Not an achievement, not better than Get Out

Rating: 6/10 (11 February 2020)

I like this movie and I think it is far from a bad one, but to call it a horror masterpiece, and to say that it is better than Get Out is just incorrect.
Personal point first:
I love and appreciate the subtle homages to horror icons like Freddy Krueger, Jason Vorhees, and Michael Myers.
Now for the pros and cons:
The symbolism with the rabbits, the scissors, and the spiders and all that were brilliant! The same can be said about the subtle connections that every character has to something in the movie.
The characters themselves are very likable, which is exactly what a horror film is supposed to do!
There's a lot of clever reincorporation, like the fave surgery thing! Excellent! Just excellent!
There were a few comedic moments that really landed! I laughed the hardest when the boat propeller chopped up you know who. (Yeah, I got a dark sense of humor.)
The cinematography is super well-done! Mike Gioulakis has been absolutely killing it! First It Follows, then Split, and then this. I seriously doubt he is going to read this but I'll say it anyway, "Keep doing what you're doing man, because you're clearly very good at it!" On top of the cinematography being very beautiful it also serves as an effective storytelling tool.
The music was awesome! Like the one that played while they were walking on the beach!
The fight choreography was great; it really felt like people were getting hurt! And I love the blood spurts.
And this film as a whole is an incredibly ambitious one. It challenged the actors because they had to all play two different characters. When they were facing off against each other they were talking to nothing and fighting nothing. There's no way that's easy. On top of this, the themes that it tackles are very sensitive ones, and their treated with respect. The premise itself is very interesting (which is what gives the film re-watch value for me). It's very creative and weird, and it really shows how smart Peele is.
As for the flaws, I'm going to start out with the scare-factor. It was non-existent for me. However, it might just be my bias because I'm not easily scared. But that being said, when a horror movie isn't scary to me, it really bogs down the experience for me.
Even though the themes and messages were handled with care and respect, they're not as well-defined as the themes in Get Out. This is due to something that I will talk about in a few paragraphs.
The film did nothing to subvert my expectations when it came to the characters. When I met Elizabeth Moss and her family I was like, "They're gonna die." And guess what! They all died! And none of the main characters were killed off, and at no point did I expect any of them to die. Why not kill off one or two of the main characters and let some of the side characters live?
This film had a hard time deciding what it wanted to be; during tense scenes there would be comedy and it would come at the expense of the horror. And it would try to be a movie that you're not supposed to give logic to, but then be a movie you're supposed to give logic, to. When the main family was being attacked, the dad would crack jokes and it would just really get in the way of the suspense. This movie should have taken breaks for comedy like Get Out did.
The doppelgängers rising up and being treated unfairly is supposed to be a metaphor for inequality and what it can lead to, but at the same time there was this whole government trying to control everyone stuff. First of all, the exposition that was delivered at the end was really dumb. None of the dialogue sounded all that realistic to me. Second of all, if the movie hadn't provided literal explanations for the doppelgängers' origins the movie would've been better. It would've just been one big metaphor. I wouldn't have questioned the origins of these creatures. It probably would've made the doppelgängers scarier, too.
The way that the doppelgängers communicate with each other was comical.
And last but not least, the twist ending. It sucks and here's why: It raises way more questions than it answers, and it's a cliché. Whenever there is a double of somebody, you will assume that there will be that bait and switch shtick. And when the movie started coming to a close I was like, "I guess they're not gonna do that." But then I realized there was gonna be a twist ending before it happened, and I guessed it would be the cliché bait and switch, and it was. Now what questions did it raise? Well, if she's the original girl then why didn't she try to communicate this to anybody? How does she have such an extensive vocabulary if none of those doppelgängers can speak English? And since the doppelgängers uncuffed her from that bed while she was still a little girl, and she spent 20+ years and those underground tunnels, she never found her way out of that place, even though it was clearly shown to us that it was not difficult to navigate yourself out of there? Bull! Crap! The doppelgängers wouldn't have stopped her! And they wouldn't have warped her mind! Another thing that was clearly shown to us is that all they did was mimick their surface selves! This is not a good twist-ending so don't say that it is! This renders that awesome monologue by Red at the beginning of the main conflict really stupid.
Overall I enjoyed this movie and I do find myself re-watching it every now and then, but like I said, the praise this film is getting is a bit undeserved. I have great respect for Jordan Peele and I will be watching whatever movie he makes next, because he truly is one of the most unique voices in Cinema today.