She Sees Everything: A Reflection Inspired by Beau Is Afraid

Some horror –– if that is indeed the right word –– doesn’t explode through your front door with knives, blood, or jump scares. It lives in the invisible corners of a person’s living, breathing life. It is the horror that comes along with being watched, judged, and found lacking by someone who was supposed to love you completely and unconditionally. 

Beau Is Afraid, Ari Aster’s epic absurdist plunge into one man’s terrified psyche, doesn’t just address that horror. It dissects it.

What strikes me the most when I watch Beau Is Afraid is not the feverish chaos of Beau's world. It is the ominous presence of Mona, his mother. Mona is a woman whose love is weaponized, whose legacy is surveillance, and whose gaze never rests or shifts away from Beau. This remains the case even after her alleged death.

If you yourself have ever lived under the shadow of maternal control, then you know what it's like. Even when mother isn't in the room, she's present in uncomfortable and invasive ways. 

Beau Is Afraid doesn’t flinch from showing how love can become a trap –– how being raised to please someone else can result in a kind of emotional paralysis. And it absolutely nails how surveillance, even subtle, turns us into reluctant performers who are forever trying to get it "right."

The Devouring Mother

If you've read much mythology, then the devouring mother is a familiar figure. She appears to offer everything, but she also demands everything in return. Her love consumes. She defines herself by her children, defining them in the process, as well. When they inevitably try to leave or become people of their own, she takes it as the most profound betrayal.

Mona Wasserman is a modern version of this archetype turned all the way up to 150 percent. She is not merely overbearing. She is omnipotent. Godlike, even. A business empire bears her name. Her portrait looms, sucking the air out of the room. Her voice follows Beau through every nuanced layer of his myth-like journey. Even when he tries to escape, she is there, or maybe especially then.

And yet, it’s not just about Mona. It’s about what she represents –– the internalized voice that tells us we need to sacrifice our very existence on the altar of someone else's comfort. If you've had the misfortune to develop such a voice, then you already know how it watches and critiques, even when you’re alone. It is the voice that insists, "You have to do everything perfectly."

The Gaze That Shapes Us

There is a reason Beau Is Afraid feels like a paranoid fantasy. The world is deliberately exaggerated, menacing, and cartoonishly hostile. But it’s not random. It’s shaped by the gaze. Beau’s reality is perpetually distorted by what he thinks Mona sees and thinks about him. The city outside his apartment is dangerous because he believes danger is what he deserves. His dreams are violent because guilt runs deep enough to infect even his imagination.

This is not unlike what it's like growing up under a gaze that’s always searching for what’s wrong with you. You learn to monitor and censor yourself. You anticipate criticism before it comes. You flinch before you make a sound. You disappear before someone has the chance to erase you.

And if you dare to hope for something more — love, freedom, creativity, a life of your own — you may even punish yourself for even wanting it. Because somewhere deep inside, you still fear that someone is watching. Someone who will be angry if you step out of line.

Someone like Mona.

Surveillance as Legacy

After some thought, I've realized that the most haunting setting in the film for me isn’t the bathtub, or the attic, or the theater in the woods. It’s the courtroom and the accompanying idea that Beau’s entire life has been one long trial, conducted in secret, only to be revealed at the end. His entire existence was evidence, and he was always guilty.

There’s a part of me that understands that more than I care to admit. The feeling that your life is being watched and interpreted by someone who assumes the worst of you. That nothing you do will be enough. That forgiveness isn’t an option, because your failure to be who they wanted you to be is the crime.

The Sacred Act of Rebellion

Rewatching Beau Is Afraid in my office this afternoon over a cup of hibiscus tea reminded me of how powerful it can be to say, "I do not exist for you." To a mother. To a culture. To anyone or anything who eternally watches but never really sees.

Beau never quite reaches the point where he can say this out loud. Instead, he stumbles through terror after terror, dragged along by guilt. But I’d argue that the act of moving, of trying to get to his mother, of searching for closure (even though he never really gets it) is its own form of sacred rebellion. Beau may even know on some level that he's destined to fail, but he steps out and goes on the journey anyway. 

That’s what I’m doing, too.

I write about the things that have scared me. I share truths my mother would rather I bury or allow her to rewrite for me. I talk about art, and spirits, and dreams in public spaces where I’m likely being hate-watched by people who resent me just for existing. But I do it anyway.

Because the moment I started living for myself instead of performing for someone else, I managed to accomplish what Beau never could. I stopped being afraid.

For Those Who Have Also Lived This Story

If you grew up under the gaze of your own Mona — someone who loved you in a way that also cruelly erased you — I want you to know something.

You are not your mother’s fears. You are not the trial or the guilty verdict she may always have had planned for you. You are not too much or too little. You are not a disappointment.

You are holy in your defiance. Sacred in your becoming. And no matter who tries to manipulate you into silence, you still have the right to speak and be seen. Even if you have to start by seeing yourself.

* This post is part of the current cycle of my Feast of the Wandering Pen project, a month-long journey into storytelling, expression, and creative contemplation.