10 Awesome 2023 Movies That Didn't Deserve To Flop

Now to be fair, few were expecting Ari Aster's new horror-comedy Beau Is Afraid to be a stonking commercial success, but even so, that it ended its global run at just $11.5 million is absolutely disastrous.

Compare this to the totals of Aster's previous films - Hereditary ($82.8 million) and Midsommar ($48 million) - and it's a staggering fall-off. This gets even worse when you consider that Beau's budget was $35 million - almost double the combined budgets of Hereditary and Midsommar.

Aster's new film certainly isn't for everyone - it's a surreal and extremely challenging three-hour epic intentionally primed to unsettle the audience, and not even the star appeal of Joaquin Phoenix in the lead role could do much to move the financial needle.

While it's easy to see this as A24 giving an auteur filmmaker a large budget to make his wild passion project, there's also no reality where the studio is happy with this outcome.

Aster himself expressed disappointment with the film's commercial performance, and while few were expecting amazing numbers, to see such a creative and fascinating film so brutally rejected by all but the most die-hard cineastes is a damn shame.