Jordan Peele’s Get Out was an announcement of a new voice in horror, one that made an indelible mark on the cinematic landscape as a whole, not just for horror cinema. The danger in one’s first effort being hailed as a masterpiece is in the impact itself – how do you follow up a movie that was widely regarded as the best of that year? The answer for Peele was to keep on making movies with social commentary, albeit different than that found in his first effort.
Us stars Lupita Nyong’o as Adelaide, a mother of two and wife to Gabe (Winston Duke), on vacation with the family in California. She is haunted by the events of one night in 1986 on the boardwalk in Santa Cruz, when she came face-to-face with… something… in the hall of mirrors on the beach. Before anything creepy sets off in Us, Adelaide is already on edge, too close by half to the site of her childhood trauma.
When a quartet of strangers appears outside their home, Adelaide, Gabe, and the kids are confronted by red-jumpered versions of themselves whose intent appears violent and whose origins are mysterious at best. The rest I will say no more about, as one of the appeals of Us is seeing the mystery of the doppelgangers unfold.
Where Get Out felt like a visceral and personal film about the experience of being black in America, housed in a terrific B-movie plot about stolen identities, Us represents a different critique. As the title suggests, Us is about, well, us. At one point, Adelaide’s doppelganger is asked who she and her lookalike family are. “We are Americans,” she says. Ultimately, Peele wants to suggest that there is a class of Americans who live in the shadows, one that most of us never regard beyond a passing there-but-for-the-grace-of-God. Unlike the previous film, Us feels a bit less contained in its thematic arguments, resulting in a messier experience with the messaging of the movie.
And, when you get down to the hows and whys of the story, which I of course won’t reveal here, it all lands as being a bit silly and vague. I have a lot of questions, and I look forward to those discussions with all of you, but I will say that the explanation for the film’s events is less satisfying than I would have liked.
Despite these complaints, Jordan Peele is expert at pacing a film. The set pieces are fantastic, and there is a creepiness instilled in almost every frame of this movie. Like Get Out, the nooks and crannies are packed with lots of interesting visual cues, and I eagerly anticipate future viewings to begin to pull apart the threads of the film and pay more attention to the background happenings of Peele’s MAD magazine-like propensity to fill his frame with detail.
In a binary society where love and hate seem to be the only choices, my feelings about Us are more complicated. On the one hand, it is a fine piece of crafted filmmaking with some excellently constructed scenes of tension. Lupita Nyong’o is outstanding, and Winston Duke provides some great comedic support, not unlike Lil Rel Howery’s Rod from Get Out. Some of the scenes with the kids are particularly effective, and Shahadi Wright Joseph is scarily good at being evil. Someone may need to keep an eye on her in the future, both as a fine young actor and for hints of being diabolical.
On the other hand, I wish the thematic discussion in the film, which I am glad to have no matter how it is managed, felt more coherent and more pointed. Likewise, the ultimate reveal of the plot’s mechanics was underwhelming and broadcast in a way which made the final moments of the film seem inevitable rather than surprising.
Despite these flaws, I can easily recommend Us. Jordan Peele is quite simply a very good genre director who stumbles only a bit in his sophomore effort. It’s still eerie and compelling viewing worthy of your time.