The ending of Beau Is Afraid, Ari Aster has begun to realize, may have been a little too prophetic for its own good. He’s not really talking about the method in which his endlessly tortured protagonist Beau Wassermann (Joaquin Phoenix) is put on trial and excoriated for his apparent misdeeds against his mother (Patti LuPone), but more about what happens next, after Beau meets his ultimate fate: The arena crowd that’s gathered for this bizarre spectacle quietly, rather indifferently walks away, barely moved at all by what they just watched. “It occurred to me in retrospect,” Aster says now. “I knew where this was headed.”

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Aster is still processing the bumpy rollout of Beau Is Afraid. Budget at $35 million, one of A24’s most expensive productions to date, the film offered the writer-director of indie horror hits Hereditary and Midsommar a massive canvas, and he took giddy advantage. Between its extended animation interludes, grotesque sex scenes, and relentless sequencing of horror after horror being inflicted upon its picaresque hero, Beau premiered in the spring with undeniable originality and vision. Aster knew his movie would not be for everyone. What he was less prepared for was that most audiences wouldn’t bother to land on a side in the first place.

Despite a robust promotional campaign from A24, Beau grossed under $10 million domestically, struggling to escape the impact of a heavily polarized critical and fan response. The film has found new champions since its digital release, and with good reason: This gonzo brand of personal cinema, infused with a sickly specific sense of humor and crafted with extraordinary care—from the elaborate production design to the superb ensemble cast—doesn’t always click on the first try. But in an era where big swings like this are so hard to even get made, let alone at this unhinged scale, Aster may have done the impossible. (Even Martin Scorsese has said he felt inspired by it.) In a wide-ranging and candid conversation with Vanity Fair, Aster reflects on his complicated feelings about the way the world received such an effort—while assuring that he’s still forging ahead, prepping a new film set to star Phoenix once more.

Vanity Fair: How have you broadly experienced the life of the movie over the last few months since it came out?

Ari Aster: I’m always happy to hear anything about the film since its release was slightly stunted. So, it’s gratifying to know that people are still finding it, and I hope that they continue to find it.

Can you say a little bit more about what you found stunting about the release?

I always knew the film was going to be polarizing and it’s designed to be divisive. The film shape-shifts a lot, and the film has something of hostility toward traditional narrative structure. It was always important to me that the film be about a character who does not change, so already, this is something that’s going to alienate certain people and it’s designed to alienate certain people. The length is part of that. That was certainly something that I had to fight for, and to the credit of A24 who had a lot invested in the film, they really allowed me to make the film I wanted to make. I’m really pleased with the shape of the film and proud of it. When you’re making a film like that, you’re very excited by the idea of dividing people, but then it comes out and it divides people, and then you realize, “Oh, wait a minute. This is also functioning as a deterrent for people to even go see it.”

It sounds like that surprised you.

Well, the film ends on a theater just very gradually emptying out over the credits, with a very indifferent audience. I wasn’t quite ready for just how prophetic that ending was going to be. It occurred to me in retrospect. I knew where this was headed. Right. And that’s part of the point.

Do you connect all of what you’re talking about, in terms of reaction and the difficulty of getting people out for a movie like this, to the broader state of the industry?

I’m obviously feeling kind of cynical this year about things, but then at the same time, I’m prepping my next film as much as I can during the strikes, so I can’t be that cynical. I’m incredibly lucky that I was able to make this film in this climate. The fact that this film exists as it does with so few compromises is really a beautiful, exciting thing that I’m so grateful for. There were points in the making of the film, in the editing of the film, where there was a line in the ground—I cross this line, I’m making a decision to preserve the integrity of what this film is at the risk of losing a chunk of the audience.

I fantasize about there having been a time during which a film like this might’ve come out and divided audiences, and it would’ve made people excited to go to the theater in order to determine how they felt themselves, as opposed to just people hearing, “Oh, the response is all over the board, so I’m not going to bother.” I knew this film was going to have people hating it or hopefully loving it, and I was hoping that the draw of a debate would be greater, as opposed to the response being something that would ultimately push people away from giving it a shot. So, the film will always be polarizing, but I just hope that people keep finding it.

