Indicative of a promising future, but not a win

Rating: 5/10 (27 September 2019)

This is only the second movie by writer/director Jordan Peele. Peele is far better known as the Oliver Hardy half of the comedy duo "Key & Peele"
While Key is off making mainstream car commercials, which doubtless yields a tidy profit, Peele is one of those actors who has both the balls & talent to try getting behind the camera and do his best, rather than just expect congratulations to roll in because he's "him".
That being said, Peele's no M. Knight Shamalamadingdong, and in no way like Eastwood (yet). M. Knight might have 'come out of the gate' with The Sixth Sense (his 3rd movie) but he's made quite a few stinkers on the way... Eastwood did better but he's been in the business forever.
Peele's problem, conversely, is that while he's got amazing style & capability, he really kinda sucks when it comes to putting a script together. This is surprising because he's got at least 15 official credits as a writer. It's too soon to say whether Peele will be a flash in the pan, both because he's not got that much officially under his belt and because so far he's sticking with "BLACK!!" interpretation. My wife believes I saw his first movie, Get Out, but I don't think I did.
US doesn't rely on jump-scares and has a great suspenseful tone, both of which automatically go on my 'favorable' side. The acting is very decent; many of these were probably in Black Panther and do perfectly well performing here, particularly the heroine. There are two child actors, and both do fine with what are actually complex roles. My guess is that Peele's skill as a writer is the source of some amazingly well-executed lines, scenes, & even vignettes/non-verbal moments (if you decide to see this, remember the line: "We're Americans!" and you'll realize what I'm saying).
The problem is that style, scenes, & excellently conveyed creepy mood isn't enough to cover up gigantic plot holes & shoddy story execution. It's possible that because he's the writer he figured he didn't need to go through a better drafting & revision process, but that's simply false. There's some absolutely wonderful concepts, including "Hands Across America" & steam tunnels (part of the intro so it's not really a spoiler) but the problem is there's very little done in an effective fashion with them. Likewise, the performances are better than "just fine", but there's too many loose ends left with the motivation behind them. It would perhaps be as if The Terminator spent screen time showing the theory of how time travel works without showing Arnold or Reese (Biehn) actually showing up (Arnie's flex vs. Reese's vagrant-in-pain). That fails as an analogy but I can't think of a better way to convey it.
So I'm not pretending to have a solution, but I'm hoping that Peele hires some writers and uses someone else's story. Doing an 'ethnic' horror film was novel, he did a great job of it, but it still doesn't work in the final tally. I think he has great potential and it would be an absolute shame for one of the rare out-of-the-box types to get washed up so early in what could be a great career.