*I don't get why the fact that it's a comedy as much
as anything else is seemingly getting wiped from the record. Respectable movies
can be funny.
The trailers for Us are
pretty-straightforward when it comes to the story. As a child, Adelaide (Lupita
Nyong'o) has a traumatic experience on the Santa Cruz pier. Years later, she
returns there with her family. The first night in their summer home, they are
visited by a doppelgänger family, dressed in red, carrying scissors, who look
just like them except creepier. That's as far as the trailers go, so that's
where I should stop as well. Needless to say, this doppelgänger family hasn't
come to borrow some sugar.
Us is straight horror
this time. The laughs come only out of necessity to ease the tension. Where Get
Out clearly came from a comedic mind trying to move into another genre,
there's little direct evidence of Peele's comedic background in Us. And
that's probably for the best. 'Horror comedy' is a tightrope with no margin for
error. Pulling that off twice would be like hitting back to back grand slams:
feasible, but no one needs that kind of pressure. I imagine Peele also didn't
want falling back on comedy to be his crutch. He needed to make a movie like Us
to grow as a filmmaker.
I'm not sure there's a filmmaker out there who
understands the iconography of horror better than Jordan Peele. Get Out
had the sunken place and the stirring of the tea cup. Us doubles down on
the visuals. He makes bunnies scarier than anyone has since John B. Watson.
If people dressed in red, holding scissors isn't a top costume for Halloween
this year, I'll be stunned. The film is packed with striking images. Peele has
an amazing eye for that. While Us isn't a comedy, I think it takes a
comic's mind to make the film. Peele breaks down horror with a comic's eye. He
does the same thing someone looking to parody the horror genre would do.
Except, instead of pointing the conventions out to undercut them and mine them for laughs, he uses that
understanding to create efficiently creepy images. It doesn't even matter if
they don't make a lot of sense.
Because, Us is not an easy movie to
understand. I'm sure all the bunnies and Hands Across America stuff have clever
deeper meanings that Jordan Peele could explain for hours. That doesn't mean
the movie makes much sense in the moment. There's a lot about this movie that
is driven by the idea "this would be scary". Why the red suits? Why
the scissors? Why doesn't the doppelgänger Lupita Nyong'o talk like that? In
most cases, the simple answer is "because it's scarier that way".
Unlike Get Out, Us is not a movie I'm going to think about weeks
later. It's more like La La Land: full of color and captivating in the moment,
but as soon as it's over, I have trouble remembering why I was so caught up in
it at the time.
Lupita Nyong'o is an Oscar winner. This is
bafflingly, her first major leading role despite 12 Years a Slave being
six years ago. She is, to no one's surprise, great in both her roles. She's
natural and believable as Adelaide and creepy and unnatural as her doppelgänger. She barely even registers as the same actress in the two roles.
She makes the movie work as much as anything Jordan Peele does as
writer/director/producer. The rest of the family (Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright
Joseph, Evan Alex) are fine. They have their moments and look like they're
having a lot of fun as the doppelgängers. Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker are
underutilized (OK, maybe just Moss). Or maybe they aren't needed at all. Still,
I'll never turn down an opportunity to have more Elisabeth Moss in my life.
Us is far from perfect.
The story is a little wacky. It has a lower pop culture permeation factor than Get
Out. Still, Peele is even more in control of the tone. The photography is
gorgeous and haunting. The performances are calibrated just right. I'm
convinced that, while Get Out was a best case scenario, it certainly
wasn't a fluke.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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