Underneath that comedy persona, a horror film maestro must have always been lurking. Jordan Peele writes, directs and produces US a film that gets us thinking if we really ‘do’ have a double.
Following the critically acclaimed Get Out, comes a new nightmare full of metaphors and monsters that are actually ‘us’ living beneath the bowls of the earth. Hold that thought….
It’s 1986 and young Adelaide Wilson (Madison Curry) wanders off from her parents from a carnival and into the night. With candy apple in hand, and wearing a Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’ shirt, she comes upon a fun house/hall of mirrors called ‘Visionquest’ that reads ‘find yourself.’ This changes her life forever. It’s here that suspension of disbelief kicks in for the audience asking, “What child at a young age – already set up to be frightened – would wander alone on a dark beach away from her parents and the well-lit amusement park, to a thunder-struck-deserted beach?”
Nevertheless, we fast-forward years later, present day and young Adelaide Wilson has grown into Lupita Nyong’o (Black Panther, 12 Years a Slave.) Adelaide is married to Gabe Wilson (Winston Duke) a sweet albeit goofy dad who loves his motorboat, his fishing trips and his family vacation on the lake. (Think Clark Griswold.)
But when Gabe, Adelaide and their two children, Jason (Evan Alex) and Zora (Shahadi Wright) see a family standing in their driveway, the suspense and mayhem ensue. A guy with a scissors and his family are dressed in Hand Maid’s Tale crimson red…but as jumpsuits instead of handmaiden frocks.
From the onset the film mesmerizes but one wouldn’t say it’s good. Peele’s wild imagination and ideas come into play in an original way, but one isn’t sure it actually works.
It’s only in the second act when the zombie-esque doubles intrude that the jump-in-our-seats action begins. There’s a safety factor to good horror films. They can make you laugh (and chuckle you will… even when you feel it’s inappropriate). They also have plots. And in these plots – babysitter Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween or Jason in Friday the 13th – we watch them from the safety of our theatre seat. Us has those elements. It even has the Wilson son named ‘Jason’ who wanders about life in a mask. And, it has moments like the classic Jaws, where the music rises, we anticipate the shark but then it leisurely swims away. Until the next time. When will it attack? Or in this case, which time will the Wilson family in their locked out car, their forgotten front door key have a Zombie appear to latch on.
There’s ringing truth to Peele’s films, too. If Get Out tackled racism, Us tackles class system. They’re the poor versions of us that live underneath the well-to-do us who’ve made it. They’re the mirror image of ourselves (thus the fun house of mirrors.)
The film opens by highlighting the many tunnels that run under America. Anyone who’s ever visited Newburyport, Massachusetts, knows that during colonial times and in order to escape tariffs from England, tunnels were built to avoid the Boston Harbor. When the tunnels were reopened years later – by the house-buying Yuppies, renovating and expanding their basements – ghosts galore were released.
It is only when Lupita Nyong’o has to face her own demands and return to the fun house – now named Merlin’s Forest ‘find yourself’ – that fate comes full circle.
This is the best bad movie I’ve ever seen with a soundtrack that pierces you. In the end you have a violent R rated film, that doesn’t quite gel to the expectations. Jordan Peele can try to be Wes Craven or John Carpenter…or maybe not. He’s his own thing. But there is something to be said by facing our biggest fears of ‘us’ trying to overtake our own homes, property and families. Look out. Or is it ‘get out!’ 2 ½ tiaras