Us (2019) – Review

The horror genre has seen a revitalization in the last few years thanks to new, young directors creating small but creative horror movies, and one of those directors to really make an impression is Jordan Peele, who debuted with 2017’s Get Out, an immensely smart horror movie with a hidden social commentary and brilliant twist. After seeing Us, Jordan Pele has proven that he’s not a one-hit-wonder, but a director to look out for in the future.

I’ll try to be as vague as possible with the plot because that’s how the trailers were, and it pays to go in as completely blind as you can. Us focuses on a family as they go on vacation to their summer home where they’re interrupted by a strange family that looks just like them, and the family is forced to try and survive. The story is very well done as you get enough meat  to get invested into the family and root for them. It keeps you interested in what exactly is going on and why there are these strange people that look exactly like the ones we’re cheering for. There’s a lot of depth and questions left unresolved, but with the pieces scattered throughout the film, this encourages second and third viewings. There’s a couple of twists that happen in the end that pull the rug out from under you, and Jordan Peele does an excellent job of misdirecting the viewer, but I have a couple of nitpicks that I won’t go into detail about because of spoilers, but it’s just little things that don’t make complete sense, and thus, at times you find yourself asking, “Why don’t they just do *blank*?” Other than that, I was hooked from start to finish.

Jordan Peele did a superb job writing and directing Us, and though it doesn’t appear to me to have a deeper social commentary like Get Out, it is more of a straight horror movie and deals with some excellent themes, as it looks at individuality, freedom of expression and how sometimes the thing you fear most is yourself, and there’s a Bible passage mentioned multiple times that I highly recommend looking up after you watch the movie. Peele uses music to a perfection in this movie; it builds tension extremely well and goes along with the action in the movie. Keep your eye out for the scene with the burning car and the final climactic fight for the best examples, but I want to rewatch it again to find more. Speaking of tension, there’s a lot of it, and it builds quickly and fiercely inside you, which is how Us scares you the best. There’s never an over-reliance on jump scares, and in fact there’s only a couple, and they’re used smartly so that they actually scare you and not just startle you. The tension builds and you’re filled with dread as there’s this feeling that the characters are being watched or that they haven’t quite escaped danger, and you don’t know when it’ll come again. This is also in part due to the beautiful cinematography that makes great use of foreground, middle ground and background, having you constantly searching and thinking that you may or may not have seen something. These shots also provide some excellent visual storytelling that I managed to catch on my first view, but bet there’s more I can catch in repeated watches. Jordan Peele knocks it out of the park here and it’s safe to saying his directing has improved since Get Out.

The performances are excellent all across the board, with the main family consisting of Gabe (Winston Duke), Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph), and Jason, (Evan Alex), but the stand out is Lupita Nyong’o as Adelaide for her performance was truly chilling.  Their screen chemistry really helps you buy the fact that they’re a family, and Winston Duke offers some of the biggest laughs in the movie, and plays as more of a comedic relief to help let off some of the tension, so as not to make us go completely insane. As I mentioned before, Lupita Nyong’o is a stand out and is unbelievable in the movie, and there are scenes where she goes through so many emotions at once; the physicality she brings to the role is simply amazing. It’s one of those performances that should be looked at come award season, but will get looked over like Toni Colette in Hereditary. The most impressive part about these performances is that they all play their strange lookalikes, and they all bring this new level of creepy. Each viewer will be uncomfortable with someone different, and it just shows what scares you more. Evan Alex creeped me out the most but they are all terrifying in their own way.

Us was a phenomenal second movie by Jordan Peele, who has a smart mind for horror and how to capture it, and with this entry he tackles great themes, and the performances are all top notch, especially Lupita Nyong’o. This film definitely encourages multiple rewatches to pick up on all the symbolism and deeper storytelling, I’m still not sure which one I like more — Get Out or Us — so I will be seeing this again soon — and this makes Jordan Peele a director to look out for in the future.

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