Us
Directed by: Jordan Peele
Written by: Jordan Peele
Starring: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop, Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon, Madison Curry
Horror/Thriller - 116 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 21 Mar 2019
Written by: Jordan Peele
Starring: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop, Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon, Madison Curry
Horror/Thriller - 116 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 21 Mar 2019
Jordan Peele learned a lot from his first trip through feature film land with Get Out. It made him a pile of cash. He won a metric ton of awards, including an Oscar. The experience, specifically audience reactions across the land, taught Peele he knows how to move us. I still remember the Get Out screening. A couple hundred of us “oohed and aahed,” but more importantly, we simultaneously yelled out, shook, howled, and exclaimed, “Ah, hell no!” This is not routine - one film perhaps every other year will prod audiences to work together to process a shared experience like that. With Us, Peele is up to his old tricks - the audience reacted, viscerally at times, but it was less than. This will not be a compare/contrast of why and how Us is less awesome, shocking, and gut-pounding than Get Out - the film merits its own study.
Us opens with written facts and a warning about tunnels. Beneath our feet, there are abandoned tunnels whose purposes are long forgotten and are just sitting there - nobody knows what they look like anymore nor what, if anything, is going on inside of them. M. Night Shyalaman’s Unbreakable started off in a similar fashion with its warning about comic books. The film takes a long time to wind its way toward tunnels, even though the trailer shows a bunch of them. Warning, try not to watch the trailer. I am shocked how much it gives away. You may forget about tunnels after awhile, because the film’s first half appears to be a standard slasher fest centered around a summer vacation home - the bad guys are outside and they terrorize a family as they try and come inside.
Us opens with written facts and a warning about tunnels. Beneath our feet, there are abandoned tunnels whose purposes are long forgotten and are just sitting there - nobody knows what they look like anymore nor what, if anything, is going on inside of them. M. Night Shyalaman’s Unbreakable started off in a similar fashion with its warning about comic books. The film takes a long time to wind its way toward tunnels, even though the trailer shows a bunch of them. Warning, try not to watch the trailer. I am shocked how much it gives away. You may forget about tunnels after awhile, because the film’s first half appears to be a standard slasher fest centered around a summer vacation home - the bad guys are outside and they terrorize a family as they try and come inside.
Adelaide and Gabe Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke) appear well off as they drive with their two kids to their summer home. Gabe plays the Jordan Peele role - he’s a bit of a nerd with glasses habitually sliding down his nose and he is over-excited about a third tier boat rental which is more likely to sink than facilitate good times. Adelaide is more alert; on edge is a more apt term. At the beach, she panics when she loses line of sight on her son for a moment. Adelaide had a life-altering experience at this beach as a child, but cannot quite put her finger on what it was that happened to her and why she is so afraid that she cannot put the fear into words for Gabe to understand.
Adelaide’s fears manifest that night when a family appears in the dark on their driveway. Peele takes his sweet time getting to this marker so the audience is more than primed for the bloodshed to come. While there are blood and guts galore to coat the floors and walls, what propels us and will make sure the movie sticks with you for a few months to come is 1) Lupita Nyong’o’s staggering performance, one surely to generate a bow wave of Best Actress calls all the way into next year and 2) Peele’s penchant for cheeky mise-en-scène, climaxing early with a scene of the kids creeping through a house set to N.W.A.’s “Fuck the Police”. These are the two main reasons Us keeps its head above water, even though the nebulous plot and gaping plot holes start to capsize the ship.
Nyong’o, already an Oscar-winner from 12 Years A Slave, plays two characters in the same film. They are worlds apart - different voices, movement, and expressions. She is so effective at both of them, it is hard to believe we are looking at the same actress staring at herself in the same room. Winston Duke, the kids, and even Elisabeth Moss do the best they can, but Nyong’o diminishes their screen presence to hardly a ripple. On top of the acting, Peele, both writing and directing, incorporates music to such a fine-tuned and thoroughly integrated degree, it elevates the mundane toward the sublime. A boring car trip meant to set up family dynamics and personalities involves us with Luniz’s “I Got 5 On It” whose catchy melody returns later on in an orchestral version during a pivotal moment. The scene with N.W.A. backing a particularly violent spree in the film may be taught later in film schools on how to tackle well-worn suspense scenes and turn them on their ear.
Peele takes on gargantuan, existential ideas his screenplay is not fully up to the task to confront. It’s the details. Suspend disbelief, you’ve already agreed to go to a horror film so setting aside plausibility is a given, but scratch more than the surface of what Peele says about tunnels and the twist on how this world came to be, and something doesn’t add up. He confronts themes of shadows and mirrors, but the rules of being a shadow only apply when the plot needs them to; otherwise, the shadows may do what they please. Us also employs an ending meant to divide the audience - some will applaud, some will hate it, and some pretentious few will claim to understand the entire arc. Those people are lying. Peele doesn't care about the split; he wants the discussion and the tweets. It is admirable to witness a director try something new and attack ideas which seem too large for a small film, but if not for Nyongo’s performance and Peele's unique mechanics, Us would lose its way. Yet, it breaks just enough rules to escape its genre's limitations and deserves more study - but I’m pretty sure some pieces are missing.
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