Us

Grade: B+

I try to use the phrase sparingly, but sometimes, in my movie reviews, I say that a director doesn’t work with a cookie cutter. Jordan Peele (Get Out) works with a cookie cutter, but has made his own design. He has taken what has worked for numerous legendary directors before him, and come up with his own satisfying concoction. I liked Get Out. I like his new movie, Us, even better. Like his previous work, some may take it at face value and see it as merely a thriller, and it works perfectly fine as just that. But we know by now that with him, there’s always more to it. There’s a thoughtful socio-political allegory bubbling beneath the surface.

Us begins in 1986 in an amusement park along the Santa Cruz boardwalk. A young girl separates from her family and wanders into a hall of mirrors to see a young girl who looks exactly like her. Cut to a time period specified only as “present,” where the girl is grown up with a family of her own, and played by Lupita Nyong’o. The family is vacationing…guess where? In the area of Santa Cruz. The horror begins when they discover a family standing in the driveway of the house they’re staying in. It is the dead of night, and a lone streetlight is backlighting this “family” in the driveway, standing perfectly still, holding hands. They are doppelgangers of each individual family member. They all wear matching burgundy outfits, and wield sewing scissors. Most of them don’t speak, but Nyong’o’s clone (also played by Nyong’o, and each actor pulls double duty as their “shadow”) has an eerie cadence that sounds like she’s inhaling whenever she talks. To oversimplify it, they are the lesser privileged counterparts.

Us will resonate in different ways for different people. In 2008, Joel Schumacher had a wonderful thriller that I loved called Lakeview Terrace. Roger Ebert spent half his 4-star review talking about its deeper meaning. I can understand all that, but I just appreciated it for the really good movie that it was. Like I said, people will get Us on varying levels. It did falter in a few places that I want to note. Consider a scene where characters ask a cylindrical device in their house called “Ophelia” to play music. Evidently they couldn’t get permission to use you-know-who’s name. That’s fine, but why, after significant things have happened in that house, and other characters enter, does nobody ask Ophelia to stop? Seems to me like it would take away a big distraction and help these characters with the task at hand. Also, why wouldn’t the amusement park employees turn off the skybucket ride in the off-season? Unless, of course, they left it running because this is a movie and it makes for a more ominous atmosphere to see and hear those completely deserted gondolas passing above you all the time. These played more like movie conventions than anything else, and Peele, who is usually smarter than this, could have easily eschewed them.

I don’t know that the twist revealed at the end holds water. It seems to negate much of what came before. But I am likely wrong on this, and just need to read up on it, and let the movie sit with me. And for all its quirks, this is an absorbing, skillfully made film that will get your senses humming. Peele is the real deal.

Grade: B+