Us

I’ve been waiting for this.  Us is director Jordan Peele’s followup to his much-lauded debut, Get Out.  It nabbed the filmmaker an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.  My expectations were high simply because it was this reviewer’s 4th favorite picture of 2017.  It’s hard not to make comparisons as Us is another work in the horror genre that incorporates both creepy and funny elements.  For example, the 1986 charity benefit “Hands Across America” is woven into the narrative as an illustration of both.  But Us has such a different agenda.  It’s something else altogether.  I’ll cut the suspense.  This is not as coherent as his first feature.  Yet there’s still so much to recommend.  At worst, it’s proof that Get Out was not a fluke.  Jordan Peele is an imaginative talent with a vision.  The screenplay extracts fear out of our safe space.  Us is a highly entertaining thriller meticulously built upon a foundation of unrelenting tension.

The movie concerns the well-to-do Wilson family.  There’s mom Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) and her husband Gabe (Winston Duke) along with their two children, teenaged daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and younger son Jason (Evan Alex).  The clan is on vacation and they’ve gone to Santa Cruz beach.  While the group is hanging out with the Tylers, Kitty (Elisabeth Moss) and Josh (Tim Heidecker), young Jason wanders off.  He encounters an incongruous stranger dripping with blood right there on the sand.  At that same moment, Adelaide notices Jason is missing.  She panics running down the beach snapping up her little boy before anything grave has happened.  However, she’s freaked out.  Time for everyone to return back to the house.  That night, they will be visited by a family that looks unnervingly like their own.

Every exceptional horror film is elevated by at least one galvanizing performance and Lupita Nyong’o is the star of this show.  For the first time in her career, a story revolves around the actress.  She is more than up to the task.  The opening vignette is a flashback to 1986 when Adelaide was a little girl (Madison Curry).  Back then, she too had a negative experience at that very same beach.  It was here that she entered an old funhouse with a hall of mirrors and confronted another girl that looked exactly like herself.  Adelaide was reunited with her parents but is so traumatized by the experience she was unable to speak.  This unresolved childhood trauma informs their present-day dread when they are visited by what appears to be duplicates of themselves.  Nyong’o gives two markedly distinctive portrayals.  Her human copy speaks in a deep guttural croak of a voice.  The unnerving low pitch only serves to emphasize how her evil twin has become her own worst enemy.  Director Jordan Peele is a self-proclaimed black nerd, or “blerd” and it’s hard not to see the auteur’s presence in the father.  Winston Duke was the powerful and virile warrior leader M’Baku in Black Panther.  Here he is a doughy, goofy dad with large spectacles proud of his newly purchased dilapidated speedboat. He’s prone to corny dad witticisms too. When out in the wilderness, daughter whines “There’s no Internet!” He happily chirps back, “You have the outernet!”

At its basic essence, Us is a home invasion thriller.  Then, in the final stretch, seemingly descends suddenly into a disorganized hodgepodge of allegorical plot ideas.  Let’s throw race, class, and nationality as topics for consideration.  Without context, I’ll simply add that “We’re Americans” is perhaps the most memorable utterance in the entire picture.  Wait, so is that title Us or is it the abbreviation U.S.? I’m not here to spoil the deeper themes.  Just want to acknowledge the assortment of concepts swirling around this chronicle.  This is sure to inspire a boatload of think piece articles that pontificate about things like existentialism.  I didn’t warm up to all of that.  Us works best if you don’t try to pick it apart too much, although repeat viewings will undoubtedly uncover more clues to bait that desire to delineate a singular point.

Great cinema isn’t just about WHAT you say but HOW you say it.  Horror movies are rarely this evocative.  It’s unbearably stressful but wisely uses unexpected dashes of humor to alleviate anxiety. Michael Abels’ score is frightfully good at extracting tension.  The cinematography by Mike Gioulakis artfully captures the action.  This production looks fantastic.  He appreciates faces, lovingly highlighting the visages of its stars in closeup so we the audience feel emotionally connected in their plight.  What’s interesting is despite the fact that each doppelgänger is portrayed by the same actor, they appear slightly different in some imperceptible way.  Call it makeup, lighting, or perhaps skillful acting.  Whatever the reason, it’s an unsettling effect.  Ok, so I’ll concede that their clothes are a dead giveaway.  They all wear red jumpsuits, sport sandals, and one fingerless driving glove.  Scissors are their weapon of choice.  Curiously, not a single gun is fired in this film.  The heightened visual presentation makes these villains iconic.  Does anyone want to guess what the hot Halloween costume will be this year?

03-21-19