Us (2019) - Review

I’m one of the few people in the world who didn’t love Jordan Peele’s horror and directorial debut: Get Out. It was a perfectly fine movie that was well-crafted, well-directed, well-acted, and well-produced. The entire world seemed to be infatuated with it and it even got some academy awards, much to my surprise. Don’t get me wrong, I think Get Out is a good movie, but it never quite clicked with me the same way it seemed to for others. All that being said, Jordan Peele returns with another horror film, Us, which has been thoroughly praised, though, not quite to the highest of heavens as its predecessor.

Pros

• Doppelgangers are creepy and weird in a good way when you first see them

• Good acting from the whole cast, each of whom having to play two different characters

• Humor segments in the film work rather well

• Music is utilized well

• Particular moments are striking in an artistic and experimental way

Cons

• Plot does not make sense

• Final twist doesn’t matter or make sense

• Loses a lot of steam by the end and the doubles are far less intimidating or interesting

• Making Lupita Nyong’o talk while inhaling is not creepy, it’s just difficult to understand

• Most of the plot’s big moments depend on smarter characters doing stupid things or being completely oblivious for no real reason

• Impending doppelganger threat occurs too early and tension is wasted as a result

Plot & Thoughts

Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o) and her husband Gabe Wilson (Winston Duke) have just bought a vacation home in the Santa Cruz mountains and are taking a vacation with their kids: Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex). Adelaide has some apprehension about Santa Cruz though, due to a somewhat mysterious and traumatic experience that still haunts her from when she was at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk with her parents decades ago. She can’t seem to remember the details, other than getting stuck in a maze and running into someone who looked exactly like her. After a relatively short amount of time introducing us to Adelaide and her family, as well as their friends, Adelaide’s fears about her doppelganger are realized, when people who look like her and everyone else in her family arrive at their front door in red jump-suits and carrying some heavy-duty scissors. It turns out Adelaide was not the only one with a counterpart, but apparently everyone else in the world.

The family is quickly taken hostage by their psychopathic doubles and violence ensues. This leads to horrific murders being performed by these mysterious doppelgangers across the nation. By the end, the movie attempts to explain an inexplicable plot about how these people came to be and why they’re going on a murdering spree, killing those who look like them. I don’t think it makes sense at all and the more of the plot you ignore, the more likely you’ll enjoy Us.

The acting is good, with some genuinely creepy performances by the main cast as the crazy others. The music is utilized to both dramatic and comedic effect well. The direction is perfectly fine with some striking moments that resemble something out of a Dario Argento horror movie. It’s certainly intriguing in its mystery and in how it seems to go in a different direction than you might expect, considering the fact that it doesn’t take long for the horror to emerge, unlike Get Out which takes a lot longer to get going.

The biggest problem I have with Us is the plot. Get Out’s plot functioned so long as you could suspend your your disbelief in regards to the use of hypnosis or the concept of body swapping. Both of these concepts are common in science-fiction stories that are stripped right out of the old horror movies of the 1940’s. Us asks for you to suspend your disbelief a lot more about the whole concept of the doppelgangers and provides a poor explanation as to why they exist and what their goals are. I would have bought a parallel universe premise—or nothing at all—over what Us actually provides as an explanation.

I’m not sure what the creative process was for coming up with the story, but I get the impression that this was a movie built on a single concept: “Wouldn’t it be creepy if people who looked like you, but acted weird, came to your home and tried to kill you?” The answer to that question, of course, is “yes,” and has been proven multiple times in the Invasion of the Body Snatcher movies already. Us squanders this premise and presents the crazy counterparts much earlier in the film than you would expect. This wouldn’t be a problem, if they stayed in the shadows more and seemed more crafty and clever than they are. Instead, they just seem like schizophrenic morons and lose their creepiness pretty quickly.

It also doesn’t help that the only doppelganger who ends up talking speaks in a way that is neither creepy nor discernible. I know the intention was to make the murderous version of Adelaide that much more intimidating, but I struggled to understand what she was saying more than experiencing any sense of danger from her. It was distracting and did nothing to make the whole scenario any more frightening.

TL;DR (Conclusion)

I can see why Us was not as well-received. Unlike Get Out, which was so well-crafted that it didn’t leave many unforgivable loopholes in its plot or characters, Us left me scratching my head in a lot of spots and shaking my head in others. Unfortunately for Jordan Peele, the overwhelming success of his first movie as a director means that everything he does afterwards will be compared to it for the rest of his career—much like M. Night Shyamalan and The 6th Sense. Maybe he’ll get lucky and continue to make movies that everyone (except for me) loves. Or maybe Us is the early warning sign of a steady decline in quality to come.