‘Beau Is Afraid’: Ari Aster Has The Same Problem As Jordan Peele

One bit of oft-repeated advice, often attributed to Coco Chanel, could be applied to more than just the fashion realm: “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.” In other words, you should streamline before walking out the door looking goofy.

Or, if you’re widely popular horror filmmakers Ari Aster and Jordan Peele, before you subject audiences to your latest overindulgent movie, consider getting it together first. Otherwise, you’ll end up with something like the former’s latest, “Beau Is Afraid,” or the latter’s “Us,” gargantuan films with promising concepts that hurtle off the rails on their way to a conclusion.

This has now become a pattern for both otherwise skilled directors, whose impressive first features — 2018’s “Hereditary” and 2017’s “Get Out” — helped revive faith in mainstream horror. For a few solid years leading up to their openings, smaller films and those coming out of international markets had proved to be more consistently effective and resonant contributions to the genre. (Think “Raw,” “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” and “Only Lovers Left Alive,” for instance.) Aster’s and Peele’s debuts helped to change that narrative.

But when you put a filmmaker whose work you’ve come to trust, particularly early in their career, on this type of pedestal, it gives them very little space to experiment or fail. Or, when they do mess up, the narrative built for them has become so secured that audiences sometimes don’t even react when it’s just not true anymore.

Are Aster and Peele one-trick ponies? Well, they’ve each directed only three features, so that remains to be seen. But it’s telling that the films made after their stunning debuts have ultimately been disastrous.

Aster’s grandiose sophomore effort, the folklore nightmare “Midsommar,” is confounding, especially coming from a director whose first feature was so humanly devastating and unsettling. Peele’s similarly ambitious second film, “Us,” never stuck the landing, opting for an increasingly frayed trajectory instead. His third film, “Nope,” also abandons sensical storytelling.

These later works feel like directors’ attempts to feed audiences they don’t quite understand, or the output of artists who realize they’ve reached a point where anything they create will be showered with praise. Or…