20 Scariest Horror Movies Of The 2020s (So Far)

And finally, though some might object to calling it a horror movie at all, Ari Aster's bold third feature Beau Is Afraid is one of cinema's best-ever depictions of the utterly crushing, life-ruining potential of anxiety.

Indeed, Aster's film ambitiously leaps from one genre to the next, from horror to surreal tragicomedy and everything else in the middle, but between Joaquin Phoenix's ever-unreliable protagonist and the movie's sheer ballsy unpredictability, we're never able to get comfortable with knowing what might be coming next.

It's an absolute waking nightmare of a movie whose gruelling quality is only exacerbated by its three-hour runtime, as we follow Beau on one of the decade's most unnervingly peculiar cinematic odysseys. 

And while Beau Is Afraid requires a certain level of adventurous from audiences and certainly isn't for all tastes, it's tough to argue with the swinging-for-the-fences brio of Aster's filmmaking nor Phoenix's stupendous performance in the title role.