I would imagine this is the kind of filmmaking you want to do more of, but then on the other end, you do have this reality facing you in terms of response. How do you square those two things?

I’m doing my best to not learn certain lessons because I won’t make a film like Beau Is Afraid again. I hope none of my films are too similar to any others, while at the same time, I recognize that I keep returning to certain themes and that there are things that echo, that I’m already noticing through my work that I’m not fully aware of while I’m writing them. One thing that excites me about Beau is that there are certain things that I buried in that film that still haven’t been talked about, and I was kind of disappointed by the way people were maybe engaging with the film on first release because it was very verdict based like, “Well, it doesn’t all work.” It’s like, “Well, wait, what doesn’t work?” The film is an experiment in so many ways. Even what he finds up in that attic is a very specific provocation. I’m deliberately blowing up the whole film. People talked about it as a letdown when clearly—yeah, that’s the joke! Interpret this, right?

There are things in that film in the background that I think tell a whole other story that nobody has brought to me yet, and in some ways, that’s frustrating because you take the time to put them there and you wonder who’s going to catch them. But I’m excited by the idea of people finding those things. In the cruise sequence, if you look in the background in every scene there, you might catch something and it might spark an idea.

Does it feel exposing, making a movie like this that feels profoundly personal, and then putting it out there without any control over the life it lives? How has that part of it been for you?

When you make a film like this, it feels in some ways like you’re just pulling yourself inside out. With this film especially as it came out, I felt very protective of it. I’ve said this before, but it’s absolutely my favorite of my own films and I think the furthest I’ve been able to go. I’ve only made three films, but there was a real joy in making it. I’ll leave it there.

In Beau, you have, in addition to Joaquin, this murderer’s row of iconic New York theater actors, and they’re being asked to do things that in many cases, I haven’t seen them do before. Can you talk about the experience of working with an ensemble like that and how it pushed you? I don’t think the performances in the film get talked about enough.

Part of what was really tough about making the film was that we were jumping from world to world, and that those worlds were designed to kind of function differently than the last. Each world changes rhythm. There’s a tonal shift. Joaquin and I found that every time we moved from one location to the next or one world to the next, for instance, going from the city section to the suburban section to the stuff in the woods, the first day of shooting in each new location was just beginning a new film and almost always a disaster on day one. We had to completely reset, so it was really overwhelming. And then, you find your rhythm with the new actors in these new worlds, and then you have to pivot again, so that was the challenge of it, was that we are never in a place long enough to quite make ourselves at home.

By the end, there was something invigorating about the way that we found ourselves out to sea or out at sea with each new section, and there was a real feeling with the actors like, “Okay, how do we find our footing here in this thing?” Despite not having a lot of time on set with anybody except for Joaquin—everybody had about 10 days of shooting besides him—it brought us really close. We had to find the rules of these different environments and kind of make them real, despite the fact that they still kind of exist in this kind of funhouse evil clown mirror reflection of reality. With Parker Posey, for instance, that scene on the porch with her, I knew that I wanted that scene to be kind of ghostly and slow and kind of ethereal, but what she did there was so thrilling to see. I knew she was going to do something interesting there, but I’m mesmerized by what she did.

When the movie came out, there was a sort of, “Get ready for that scene” around Parker’s big moment. There were a few of those, obviously, but taking that as an example, how did you find the conversation around that scene, particularly versus intent?

I had a feeling if people were going to talk about certain scenes in the film, I expected that to be one of them just because what Parker does is so ballsy and she’s so funny. She’s just doing so much in not a lot of screen time. Then we had to fight hard for that Mariah Carey song. I had a feeling that that would just work in the way that I imagined it would. The goal was to make the most horrendous sex scene possible, to be in the canon of atrocious despicable sex scenes.

What can tell me anything about the movie you’re prepping?

I really shouldn’t say much. It’s another one with Joaquin, and I am really excited to do something again with him. Working with him on Beau was really one of the most invigorating experiences that I’ve ever had, just making anything. I’m really, really thrilled that we’ll be able to do it again. He’s the greatest, a real mensch—but also a really serious and inspiring artist.

This interview has been edited and condensed.