10 Unanswered Questions From Recent Movies
1. Why Did Elaine Die? - Beau Is Afraid
One of the many shocking scenes in Ari Aster's surreal horror film Beau Is Afraid involves the death of Beau's (Joaquin Phoenix) decades-long crush Elaine (Parker Posey).
It's established early on in the film that Beau is pathologically afraid of sex due to his father apparently dying of a heart murmur during his conception.
And so, when he reconnects with Elaine in the present day and they have sex, Beau is relieved that he survives the tryst. But in an ironic twist, it's Elaine who dies while climaxing, her body eerily frozen stiff.
Like much of what happens in the film, this is never given a concrete explanation, with audiences instead invited to figure it out for themselves.
Perhaps the most basic rationale is that Beau managed to "redirect" his deathly climax into Elaine instead, but it might be best not to examine Aster's film too literally, accepting the generally dreamlike - nightmarish, even - logic upon which it operates.