Us
Movie Rating:
4
Jordan Peele set his own bar incredibly high with his directorial debut, Get Out. Though thematically a big departure, Us shows that Peele’s strong voice as a terror craftsman is not just limited to one category of horror film.
Us begins with the past. In 1986 Santa Cruz, just before Hands Across America, a family visits the boardwalk. The mother and father don’t seem like they’re on the same page about much, but their young daughter, Adelaide, doesn’t seem to notice. The quiet, observant girl soaks in all the sights while her parents bicker about what attraction to visit next. When mom excuses herself so that she can visit the bathroom and dad is left in charge, the girl lets her curiosity get the better of her and wanders down to the beach.
The funhouse on the beach seems to be calling to her, and she’s compelled to explore it. While in the classical cinematic hall of mirrors, she panics and looks for a way to get out. There, she finds what looks to be her doppelgänger.
Just as soon as we glimpse the uncanny interaction Adelaide had as a child, we’re brought into her life in the present day. Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) is a mother oif two kids and heading back to Santa Cruz for an annual family vacation. Her husband, Gabe (Winston Duke), has fully embraced the role of the corny father. Daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and son Jason (Evan Alex) complete the quartet as an exacerbated ‘tween and a playful kiddo. This group is ready to relax and get in some family time as best they can.
Peele doesn’t hold back on the atmosphere or tension, even before we settle into the real horror within Us. Even when it’s just a family beach vacation, the score and framing build on Adelaide’s unease with her return to Santa Cruz. The camera often floats along at the eye level of children, and doesn’t allow us to see things through adult or authoritarian eyes.
When the horror does start going, it goes hard. One night, after dark and just around bedtime, four people appear in the driveway. Gabe does his best silverback impression to scare away the strangers, but things go terribly wrong and continue to get worse for the loving, normal family.
To call Us a home invasion horror film is not inaccurate, but it’s incomplete. Doing so would ignore all the other psychological elements and extensive world creation within the film. The home invasion is a catalyst for greater discovery of just how deep the terror runs beneath the surface, but it’s not the crux of the larger and longer lasting fear that Us creates.
While all the actors are perfectly cast, given the nature of the film, each is also called upon to do so much more than a mere vanilla role. Even the smaller roles of the neighbors (Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker) are anything but window dressing to a larger story; they’re instrumental in carrying the weight of this grand world. Nyong’o defies comparison to other horror heroines since she pulls double duty as both victim and monster. I cannot recall the last time an actor made my skin crawl for the entire length of her introduction, and every single moment on screen thereafter. This is what nightmares are made of.
Us is a formidable horror giant in an already crowded pantheon of modern horror. The genre has always been political, grand, and aggressively honest, and it’s a boon to see that new directors like Peele are ready to carve out their own place in that world.
matt
I really enjoyed this. The commentary is clever and provocative, though I don’t buy all of it. But I feel there’s a massive plot hole with the whole twist:
********SPOILERS**********
Shadow-Adelaide seemed to have no issue accessing the surface and the Funhouse. After the swap, what kept Real-Adelaide from escaping? For that matter, what’s keeping the rest of the “shadows” from escaping?
Bolo
That was one of the worst final acts I’ve seen in a movie in a long time. It just felt like weird shit piled on top of more weird shit on top of twists for the sake twists. I don’t think it adds up in the least. If the movie was just supposed to be taken metaphorically for the purpose of commentary, then it spends way to much time on its more grounded home invasion scares. And unless you take it purely as a metaphor, then nothing about the underground facility makes the slightest bit of sense.
SPOILERS
They say it was a failed experiment to control people on the surface. Not sure how that was even expected to work, but um, okay. Is there a one-to-one ratio of surface people to underground people? How do they ensure that the same couples on the surface match the ones underground and that they mate at the same time and that their genes produce physically near identical children to their surface level counterparts? Why do they make the underground people rip rabbits apart with their bare hands for food? Why is the entrance in a carnival funhouse?
Like Matt said, if Adelaide can leave at any time, what stops the other underground people from leaving? Why doesn’t Adelaide remember that she escaped an underground facility by swapping places with her double until way later in life?
What was the point of underground Adelaide’s revolution? Was it for all the underground people to stab all their doubles with scissors, then recreate Hands Across America as a message to all the people they just stabbed?
If somebody wants to explain it to me, I’d be happy to listen.
Matt Stearns
Great read, although doesn’t explain everything.
https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18277163/us-movie-ending-what-happened-adelaide-red-explained
Bolo
I agree with the article that Adelaide repressing her memories is the only rational explanation for her behaviour throughout the film that still allows for the twist reveal to make sense. But I just didn’t really feel the movie got that up on screen. I think it would’ve been better to ease it out a bit more rather than dumping one big cheap twist on the audience at the end. But that’s just my opinion.
Ally
Shadow-Adelaide was able to access the surface when the power went out and the only escalator, which goes down, stopped. After the power returned, Real-Adelaide and the rest of the tethered would not be able to escape.
Bolo
So there was a blackout exactly on the night when surface Adelaide was in the carnival fun house that leads to the underground facility, and the one double who happened to escape from the underground facility was her double? Is that just supposed to be a coincidence, or is there also some explanation about how the underground Adelaide used her powers to lure the surface Adelaide there?
Alfred S. Woolfolk
WTF did I just watch?
Chaz
Man did I love this movie, thought about it the whole way home. I love movies that leave their explanations to be thought about. Whether the logic of it makes sense doesnt bother me, some of the best episodes of the Twilight Zone (which Peele is now running) dont make sense logically either but they were great episodes and stories. Definitely the case here, cant wait to see it again 🙂
Judas Cradle
US = LOGIC TAKES A LONG HOLIDAY.