CLASS DISMISSED

Rating: 7/10 (28 March 2019)

Masquerading as a political horror flick, "Us" is really a steady stream of cultural references thriller with a twist clever enough to get folks all riled up. Much like the the Coen brothers, and Quentin Tarantino, Jordan Peele is obsessed with littering his grand canvas with a bunny farm of Easter Eggs.
The internet is going crazy tracking down everything from obscure VHS covers, to Biblical passages, to this Michael Jackson fella. It's all a bit much really, distracting from what should be a seat-gripping theatre experience. Pilfering an old Twillight Zone episode about an evil doppelganger, "Us" takes a brilliant premise and clutters it with needless tidbits. This of course means box office gold, as repeated viewings are necessary to grasp everything needed for proper dissection. Shame that.
"Us" looks great, revs nicely to a boffo climax, and features some brilliantly complex performances from its leads. Lupita Nyong'o is especially fantastic. But as with all great horror films, there needs to be a suspension of common sense to really dig this movie. If there's time to ponder on the plausibility of what is happening on screen, then the whole thing falls apart. "Us" comes close, but short (where the hell are the guns?).
Still, there's enough fodder here (privilege, race, America, revenge, soul, cults) for much heated discussion, and Jordan Peele proves he's not a one trick pony director, but a horse that needs to be reigned in a little.