[rating=10.00]
There hasn’t been a sophomore film this anticipated for a good, long while. Jordan Peele, already firmly established as a comedic genius with his sketch comedy series, Key and Peele, shocked the world in 2017 with Get Out, a film that displayed his mastery of horror as well. His terrifying meditation on race was a rare horror film with universal acclaim that went on to be nominated for four Academy Awards (including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor) and made history with Peele’s win for Best Original Screenplay, marking the first time an African-American has won that prestigious award. Get Out was a transcendent horror-cinema experience that will, no doubt, be talked about and studied for decades to come.
Us might be even better.
I say might be because Us feels very specifically like the kind of film that needs multiple viewings and offers countless interpretations. It’s not a film that can be digested in a single viewing or without series examination. It is bold, beautiful, astonishing, and mesmerizing in all the ways Get Out was but with a surety of style and technique that will leave no doubt of Peele’s craft mastery. Once more, he has hidden philosophical musings deep inside the skin of horror and created a work that will transcend genres and audiences and earn its place in the annals of film history.
The meat of those musings, however, defies a single watch. Us is a film that demands revisitation and reconsideration almost moment to moment. Parsing through the subtextual layers of Peele’s designs in a single watch would be futile and unfair to the work itself. Peele’s cleverness as a filmmaker and screenwriter is a force to behold, and even while deeper meanings and themes will require multiple viewings he manages to create a work of singular philosophical weight while never forgetting that first and most important rule of cinema: Keep ‘em entertained.
The film follows the Wilson family—mother, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), father, Gabe (Winston Duke), and children Zora and Jason (Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex)—as they go to their summer home near Santa Cruz. There, they meet with friends Josh and Kitty Tyler (Tim Heidecker and Elizabeth Moss) and settle in to enjoy some well-deserved rest and relaxation with board games, beaches, and boats. Their serene family trip is interrupted when the family is beset by a gang of crazed doppelgängers intent on murdering their peaceful lookalikes.
Inspired in part by the Twilight Zone episode “Mirror Image,” Peele (who is set to return to TV next month with a reboot of the famed anthology series) has created a terrifying work of art that sets new standards for popular horror. As a filmmaker and story teller, he plays with the concepts of light and dark, good and evil, and muses upon that most horrific of enemies, ourselves. It’s difficult not to look at Us in a Jungian light, with the Wilsons forced to confront their literal shadows and face their deepest fears.
His script balances this concept beautifully, keeping the audience steadily unbalanced as it unravels a mystery that gets crazier the longer it continues. His narrative necessarily demands much from his performers, with the cast members pulling double duty as their characters and their shadows, but they all rise to heights of Peele’s vision. Nyong’o, especially, is incendiary as both Adelaide and her doppelgänger, Red. The nuances of their connection to each other are portrayed in subtly brilliant ways by the Oscar winner who feels like an early shoe in for consideration next year.
Perhaps most impressive for all involved is the trust they put into the audience. There’s a clear mythology fueling the horror on screen, though Peele and his actors reveal precious little of it—only what we need to understand the story at hand. The suggestion of world building brings Us to even higher levels, leaving to implication what other, perhaps lesser, filmmakers would have been tempted to explore in more detail.
That restraint on Peele’s part is just another notch for his mastery. He’s a story teller that knows what he wants to say and stays remarkably on target. The scope of his vision may be broad but his genius lies in allowing the story to come first, and the balance between his implication and his narrative largely fills in the gaps.
Us is a masterful work by a masterful filmmaker. It’s art that masquerades as popular entertainment, proving that popular entertainment need not kowtow to the lowest common denominator to be effective. His craft and commitment has allowed for a terrifying stunner of a film that forces us to think, react, consider, and conclude all while telling a fantastically engrossing tale. It will, no doubt, be among 2019’s best.
Us is now playing in theaters everywhere.
