Beau (2011)

September 17, 2020 1:04 PM

A neurotic middle-aged man's trip to visit his mother is delayed indefinitely when his keys are mysteriously taken from his door. He is subsequently haunted by an increasingly sinister chain of upsetting events. A short horror film from Ari Aster (Midsommar).

I'm not sure where this info comes from, but multiple online sources say that although it is not made apparent in the film, some time before the start of the film, Beau used a Ouija board.

Available streaming on Vimeo.

posted by DirtyOldTown (3 comments total)

This feels like Aster had already started developing his interest in the confusion of a mentally ill person actually facing the supernatural that he would later explore in Hereditary. Although in this case, he doesn't have much interest in an explanation, just the collision.

It's like someone asked him how did this happen? And Aster just said, I dunno... a collector of keys or some shit.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:16 PM on September 17, 2020

I was following along okay, I think, until the ending. (Possum, playing dead, paranoia; feels like he caused a death somehow, presumably accidentally, maybe that of the homeless man who injured himself attacking him, supernatural vengeance/guilty mindfuckery vibes.) But then, uh, what? Why was his mom a were-possum? What was the whatever-it-was eating turf and smoking?

A metatextual ouija board use does not do anything at all to clarify the matter, I'm afraid.
posted by Scattercat at 4:38 PM on September 18, 2020

Not that this will help, but the credits list a character named Kolgaan, The Collector of Keys.

So from a what happened standpoint, it seems like Beau (maybe bc of the aforementioned metatextual ouija board) inadvertently summoned this demon, Kolgaan, who stole his keys, then tortured him. It was Kolgaan who answered the phone, not his mom.

From a why this happened standpoint, the bottom line is still Aster doesn't exactly care. He just wanted to show the mental illness/demonic weirdness collision and [mega hand wave] is the mechanism that made that happen.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:58 AM on September 19, 2020