paralyzing fear of his own sexuality, Beau has to slay the monster, though he doesn't end up doing this himself. A veteran named Jeeves, who supposedly died in a previous segment, ends up charging in through a window and shooting it before succumbing to wounds delivered by the creature's sharp front limbs. In the end, Beau couldn't slay the monster himself, nor could the braver version of himself who first tried to investigate the attic as a boy, and remains chained in the darkness as Beau scrambles downstairs.
The manipulative machinations of Beau's mother helped create a mewling man who couldn't defeat the monster in the attic, but when he had the chance to conquer his demons, he faced the wrong monster. It wasn't a giant penis and set of testicles, it was his mother, who wanted to be loved by him unconditionally and whenever he disappointed her, revoked her affection until he became so desperate for her approval that he never lived his own life. By the end of Beau is Afraid, it's clear that his real anger should have been directed at the monster that had always been in front of him.