Us (Review)
Jordan Peele Raises Expectations with Us.
With his new movie, Us, Jordan Peele has proven that he’s going to ruin horror movies for me. Not because he’s a bad director, but because of just the opposite. Because of Peele coming along and raising my expectations, I won’t be able to stomach all the other garbage movies cluttering the genre these days. Peele’s appearance as a director has proven that horror movies are to be taken seriously and is ruining my theory that they are built on a foundation of putting stupid people in life-threatening situations. All praise aside, Peele’s film is a worthy follow up to his break out hit Get Out, but temper your expectations because as worthy as it is, it just isn’t quite as good. Still, saying something is “not QUITE as good” as one of the best horror movies of the new millennium is nothing to scoff at.
Like Get Out, Peele works with layers inside of layers in his newest movie Us. There’s the old saying, “you’re your own worst enemy,” and Us embraces that notion to the extreme. The film follows a family on vacation who are brutally tormented by a group of home invaders who turn out to be dark versions of themselves. Forced to run for their lives, they soon realize there is no escaping their attackers and have to take a stand and fight for their lives against… themselves. Only to realize that what they are experiencing is not an isolated event and may well be the beginning of the end.
Us snatches up several actors from last years blockbuster Black Panther in lead roles. The parents of the family being attacked are played by Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke. Both of whom are absolutely phenomenal in their roles for different reasons. Duke mostly provides comedic relief with his spot on “dad impression” throughout the film. It’s a strange sight to behold, considering just how huge and threatening he seems at first glance. Of course, Peele cut his teeth on comedy with his hit show Key & Peele, so it makes sense that he would include a character to cut the tension with comic relief and Duke proves to be perfect casting. Opposite him is Nyong’o who plays a mother fighting not just for her life, but for the life of her children. She finds herself quickly backed into a corner and immediately turns the tables on the doppelgangers as she brutally defends her family from them. However, it’s not just these two that are worthy of praise in Us. The film also features some of the best child acting I’ve seen in a long time from Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex, as the daughter and son. The thing to keep in mind though is that all the actors in Us pull double duty as their normal characters and their deeply disturbing copies.
Peele knows that the key to horror is suspense and he brings plenty of that to his newest film. So often people think that genre is only about jump scares, buckets of blood, and gratuitous nudity, but there’s a real art to good horror. As Stephen King once observed, “Nothing is so frightening as what’s behind the closed door.” In other words, what we imagine is a million times worse than anything we can be shown. This proves to be the inspiration for Peele’s filmmaking approach to Us, because so much of it is spent waiting for that horrible moment to come. He lets the audience’s imaginations run wild as they desperately try to get ahead of the action. However, Peele knows that teasing is only worthwhile if there is an eventual payoff and Us features plenty of stomach-dropping sequences, but none of them rely on gratuitous gore. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of blood, but most of it is splatter relying on characters reactions to force us to fill in the gap of what just happened in our minds.
As skilled as Jordan Peele is as a filmmaker, Us does stumble from time to time. It’s biggest struggle though is in the third act when it tries to explain everything that’s been going on. “Why” is the greatest enemy for horror in general, because no matter how rational or well conceived the reason behind horror is almost always a letdown. Us is absolutely enthralling for 90% of it’s run time. It’s when it tries to come up with a clever twist or explanation that it fails. To make matter’s worse because it flies so very high the rest of the time these “falls” are all the more jarring because they feel so completely out of place. I can’t fault Peele for trying, but when the rest of the film is so incredibly creative its disappointing to see it run out of steam at the moment when it needed it the most.
As painful as it is to say, Us is not as good as Get Out. However, that’s a hard act to follow. Still, this is an important distinction to make, because if you head into this film expecting to compare the two, you will be disappointed. The fact is that most great directors struggle a little with their second films, but go on to find their pace soon after. With tempered expectations though, I have no doubt that most audiences will love Us. It’s creepy, incredibly well crafted, and hits you on a visceral level. With Us, Jordan Peele proves that he is a modern master of horror and has officially managed to earn a spot among my favorite directors and that https://starsandpopcorn.com/2019-new-movies/my faith in him and the film was well placed.
