Olivia Rodrigo On Watching ‘Beau Is Afraid’: “It Felt Like A Bad Acid Trip” & “Had To Walk Out Of The Theater”

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Olivia Rodrigo is sharing her thoughts on the experience she had watching Beau is Afraid, the Joaquin Phoenix surrealist tragicomedy horror film written, directed and co-produced by Ari Aster.

While talking to Phoebe Bridgers for Interview magazine, the High School Musical: The Musical: The Series alum said the film was “like a bad acid trip.” “I convince myself that I see shit after I come home from watching Insidious or something,” she said. “Also, I watched that new Ari Aster movie Beau Is Afraid and I got so scared.

I literally had to walk out of the theater. I have never had such a visceral reaction to a movie in my life. It felt like a bad acid trip.” Bridgers agreed with Rodrigo saying that it was “the scariest movie I’ve ever seen, but I was laughing the entire time.” Rodrigo then added, “That’s the only reasonable reaction.

Your body just can’t process it. You have to laugh.” Phoenix himself had previously warned moviegoers to “not take mushrooms” before seeing the film. “I was told from someone in college that there was this college thread amongst friends, a challenge they were going to take mushrooms and go see this movie,” Phoenix told Fandango in an interview back in April. “And I just wanted to make a public service announcement and say do not take mushrooms and go see this f***ing movie.” A24’s Beau Is Afraid revolves around “a paranoid man [who] embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother.” The film also stars Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Kylie Rogers, Denise Ménochet, Parker Posey, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Richard Kind, Hayley Squires and Michael Gandolfini, among others.