Us

Jordan Peele's Us (the follow up to 2017's Get Out) is one of those movies where critics need to tread carefully.  It's the kind of film where the less you know about it walking in, the better.  And so, the job of the critic becomes to convey their thoughts, while revealing as little as possible.  It's a tricky balance, and I really want to accomplish it, because what Peele has done here is create a nerve-wracking thriller that is constantly gripping, even if some of the answers it provides to its own mysteries don't make complete sense.

This is a film with a lot on its mind, and even more on its plate.  And even if the screenplay doesn't nail all the landings, the ride getting there is a lot of fun.  In only his second time as a filmmaker, Peele shows a masterful skill at creating mood and an uneasy air that creates a mounting sense of tension.  The best comparison is M Night Shyamalan, and how in his better efforts he is able to draw the audience in with silence and minimal dialogue.  Watching Us, you're constantly glancing about the screen for clues that it provides about where the mystery is going.  You also find yourself hanging on every word.  Not only this, but the movie shows a masterful skill at using music to create a mood, both with hit songs from the 90s, and the unsettling and odd music score by Michael Abels.  Even if there are moments where the plot doesn't seem to be on the most stable of ground, you're still engaged, because of the atmosphere and mood that Peele creates.

The story kicks off with an incredibly creepy prologue set around a Santa Cruz amusement park in 1986, where the less said about it, the better.  All I will say is that it's a wonderful set up to the film's overall mystery.  After this, it cuts to the present day, where we see a family of four driving to a vacation home near that same amusement park from the opening.  The family includes the father Gabe (Winston Duke, providing some great comic relief throughout the film when necessary) and the mother Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o, who has never been better, and gives the first standout performance of 2019), as well as their two children, teenage daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and youngest son Jason (Evan Alex).  We spend about a half hour or so with the family, showing their bond and a strong sense of humor in the screenplay.  However, the movie never lets us forget its unsettling opening scene, and how the family is involved, even if most of them don't realize it yet.

At night, after the family has spent the day at the beach with some friends, there is a power outage in the vacation home, and the family discovers that there are four shadowy figures standing mute at the end of the driveway leading to the house.  Gabe tries to be intimidating and scare them away, while Adelaide seems more nervous.  At first, the strangers do not seem to respond to anything, but the situation quickly escalates, and before long the visitors are trying to storm their way into the house.  This leads to one of the creepiest home invasion sequences I have seen in a movie in a long time, especially how it expertly draws us into the mood that Peele is going for with this film.  We eventually learn that the four invaders resemble each individual family member, only they act and talk in a much more primitive and almost animal-like manner.  How this is possible, I will leave you to discover, but the performances here (each actor playing a family member also plays their twisted doppelganger) are fantastic as these people are forced to face these bizarre attackers.

As the layers of the plot are slowly revealed, we discover that Us is not just an effective twist on the home invasion thriller, where the person trying to break into your home is literally yourself.  As mentioned previously, this is a movie with a lot on its mind, and it delights in leading us down the various paths and ideas that it wants to take us.  With such strong performances and an eerie atmosphere unmatched by a lot of recent horror films, we're more than happy to go along.  Over time, the scope of the film grows much bigger, and this is where the film starts to lose a little bit of its effectiveness, because it seems to be taking on too much.  The film is at its best when it is tackling a simple idea, and while it is still thrilling throughout, I did find myself kind of missing the intimacy that the first half of the film had.  Again, I don't really want to go much further than that in explaining, as the audience deserves to know as little as possible.

Some of the answers Peele gives us to his mysteries left me scratching my head.  It's not enough to make me write off the film, but it does give a few moments a slightly sour aftertaste.  But, that's mostly because what came before was so wonderful, I wanted this to be the rare movie that perfectly nails every solution and every revelation.  I wanted to fully embrace everything about it.  Even if things don't work out perfectly, this is still something to get excited about.  The superb performances, unsettling atmosphere, camerawork, and music score all create an original experience, one that I don't think I have had before at the movies.  Much like in Get Out, the film is making a statement here, and it does so with a strong sense of tension and even some biting satire and dark humor.

In some ways, I think I liked this more than Get Out, as I really got into its weird and unsettling vibe.  Regardless, even if the movie doesn't perfectly pull it off, it should not be ignored, as it's one of the more engrossing Hollywood thrillers we've had recently.  Us might leave you with more questions than answers, but it will undoubtedly leave you glued to your seat for its entire run time.

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