the Tijuana underground

Rating: 10/10 (4 April 2019)

The man who runs a soup kitchen in the Bronx knows that something is not right with the city he feeds.A.J.(Daniel Stern), a self-styled reverend, tells Bosch(Christopher Curry) about the dwindling numbers of his homeless clientele. "Ten to twelve of my regulars," the good Samaritan explains to the police chief, "undergrounders" he calls them, are unaccounted for. They're vagrants who live beneath the concrete, "a regular labyrinth of tunnels and caves". Douglas Cheek's "C.H.U.D." is a B-movie with something to say. The 1984 cult-classic provides "Us" with a template for Jordan Peele's leitmotif of forgotten Americans. Peele locates the film's socio-economical message: America has a caste system, and isolates it from the dreck. "Us" forces the audience to reconsider who the real monsters are in "C.H.U.D." These seemingly malevolent frogmen, living in the recesses of the sewer, are a militia, which only becomes clear when we learn that these radioactive creatures turn out to be reconfigured human beings, denatured so by toxic waste. These humanoids, in their former incarnation as "bums", were treated by the people at large as a homogenous group you either pitied or felt revulsion towards. They were city pariahs with bad hygiene and unwashed ill-fitting clothes. "C.H.U.D." starts off with what appears to be a random and senseless murder. A woman, walking her pooch at night, fails to notice the clawed hands gripping both sides of a dislodged manhole cover. The cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers don't look it, but they're intelligent beings, and know that woman to be Mrs. Bosch. Once ignored, these reconstructed beggars command people's attention; their never-ending co-dependence on ephemeral patrons are over. It must be the creatures' glowing yellow eyes, sharp elongated fangs, and slimy reptilian bodies. Among the murdered whom the radioactive hobos settle grudges with are the usual suspects; belligerent cops with city-mandated orders to tear down their cardboard cities, and heartless waitresses at that diner-turned-crime scene whose policy was to never hand out freebies. Comeuppance never befalls on Wilson(George Martin), the man responsible for this alchemy made possible by the stockpiling of hazardous waste materials in the subterrestrial hell where displaced men and women call home. Humans, not C.H.U.D.'s kill the corrupt NRC guy. "C.H.U.D." never overreaches, never intends to make a grand statement, just a small one about the dangers of untreated toxic waste. It probably never occurred to the director-for-hire that Wilson is the humanoids' leader. But auteur Jordan Peele sees it; he is a post-modernist ethnographer, part Quentin Tarantino, part-Gregory Nava. Peele has Tarantino's gift for historical revisionism, but in this case, it's history in the making that he writes and extrapolates. Peele recognizes what "C.H.U.D." never underscores, or even notices, which is that Wilson's malfeasance has the accidental effect of giving these disposable people a reason to live. They have a superpower. They exist.
It's a home invasion; black on black crime. "Us" is attacked by "Them", a seemingly prosaic sentence that function both as a bit of plot synopsis and also a pointed and ironic reference to the French-family-under-siege horror flick(original title "Ils"). Red(Lupita Nyong'o) makes the case, however, for being "us", too, not "them", the proverbial other, when she declares, "We're Americans," as she stares down her mirror image Adelaide, in response to her question: "What are you people?" Why is it "what" and not "who"? It's because "Us", unlike lesser films, doesn't employ the repressed memory as a plot contrivance. Adelaide knows who she is before the audience does. See "Us" a second time and you'll get a different read on her anxiety as the family approaches the same Santa Ana beach, scene of the crime, so many years ago. Back at their vacation house, Adelaide has an idea what, not who, these people are the very moment her son(Evan Alex) announces their presence in the driveway. The wife/mother knows why her husband's lookalike substitutes words with animal noises, and why her duplicate children make no noise at all. Most important of all, she knows why Red is fluent in English, and more worldly-wise than her kin. Way back when, in that hall of mirrors, the nameless girl cuts to the chase; she doesn't wait for the girl with a name to fall asleep; she doesn't have a pod on her to place beside the real girl's body in deep repose. The girl wearing the "Thriller" t-shirt is wide awake when the nameless one snatches her from the mirrorless mirror. Among other things, "Us" reimagines an "Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which the "pod person" learns to be human. Adelaide's parents know that something is wrong, just like the wife(Brooke Adams) in Philip Kaufman's 1979 version, but whereas Elizabeth knew her catatonic husband was a replacement, Adelaide's parent think their little girl is suffering from PSD. The nameless girl learns to be human. Adelaide(now Red) never loses her humanity. "Little girl, run," Red warns Zora(Shahadi Wright Jackson) because her doppleganger Umbrae is a killing machine. Likewise, the nameless girl who snatched the named girl's life away. between the intervening time as a child and an adult, reinvented Adelaide, and who can say for certain that the real McCoy would have turned out better. That's compassion in the nameless woman's eyes, as she checks on Umbrae, who takes her last breath in the woods after being hit by their car. "Us" makes a case for nurture over nature, while it simultaneously makes another case for nature over nurture. After a lifetime of living among replicas, The Little Girl Formerly Known As Adelaide emerges as the leader of her own cannibalistic human underground dwellers. She is a Wilson. The invisible people in "C.H.U.D." were the homeless. Who are the C.H.U.D.'s supposed to be in "Us"?
