Obvio-us? Good, but not as good as Get Out.

Rating: 5/10 (22 March 2019)

Expectations for this movie were very high, based on the previous movie by the same director.
I managed to watch this on its first screening at the local cinema, along with one other person in a not very busy screening.
I am a fan of the writer/directors debut Get Out which was an original horror with quite a bit of social commentary. However Us neither feels as original or has the same level of explicit social commentary Get Out has.
Maybe it does have a social commentary message and I just didn't get it?
This movie feels like a guest directed movie version of a Twilight Zone episode, which is pretty much what it is.
The story revolves around a family returning to their beach holiday home and having to deal with the unwelcome and dangerous visitors who come in the middle of the night. Watching trailers gave the impression that this was a house siege type of movie which it isn't. The action moves away from the family house and elsewhere so if you were expecting a drawn out tense home invasion movie that's not on offer.
This is more of a psychological horror with some violence and blood, not flat out impossible levels of gore.
The film does build up tension and doesn't rely on jump scares, there is also some humour which does work, although the other patron I saw this with didn't seem to think so. Well not everybody likes rap music or maybe he was the police?
The score and soundtrack are both very well done, adding to the comic relief at some points.
The biggest problem I have with the movie is that the ending was predictable, maybe this is due to the source material being part of the Twilight Zone cannon. What may have been difficult to second guess back in the day is quite easy to predict today. It takes more to fool people these days.
Where this is original or at least unfortunately rare is that we have a horror movie, well basically a movie about a middle class black family which is to be celebrated. We are moving away from the hood movie equals black movie era which can only be a good thing. Even black horror movies in the past always seemed to located in a ghetto environment. Not this time.
Its a very good horror movie its just unfortunate that Get Out is an excellent horror movie which its bound to be compared to.
One thing about the movie is that you simply cannot understand everything about it in one showing. Anyone who thinks they can is deluded and simply trying to appear smarter than they are. It has been designed to be watched multiple times which begins to feel like a cheap trick to manipulate the box office. Based on this reason I have downgraded my rating to a five, if you cant experience the full story watching something once, its a fail.