Seeing Double

Rating: 8/10 (22 January 2020)

The movie Us is a horror film directed by Jordan Peele, the same man who directed the infamous Get Out. The film is set in Santa Cruz with Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong'o) and her family taking a getaway vacation to their summer home. That same night, a group of "doppelgängers" show up at the family's house, trying to take their lives. This film really is the definition of a horror movie with jump scares and gruesome characters but the thing that is most impressive about the movie is how it makes you think when and after watching it.
The opening scene shows us Adelaide as a child going to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk with her mom and dad. She wanders off towards the beach and finds a "vision quest" room that seems to be empty. In the room she finds a girl that looks just like her and runs out of the room to find her parents. This scene creates a sense of uneasy emotions with the audience. It was a quick glimpse at what the rest of the film would be set around and this sequence was a great opener.
The movie continues and Adelaide is married with 2 kids. They are at their summer home in Santa Cruz when during the night, another family of 4 is standing in their driveway. Adelaide and her family are captured only to realize the people doing this are their "doppelgängers". They escape though, which starts a chain of running and fighting scenes for about an hour of the movie. These scenes use different camera angles and a lot of different lighting to convey a certain type of feeling. For example, when the doppelgänger family captures Adelaide, the director chose to use under lighting on Red (Adelaide's doppelgänger) to give her a sinister and evil look. Another thing that adds to the film is the sounds. The film uses sounds to emphasize the moment and make the audience feel like they are apart of what is happening. It also uses a repeated soundtrack during important scenes in the movie like when Adelaide and Red are having their final fight in the underground systems
The movie ends with Adelaide killing Red which then brings Adelaide to a flashback. We see her again walking into the "vision quest" room and she sees the little girl (a younger Red). Earlier in the movie when this scene was shown, the screen went black and the audience had no idea what had happened after she saw the little girl. When the scene is replayed, the audience gets to see that Red actually took Adelaide and brought her to the underground system where all of the worlds doppelgängers lived. Through this one scene the whole demeanor of the movie is changed. It is a complete twist in what the audience thought would happen and a perfect way to end. Us is a complete movie, from the chilling horror scenes to the physiological twists it presents, this film is spectacular take on how a horror movie should look, sound, and make you feel.