John Landis directed "Time Out", the first segment of "Twilight Zone: The Movie", which starred Vic Morrow, who in the course of a single night learns what it's like to be on the receiving end of institutionalized racism at its most vehement. First, he's Jewish, then Vietnamese, then Black. The unrepentant racist is shot at, dehumanized, forsaken and forgotten, made invisible; a rumor. Landis also directed the long-form video for Michael Jackson's "Thriller". The t-shirt that the named one wore on the night she was replaced by a counterfeit Adelaide is the key to understanding "Us". They're not zombies, remember; they're Americans, as Red had already explained. Red describes herself, and the people she lives with as "shadows". Shadows, in the pejorative sense of the word, can be a slur for Mexican and Central American immigrants. "In the Service of Shadows" is a making-of documentary film for Gregory Nava's "El Norte", a film about two Guatemalan illegals, down and out in Los Angeles. Jordan Peele knows "El Norte". It's no coincidence that "Us" takes place in southern California. Peele, as aforementioned, is the heir apparent to Quentin Tarantino, a postmodernist filmmaker who knows how to knit his motion pictures into a celluloidal patchwork quilt with panache. The journey is shorter; the shadows' trip is a matter of taking the escalator; it's the trip from Mexico to the United States in miniature. The flashback, late in "Us", shows the relationship between Americans and shadow Americans. For every person at the carnival, there is a double, pantomiming every body movement, trying in vain to be "us", not "them". The C.H.U.D.'s in "Us" are people on the border, right now as I write this. Peele triangulates "El Norte" with "C.H.U.D." In essence, Rosa(Zaide Silva Guiterrez) and Enrique(David Villapiando) are homeless. Everybody in Tijuana is homeless. To reach the United States, the "coyote"(Mike Gomez) makes the Guatemalan natives crawl through a sewer pipe. They're homeless people in a sewer; it's an amalgamation; it's "El C.H.U.D." Enrique and Rosa are shadows. Mexico is the shadow. Central America is another shadow. The C.H.U.D.'s in "Us" embody Bill Connor(Vic Morrow) in Landis' segment of "Twilight Zone: The Movie". White, black, yellow; they all learn what it's like to be brown. Conversely, in "El Norte", both Rosa and Enrique pantomime; they both want to be American. Rosa, a maid, goes through the motions of starting the washing machine. but it doesn't start. Enrique, a waiter at a high-end restaurant, enters the kitchen from the dining room through a swinging door, then pretends to serve coffee to customers while using rudimentary English. Peele seized on this for the flashback scene.
Peele also uses Tarantino's penchant for revenge fantasies. Like "Unglorious Basterds" and "Django Unchained", them gets back at us in Grand Guignol style. And here is the cherry on the cake. When Adelaide was a child, "Hands Across America" made a big impression on her. It was 1986; Ronald Reagan's second term. She organizes her own version in 2019. The chain extends out into the ocean. Peele is a genius. These C.H.U.D.'s can't breathe underwater. It's symbolic.
These C.H.U.D.'s are reaching out to Puerto Rico.