While Ari Aster was writing his folk horror Midsommar (2019), he listened to The Haxan Cloak’s Excavation (2013) to set a mood for the story. This led him to commissioning Bobby Krlic (aka The Haxan Cloak) to score the film – the first of three Krlic has done for Aster so far. Ever since runes were employed for Led Zeppelin’s fourth untitled LP (1971), occultism in music has been fetishised in highly performative modes. It might be another Penderecki-aping film cue, but it presents as indistinct implications of orchestral statements that go nowhere. As the film unfolds its many layers across three hours, it becomes apparent that the conventional task of a film score to register emotional shifts is inappropriate for Beau Is Afraid.