I Am Not A Horror Fan

Rating: 8/10 (31 August 2019)

The horror genre is evolving. I've seen some very good films in later years and it's by my judgement that this contemporary form is quite superior to the classic and late XX century form. I do however feel that films like "Psycho" and "The Exorcist" are indisputable, as I do with "Nosferatu" and "Freaks" and a more unknown gem like "Meshes of the Afternoon" and maybe even Salvador Dali's "Un Chien Andalou". It's in this decade, that has almost passed, that we have been faced with very wise films, that I am beginning to take a U turn and start exploring Its tropes further. I am no fan of supernatural and slasher horror films, in fact I think they are ridiculous, with very, very little exceptions.
Now, if you still follow me, I can read that somehow people feel that Peele's first "Get Out" is better than the brand new "Us". To compare, both films have a wonderful transition from a supernatural setting to a pulp Sci-Fi dialectic.
In Get Out, the antagonists are a Group from the Golden Age in USA which developed a way to transfer their conscience and memories, with emphasis on the conscience, by repressing a living man's psyche and implanting their own. Something similar, very bad executed though, can be seen in "Freejack" and "Self/Less", but a progenitor for me would be the Twilight Zone episode called "The Trade-Ins", even though that's not implied in the episode directly. In Us exists an isolated government experiment, that also begun in the Golden Age, which could be a project for the Cold War, where clones are created and kept secretly underground, engineered somehow to mimic their originals on the surface for an unknown purpose. This is very unique as a setting, if not as an idea altogether, so, this gives the first points to Us.
Get Out does have the upper hand as it does not have blatant plot holes, it doesn't have any actually. The one that really did bother me in Us was, well -- the Children. The Tethered are clones, and that is stipulated very clearly. The children however, are born. What are the chances of having the children? Even more, what are the chances of having the same sex children? And going even more into percentages, what are the chances of having the children being exactly the same as your original on the surface? I do have to concede that the surreal is much more frightening when introduced into reality, so for the sake of the movie, it had to be done on the expense of the story. It does not bother me as much, but points do go to Get Out on this one.
On why Us is triumphant versus Get Out is the duration of suspense. In Get Out we are introduced with the answer, a very direct and clear, simple even, and then the protagonist simply fights his way out. It's 90 percent that he probably lives, with a little twist, and the other 10 that he dies and we are given a bigger twist, albeit cliche in both cases. Anyway, a lazy ending, not particularly interesting at all.
The climax of the suspense in Us comes almost at the end in a Vader/Luke-esque epiphany, that is followed by a brief brutal confrontation of the protagonist/antagonist. But it doesn't stop there with subjective ethics blurring the lines when we are presented with the twist, which is a devastatingly good finish.
I do not understand why the racial/social agenda in both films is so progressive, but since it's about the USA, I have not come in direct contact with it, so I will skip it entirely and grade it as I do with any other films as I discuss philosophy with friends and colleagues.