Perfectly watchable, just pales in comparison to what it's up against

Rating: 7/10 (24 March 2019)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
As a young girl, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o) visited the beach, and took a detour into a hall of mirrors, only to find herself faced by a creepy doppelganger of herself, an incident that scarred her through her childhood. Years later, she's married to Gabe (Winston Duke) and has two children of her own, Zora (Shahadi Wright) and Jason (Evan Alex.) To destress from their heavy lives, the family take a trip back to that same beach, only for Jason to head to the same place that Adelaide did as a kid. After that, they find themselves accosted by a group of doppelgangers of themselves, who have plans of their own.
I was a latecomer to Get Out, director Jordan Peele's directorial horror debut, and dodged all the hype surrounding it when it was first released, but was certainly very impressed with it when I did get round to seeing it. And so, on learning of the existence of Us, his follow up effort, I felt somewhat more compelled to go out and check it out, even though from the offset it was living in the shadow of GO. It's received mostly quite positive reviews, and it's certainly worth seeing, it just struggles to live up to the quality of what went before it.
Revelling in the current diversity agenda sweeping Hollywood, Peele helms an entirely black lead cast, in a film deriving much of it's humour from subtle references to African American culture. The main concept is certainly intriguing, and creates a decent air of mystery to what could be behind it all. It's also strongly acted by the lead stars. But it lacks the surreal inventiveness of GO, simply revolving around a concept without having much deeper beneath the surface. While the mystery is suitably resolved at the end, it just comes off as far fetched and outlandish, not helped by moving from the containment of the family's predicament, onto a worldwide epidemic.
In a modern horror climate dominated by CGI, cheap jump scares and shaky cameras, it's great to have a director like Peele around, who keeps things story centred and at least attempts to give his work a cerebral edge. Us in no way represents a downward spiral, it just can't quite match the standard Peele previously set. ***