Us is the highly anticipated second film from comedian-turned-horror film director Jordan Peele. Peele gained internet fame on the hit Comedy Central show Key and Peele. While his co-star on that show has stuck to acting and comedy, Peele has broken out as an acclaimed director.
First writing and directing the Oscar-winning 2016 smash hit Get Out, now he is onto Us and its announced and promoted he will direct the newly rebooted Twilight Zone series.
Us certainly shows he is not only a horror director, but quite a skillful one too. Us is an instant horror classic—a bloody, well-directed allegorical horror.
Plot-wise, the movie follows a family going on a relaxing vacation to Bear Lake, Calif. This vacation is cut short rather abruptly when a family that looks just like them shows up in their driveway.
When these doppelgängers show up, the family must fight for their lives against their “tethered” versions as these sewer people—identical in every way to their land dwellers—seek to wreak havoc on life above.
What is perhaps most delightful about the film is the common brush strokes seen across Get Out and Us. Peele shows the audience that he is already a director with a particular well-done style, while some directors don’t settle on their own unique style until their third or fourth film.
Peele, two movies into his career, is well advanced as an auteurist filmmaker. The Peele shot is already a thing; the shot is a Black man or woman staring into the camera on a mid-telephoto lens with a single tear rolling down their face.
Move over, Spielberg dolly-zoom—there’s a new best signature shot in town. Sunset Boulevard is raging over it—Peele is the new hot thing.
However, he’s not the only star flying high off this film. Lupita Nyong’o is excellent in this movie as Adelaide, the mother in the Wilson family.
While it’s easy to compare this film to Get Out, they are very different. My initial knee jerk reaction leaving the cinema was that Us was the inferior film.
However, upon re-examination, they are very different movies and it is unfair to compare them. Get Out is a much more socio-psychological horror film than Us.
While there is certainly this dimension of horror in Us, it is more of a classical horror. Fans of the genre will be more familiar with the plot and iconography of this film.
This is not a slight to the film at all—it is a well-executed genre film new enough to be a highly interesting ride.
Get Out was funny, but Us raises the stakes in that sense as well. The film has a unique sense of humour exemplified with “Good Vibrations” by The Beach Boys playing over a family being brutally murdered with knitting scissors. One character says “Ophelia, call the police,” and Siri responds, “Okay, playing ‘Fuck The Police’ by NWA.”
Classical horror fans will see parallels to The Shining. Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 landmark classic is beloved by Peele. There are direct shot-for-shot cribs in Us and similarity in the finale.
The one thing that detracts from the film is the straightforwardness with which certain events are explained.
A large expositional dump and a flashback eliminate a lot of ambiguity from the film which is disappointing.
This scenario feels like studio interference in the rewrite and saying, “oh the film has to be explained, audiences can’t understand that.”
That being said, Us is an excellent horror-slasher film and it is exciting to see what Peele does next in his career.
