Us
Starring Lupita N’Yongo, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, and Elisabeth Moss
Directed by Jordan Peele
Reviewed by Michael Dalton
[rating: 3/5]
To an audience at the South by Southwest film festival regarding his new horror film Us, director Jordan Peele had this to say, “On the broader strokes of things, this movie is about this country. And when I decided to write this movie, I was stricken with the fact that we are in a time when we fear the other, whether it is the mysterious invader that we think is going to come and kill us, take our jobs, or the faction that we don’t live near that voted a different way than us. We’re all about pointing the finger. And I wanted to suggest that maybe the monster we really need to look at has our face.” Indeed. Perhaps before the lights went down in cinemas across the world, Mr. Peele himself couldn’t have provided a social service announcement saying as much instead of feeling the need to overexplain the far-reaching solution to his bloody tale of clones and tethering. Fear not. Mentioning clones is by no means a spoiler at this point. The trailer for Us, featuring star Lupita N’yongo’s eyes bugging out in horrified disbelief, has long since gone viral and the poster art of hands grasping gold scissors has a malevolent appeal. The way was paved for a helluva night at the pics and it makes good on its promise. But, what Us will do (say the title as initials and what do you get?) is send you out of the cinema debating how effective, or indeed necessary, Peele’s answer to it all is.
So, it all begins in 1986 with a young girl called Adelaide (Madison Curry) at a seaside fair in Santa Cruz with her parents. She wanders off and finds a hall of mirrors that bears the sign “Find Yourself”. Inside she sees her reflection naturally enough but the reflection doesn’t mirror her movements. It’s her doppelganger and the encounter leaves her traumatised. Many years later an apprehensive Adelaide (N-yongo), her wisecracking husband Gabe (Winston Duke), her phone-obsessed daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph), and her horror mask-obsessed son Jason (Evan Alex) are heading to their beach house in Santa Cruz. On the beach they meet up with their bland friends Josh and surgically enhanced Kitty Tyler, Jason wanders off and sees a ghoulish figure with outstretched arms and blood dripping from his fingers, and an oversized flock of seagulls suddenly appear agitated. Peele doesn’t need the cover of darkness to creep you out. Portents of doom are his specialty.
Later that night, a family of four in red jumpsuits appears in their driveway and after Gabe tries to drive them away, they break in. As it happens, these four are the family’s absolute doubles and the visit is a hostile one and worse still, identical attacks are happening right across the country. Only Adelaide’s other speaks, in a weird garbled speech pattern, while Gabe’s other huffs and heaves like a bear, Zora’s other has a smile you won’t forget in a hurry, and Jason’s other, with burn scars, scuttles about on all fours and also favours a mask; his however is like the one worn by Dr. Genessier’s similarly damaged daughter in Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (uh huh). At the screening I attended, it almost bought the house down when Adelaide asked her other who she and her cohorts are. “We’re Americans” she snarls. I doubt there’ll be a more terrifying announcement in cinemas this year.
Beautifully scored and filmed (the colouring is stunning), it’s technically a cut above. Everybody has been praising N’yongo’s work and she’s undeniably effective but watch Joseph closely. Beautiful, saucer-eyed, and just self-satisfied enough, her thundering indifference to her little brother’s immaturity is so on point you can only giggle but when she gets proactive, god help those pesky interlopers. Yet, as act three takes hold, something nags at the’s story’s eerie foundations. It’s near impossible to discuss the core of the film without divulging spoilers (Peele was directly inspired by one of the creepiest Twilight Zone episodes, Mirror Image, which starred Vera Miles) but finally those spoilers are, in essence, just that. After opening the movie with the 1986 commercial for Hands Across America, a fund-raising movement to stop hunger that hoped to inspire a human chain right across the country, and then littering the film with clues, Peele sets it up for one of the scariest haunted house rides of all time. But then comes that damn explanation. Most horror films these days leave you wanting more. Us leaves you wanting less.
