Ari Aster has named Beau Is Afraid as the film he’s proudest of.

The director followed up his acclaimed horror movies Hereditary and Midsommar earlier this year with the three-hour epic, which starred Joaquin Phoenix as an anxious man who embarks on a surrealist odyssey.

Despite baffling many viewers and bombing at the box office, Aster told Empire that he is happy with his unconventional feature.

“I feel like it’s always kind of an unhealthy thing to sit in, the grappling with the release and the reception,” he said. “So I’m happy to be on the other side of it. But I would say that it’s the film I’m proudest of. I think it’s the best filmmaking that I’ve done. I love the film, and I really hope that people continue to find it.”

The filmmaker hopes that people will return to Beau Is Afraid because he believes viewers will get more out of it on a second watch.

“It’s definitely a film that I think benefits from going back. I don’t think you quite know what it is until you’ve gone all the way through. I imagine that the second viewing would be hopefully rich in a way that the first one can’t. It’s designed to be wrestled with,” he stated.

Addressing the film’s unorthodox structure, he added, “I consider the film to be a picaresque, and I think part of that tradition is a certain irreverence towards the integrity of any sort of narrative structure. The film is designed to kind of shapeshift a lot.”

Beau Is Afraid, which was released in April, also starred Parker Posey, Patti LuPone, Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan.

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