Jordan Peele's follow-up to the enormously successful Get Out is in cinemas now...
Director: Jordan Peele
Starring: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss
Running time: 116 mins
One upon a time, Jordan Peele was known for being the nerdy half of the sketch comedy due Key & Peele. But then Get Out happened, and he suddenly found himself as the most acclaimed horror filmmaker of the 2010s.
If you didn’t hear about Get Out, then you must have been so disconnected from the world that you'd probably be fit to be part of the Government. The film couldn’t have been more of a success: made for only $4.5 million, it grossed about $250 million worldwide becoming the most cost-effective movie of 2017.
But Peele wasn’t fully satisfied, as he explained to Rolling Stone, “I’m such a horror nut that the genre confusion of Get Out broke my heart a little. I set out to make a horror movie, and it’s kind of not a horror movie.” And, to be fair, I heartily agree with him; I saw Get Out months after the hype, and was waiting for a mind-blowing horror movie, but ended with an excellent social-sci-fi-thriller. A small disappointment, but a disappointment nonetheless.
The plot of Us is exactly what the trailer promised, and to say more about it would spoil the rest of the story. We follow the Wilsons, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o who owns the film), Gabe (Winston Duke) and their two children, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex), while they’re vacationing in Santa Cruz. Whilst there, they meet their not so friendly doppelgängers, who break into their house. Who are these doppelgangers? What do they want? These are the questions around which the whole film is built. This is pretty straightforward which seems like a good premise for a horror movie.
You should go and see Us because it’s a good film, or, dare I say, it’s as good as it gets now.
The film opens with a text sequence explaining that, across the U.S., there are thousands of miles of underground tunnels that have been long forgotten. Some are abandoned subways, some old mine shafts, but many have no clear purpose. We then head back to 1986, with a young Adelaide in Santa Cruz with her parents. She wanders off and enter the gloomiest funhouse on the beach and finds herself in a mirror hall. When she reunites with her parents, she's in shock and is unable to talk.
Much in the way that Get Out was strongly inspired by Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, Us is inspired by The Twilight Zone’s episode Mirror Image. Adelaide's early speech to her husband about doppelgängers, and their need to get rid of their counterpart to be able to live, is actually almost word-for-word the same as Millicent Barnes’, the protagonist from that particular Twilight Zone episode.
But in the series, nothing is never explained, things happen and create this uncomfortable feeling of witnessing the unknown, allowing the spectator to create their own doubts. Because doubt is what makes you feel unease, or fear. And fear is what makes a good horror story.
I don’t want to sound like a grumpy old guy ranting about how things were better in the past. But, things were better back in the past. The way modern films over-explain their own concepts by dropping obvious hints before we've even begun to question it, instead of creating their own mythology to make us believe in it, is symptomatic of how cinema has evolved over the years.
And Us falls into this trap, even though it is meticulously crafted and, like Get Out, has a strong subtext and is full of details which make the film worth a second viewing. Jordan Peele is good, no doubt about that, he did his homework and his passion for the genre really shows in the way he tells his story. His characters are generally smart and avoid some overused tropes in this kind of stories.
You should go and see Us because it’s a good film, or, dare I say, it’s as good as it gets now. By that I mean that, as good as it is, it sadly all feels too well-behaved and too cautious. The overall praise of the film as a mind-blowing horror movie makes me feel very old. And even though this time there’s a bit of slasher and a drop of zombie apocalypse (two of the less creative type of horror story), its desire to explain everything negates many of its positive qualities. I’m such a horror nut that the genre confusion of Us broke my heart a little.
Did you know? The words "Get Out", which was the title of Jordan Peele's previous film from 2017, can be seen carved into the sides of the entrance of the hall of mirrors.
Us is screening at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 4 April
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