Not for everyone indeed. But it is A24 and Ari Aster (and yeah I am a fan of his works). It is very difficult to categorize the movie... part thriller, part abstract, part (well mostly) dark comedy.
Who knows Ari Aster works of before (Hereditary, Midsommar) knows he likes a lot to put abstract, symbolic and allegorical scenes, and pieces of the plot hidden thorough the movie. Beau Wasserman is unique and pitiless.
This one is surely one he put a hell of an effort to put things, and make sense in the senseless... and in chaos that is a definition for what I saw, it is pretty crazy as some flicks from the 70's (see Holy Mountain of 73, or Zardoz of 74 and you will get the LSD level of the scenes). Some more recent movies had that WTF moments too, like the middle part of Triangle of Sadness or some parts of White Noise (both of 2022) and you get the level of non-sense and comic all together.
The best definition of the Kafkaesqueness of Beau is to pick some work of the dutch painting Hieronymus Bosch of the XV century and try to grab some meaning on it. It is there but not so obvious.
In the case of Beau you can see two things: 1-) he is clearly someone with deeply psychological or psychiatric issues and 2-) he has a deep anxiety and FEAR all along the movie in the hope to not let people down or not to be a disappointment to anybody even he is clearly being it already in his mind. It is on the title of the movie.
The most "normal" scenes in the movie are the ones in the start of the movie in the psychiatrist bed (the ones that he must have with lot's of water - I don't know if it is a joke or not but Wass in german means "water" and element that is present since the beginning of the movie).
It must be interesting to see Aster working in his works, because neither one is simple, all are complex and relates to parts that we seen before. His passion for his work makes him one of the directors I admire at the most. Some people don't like him - the same way some people don't like Lars von Trier works. It is a matter of taste, and it is totally normal.
For me the story told is all above - don't try to pick what is real and what isn't, because out of the clinic door all is in Beau's head. Fragments of reality and inner issues in a bizarre blender that isn't for everyone.
I wish I had seen it on the theater there were some scenes that made me laugh a lot and at the same time felt guilty like the one at his attic.
On the technical side: Joaquin Phoenix again is a powerhouse in acting (and Academy worthy maybe?), the script is pretty original (well, last year Everything Everywhere All at Once was mostly non-sense but with a sense and won tons of stuff) and the work on editing and art direction are excellent and again long colaborator Pawel Pogorzelski work as cinematography is impeccable.
I liked the movie, it isn't the best of Ari Aster (and three hours are heavy on most of the cases), but is pretty good: my score is 8,3 out of 10,0 / A -.