How ‘The Wolf House’ Perfectly Complements ‘Beau Is Afraid’s’ Animated Sequence

Ari Aster’s Beau is Afraid has only been out for a little over a week and it’s already proving itself to be one of the year’s weirdest movies and an important stepping stone in Aster’s filmography. Aster’s ability to deconstruct and blow up the human condition leads to terrifying horror stories and Beau is Afraid looks at a simple journey where Beau Wassermann (Joaquin Phoenix) tries to get home to see his mother, only for this to transform into an impossible odyssey. 

Beau is Afraid is a movie with many memorable, nay unforgettable sequences, but one of the most striking–narratively and visually–is when Beau descends into an animated world while he loses himself in a piece of avant-garde theater. The ten-minute sequence from the 179-minute movie is heavily featured in the film’s marketing and it’s such a striking display that it’s easy to see why. It’s no coincidence that this segment from Beau is Afraid has such a distinct, precise look and it’s because Aster turned to Chilean stop-motion animators and filmmakers, Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León, to mastermind Beau’s outlandish psychic break. Cociña and León are best known for their heavy stop-motion, mixed media, and puppet film about abuse, trauma, and family, 2018’s The Wolf House, which is one of the most powerful animated movies of the past decade. Cociña and León prove themselves to be unique storytellers with The Wolf House, but their work in Beau is Afraid becomes the perfect companion piece to the dark ideas that they’ve previously explored through animation.

The Wolf House is about a young girl’s escape from one prison into another, but it lulls the audience into a sick sense of security by using the typical tropes of fairy tales. This fantastical point of view makes sense since The Wolf House is viewed through the perspective of this young girl, who has fairy tales as one of the only forms of escapism in her life. These traditionally reassuring visuals take on sick connotations in The Wolf House, almost as if they’re laughing at or preying upon the audience. The same experience occurs when Beau loses himself in fantasy and his symbols of stability turn into mocking burdens. Cociña and León immerse the audience in stunning, unbelievable visual spectacles, but The Wolf House is not an easy watch, which is typically the same feeling that audiences associate with Aster’s aggressive filmography. On some levels, The Wolf House even comes across as an animated analogue to Hereditary, Aster’s debut feature film. 

Much like how Beau is Afraid increasingly forces its audience to question everything that they see, The Wolf House also assaults its audience with jarring visuals. These creepy setpieces attack and overwhelm with no reprieve, like the cinematic equivalent of a panic attack. All the while, each new visual peels back another layer of repressed trauma that makes better sense of this waking nightmare. Only at the end of both cinematic experiences are the audiences finally properly equipped to understand what they’ve just seen. However, in both The Wolf House and Beau is Afraid, understanding can just become yet another tool that’s used to disarm the audience.

Cociña and León’s previous works, particularly The Wolf House, uncomfortably examine broken homes and images of stability and comfort that have gone rotten or are literally up in flames. There’s an exhausting cycle of birth, decay, and resurrection throughout The Wolf House and Cociña and León’s short films that’s not dissimilar to the lifetime that Beau lives across the animation-augmented sequence from Beau is Afraid. Even Cociña and León’s “Thin Thing” stop-motion music video for Radiohead side project, The Smile, features people getting lost in a wooded forest, which proceeds to meld together with them and blur the lines between man and nature. This metamorphosis doesn’t literally occur in Beau is Afraid, but it’s thematically present as Beau experiences this seismic epiphany after he gets lost in the forest, all of which concludes with its own rebirthing of sorts. 

Visually, the “Hero Beau” sequence from Beau is Afraid meshes with Cociña and León’s past stop-motion animated works, but it’s remarkable how much their “short film” within Beau is Afraid feels like the progression of the same haunting, uncomfortable ideas that Cociña and León explore in their short films, music video work, and The Wolf House. It’s easy to see why Aster was moved by their work and felt a psychic affinity towards it, but he still could have tasked them to put together a sequence that’s dissonant with their past works. It’s all the stronger that Aster encourages Cociña and León to lean into their traumatic wheelhouse and make this segment as much their sequence as it is the film’s. 

That’s not to say that Cociña and León’s voice interrupts the flow of Beau is Afraid–and there are certainly sequences in the movie that do feel at odds with the others. In fact, it’s quite the contrary. Cociña and León’s work in Beau is Afraid is the rare case of everyone’s voices working together to build a greater whole. It’s a segment that feels distinctly Aster-esque, while also highly reminiscent of Cociña and León’s works. It could be removed from the film and still stand on its own as a bleak look into the fleeting, draining nature of life. As a short film it would be the tonal antidote to Michel Gondry or even Wes Anderson. The synthesis between Cociña, León, and Aster is so effective and seamless in Beau is Afraid that it hopefully opens up some rewarding opportunities for the animators. 

The Wolf House was a critical darling in the international awards circuit, but it wasn’t easy to watch or readily available until very recently when it was added to Tubi. It took Cociña and León five years to put The Wolf House together and so it’s likely that the two are already deep in development of a follow-up feature film and will continue to tell moving, unflinching stories. Nevertheless, it doesn’t hurt that Aster has helped shine a bit of a brighter spotlight on Cociña and León. This will hopefully open more opportunities for these two, whether it’s in the context of more feature films or just other directors turning to their unique talents. Aster is hardly slowing down as a filmmaker and it will be interesting if he continues to turn to Cociña and León for different stylized and animated flourishes in his feature films or if this will remain a collaboration that’s contained to Beau Wassermann’s unhinged psyche. If nothing else, Beau is Afraid will hopefully bring more eyes over to The Wolf House. Just be advised that a double feature of the two movies may be one of the bleakest animated pairings of all-time. Enjoy.

‘The Wolf House’ is now available to stream for free on Tubi.