Us

Written and Directed By: Jordan Peele
Cast: Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Lupita Nyong’o

Swift shot: Us is highly entertaining, engaging, and of course funny thanks to the superb dialog and direction of Jordan Peele, but the end left me annoyed. To explain why it was annoying, I am going to have to spoil some things for you. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a warning before I do. Unless of course my doppelganger starts writing this review.

The movie starts with a creepy fact that there are hundreds of miles of unused, abandoned tunnels all along the American coastline. And the opening credits lead in with a chillingly effective soulful solfege, a foreshadowing dirge as the camera pans out to hundreds of rabbits stuck in cages. So, now you want to know what the hell is going on with these tunnels and these rabbits.

Back in 1986, we are cleverly taken back to a time of VHS tapes and hands across America, as we are shown a glimpse of a typical family’s living room set-up. I must admit, how Peele frames his shots to tell his stories is damned impressive. It’s that old show don’t tell trick, but he also writes such believable dialog for his characters that immediately tells you a plethora about each of them.

As we were teased at the beginning, we are taken to the coastline of Santa Cruz, California and we see a small family at the boardwalk. It’s the little girl Adelaide’s birthday, and her dad is actually getting shit for winning her a shirt. Nice touch, to show how even when he does something for his daughter, his wife is nagging him about not doing it right. When you see the shirt, especially given today’s top stories – you’ll see what I mean.

Anyway, the girl’s mother tells the dad that he should be watching his daughter – as in all the time, but for some reason that initially defies logic (and then later TOTALLY defies logic) the girl wanders off to the coast. Yes, that coast – oh shit, something bad is going to happen.

Turns out Adelaide (Madison Curry) was out of their sight for fifteen minutes. If you’ve ever lost your kid at a crowded area for even a minute, you can feel their horror. Whatever happened to her, the little girl is changed and ends up having to see a shrink. And thus concludes all I will reveal about 1986.

Now, it’s present day and we see the little girl all grown up, played by Lupita Nyong’o. She and her family are heading to a beach house near the Santa Cruz boardwalk. But, for reasons she doesn’t share easily, she is fine with going to a beach, just not Santa Cruz. Her husband, Gabe is played by Winston Duke, but I swear he was just evoking Jordan Peele. If you’ve ever watched him do his classic sketches, you’ll notice it too. So, to me, it was like Jordan Peele’s family the whole time.

The dialog with the kids, Jason (Evan Alex) and Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) was highly relatable for any modern parents. And again, Peele impresses with his ability to make the characters feel authentic. It’s like watching Poltergeist in that way, where the characters build on who they are just enough to keep them interesting without getting into boring exposition. I felt that Spielberg vibe a lot in this one too.

The family is just going about their vacation, wisecracking and having fun. All except Adelaide. She is totally on edge. Her son Jason makes a trip to the porta-potty and she damned near calls in the FBI to find him. But unlike whatever happened to her back in 1986, Jason only has a slightly disturbing run in with something unsettling. Of course, after that drama, Gabe decides it’s time to call it a day. And that night, everything changes.

If you’ve seen the trailers, you know the family encounters another family that looks just like them and then it takes on a Funny Games turn where the family is terrorized by their doppelgangers. The suspense for the audience never really abates, as each second they are with these “other thems” – you are just waiting for them to use those fancy scissors to do God knows what to this poor family.

For the rest of the movie it’s a thriller as we learn more about these shadow people and their motivations for revenge. The family has to deal with them individually and alone, as they are pitted against one another in countless struggles for sole right to be the real version of the self. It’s handled with aplomb by Peele. He gets suspense so very right, even using music samplings you might not equate with suspense to flip the script on classic horror motifs.

I have heard that Peele is not the next Hitchcock or anyone else, he is the first Jordan Peele. I don’t disagree at all. He will have some more great films after this one, but Us had some major flaws that need to be addressed.

So, I say strike one for the new master of suspense. What started out as a terrific film ended up a convoluted mess when everything is finally revealed.

It just didn’t make any sense at all, and that’s a real shame for a movie that had such wonderful dialog, acting, and cinematography. It was not anywhere near as good as Get Out. At first, I was excited to hear Peele will be bringing us back The Twilight Zone series. But, if Us is any indication, I am lowering my expectations.

S P O I L E R W A R N I N G

Years ago I went to Blockbuster and tried to buy The Village sight-unseen. The clerk wouldn’t sell it to me at first, because he knew I would return it. Of course, I bought it – I didn’t need some clerk telling me what I was or wasn’t going to enjoy. Anyway, I got it home and my roommate Amadarwin and I watched it. He said he watched it in the theaters and people were really into it all the way through, screaming, laughing, emoting, but at the end they all said how the movie “sucked.” That’s not exactly how I felt about Jordan Peele’s Us, but it was close.

Us would have you believe that someone (read as the gov’t) tried to create soul twins to manipulate us above ground like puppets. If they left it as an analogy, I would be ok with it, but they went with a metaphor – where these puppets are literally somehow moving us around.

Not only that, they procreate apparently as we do, but as shadows – even going so far as to wear our clothes inside out. It’s fucking absurd. What would have been cool would be either just a creepy cult that weren’t doppelgangers, literally but something very close to us, or dropping the cult altogether and making these actual creatures from mythology . . . our shadow selves which is far scarier than what was finally revealed.

I will fight anyone who says that this cult science plays out, at all. It doesn’t, it’s lame and sophomoric (ha ha) from an Academy Award winning filmmaker like Peele. But, if you roll with the fact that really it doesn’t have to make much sense, the film is really fun and thrilling. But, much like with The Village – the reveal left a lot to be desired. At least with that film you could buy that it was possible to put together something like that with enough money and loyal staff.

So, who the hell fed these cult people? Who clothed them? Where did they get those neat scissors? How did they go to the bathroom? Was this the first time this little girl ever danced? What the hell was that all about?

I really dug the one twist at the end that I should have seen coming, but I was too focused on the family’s plight. Will this wow audiences as much as Get Out did? No, not hardly. There was no real “further” fright moment in it. The characters were fantastically written and I am growing into a big fan of Winston Duke since I saw him in Black Panther. He proved in Us that he has some solid range and so far, I love everything he has done.

Let’s talk about tone now, putting Tim Heidecker into this film as comedy relief alongside what’s her face from Mad Men and Handmaid’s Tale felt a bit like how the tone was handled, with a juxtaposition of horror and comedy. But a few times in the movie I heard the audience and myself laughing where I am not so sure we should have been, and I doubt that was the intent of Peele for those scenes.

Finally, I asked one of my Marine buddies from boot camp right after he saw it to discuss this on a podcast. He declined, saying, “I didn’t get it. It was whack. I’ll pass. I really have nothing else to say about it. I simply didn’t get it at all.”

I agree – you didn’t get it, because it made zero sense. Anyone who thinks they can prove otherwise, I will have you on my next podcast!