Better than Get Out? Get Real.

Rating: 4/10 (24 March 2019)

Jordan Peele's first foray into directing was a great success. Unfortunately I cannot help but feel with his second movie he has fumbled into too much creative control for his own good. Us has an excellent premise, and a fairly good first twenty minutes or so, but after that you get a taste of the horror this horror movie has to supply and the movie quickly devolves plot hole ridden 80's-horror-movie-reference-fest that is not scary in the slightest. It almost feels like he had too may ideas, too much inspiration, to fit into the idea he had in mind.
Us borrows a lot from 80s horror films, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. I liked the little son in his Jaws shirt while on the beach (which his mother is deathly afraid of), reminding us that having a fear of the beach was not so uncommon after watching Jaws for the first time. But many of the references do not work in my opinion. He borderline rips off moving aerial shots from the Shining except without a modicum of the subtly in the original. He has slow artistic shots of rabbits in cages, uncomfortable close ups with his characters and "them," and foreshadowing heaped on foreshadowing heaped on more foreshadowing. He wears his inspirations on his sleeve. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. On the whole I think he does have a natural affinity for cinematography and he does appear to be a true student of horror, which I can appreciate. A horror fan will find things to like in Us, but most of the time the movie will likely be reminding them of movies that were far superior to this film.
My main gripe with the film is two fold, the "horror" and the writing. The costuming and weapon choices for the "monsters" are a weird amalgamation of Michael Jackson and Child's Play but the psychos too stupid and weak to be intimidating at all. They are consistently doing things that do not make sense and the only one that can talk has the least intimidating voice in history. I audibly laughed when the main characters doppelganger started talking. Her "we are Americans" line felt out of a Key & Peele skit. What should have been a tense scene felt comical and stupid, and not just because of the writing, voice, and consumes, it was the actual actions of the doppelgangers, virtually nothing they do makes sense and it feels like scenes just happen to advance the plot. Hey you go chase her, hey you dump this guy in a lake, you guys go play in a closet for some reason. Why?
There seems to be a bit of a revenge motif going on which does explain why the family is not killed outright but the method by which the mother's doppelganger chose to execute her plan is nonsensical. Why not break their legs? Why not explain to the family why the mother deserves what she is getting? Why not have weapons more effective than scissors? Does no one in Florida own a gun? Don't even get me started on the whole tunnels underground explanation that the goddamned villain literally monologues about at the end of the film, harkening back to one of the least intimating, least interesting intro quote I have ever seen in any movie. People were trying to control people with doppelgangers but they just happened to abandon the facility and leave it with enough rabbits to sustain a massive population with copies of apparently everyone in the city and possible all across America. He didn't even have to explain their origin, it could have been enigmatic, why go through the trouble of creating this lore when it is so obviously stupid.
The symbolism and structure needed to make up for these pitfalls and they simply did not. There are messages about family, race, poverty, dehumanization, nature v. nurture, national identity, mother-father dynamics, mental illness, the list can go one. He threw all the ingredients in the fridge in the pot for this movie and it feels like the overall weight of the film suffers because of it. Get Out was tongue and cheek, simple and effective, this movie has some of the charm but almost none of the intelligence and patience.
Peele truly is making horror for a mass audience that he believes cannot stomach excessive gore, the death of main characters, or apparently a plot that is coherent. If you want to be sacred or intrigued go to another movie. If you enjoy movie references and a few solid jokes Us will entertain you. I am curious to see what Mr. Peele will do next and if he will introduce some restraint or continue to produced substandard movies. Until whoever told Mr. Peele Us had a good script gets out.