Us Film Review - The Rabbit Gets It As Jordan Peele Directs What Happens When The Lunatics Take Over The Asylum

Rating: Null/10 (28 April 2019)

Jordan Peele's highly anticipated second horror outing Us leaves us with many questions. In 1986 young Adelaide wanders off alone to a funhouse and in the hall of mirrors encounters a version of herself. Even wearing the Michael Jackson Thriller t-shirt her dad just won in a fairground game for her. Yes that's weird, but how? Her parents are understandably distraught when she is found, but what happened in that funhouse stays in the funhouse, with Adelaide unable to speak about it.
Fast forward to the present day and the now grown Adelaide, played by Lupita Nyong'o, is driving with her family to the Santa Cruz house where she spent that long ago summer. Winston Duke is wisecracking husband Gabe, with kids Zora and Jason. Jason played by Evan Alex, and true to his namesake, likes to wear a mask and wears a Jaws t-shirt. We might be safer in the water this time! Shahadi Wright Joseph's Zora is like any teenager attached to her phone.
And Gabe's bought a boat for the summer, it doesn't work too well, but it's still a boat he can tell his friend Josh about later that sunny day. On the way to the beach they pass a murder victim being lifted into an ambulance. We remember he was in the fun park when Adelaide was small and carrying a sign saying Jeremiah 11.11. Adelaide tells the kids not to look. The Wilson family meet up with their more affluent friends the Tylers. The already sozzled Kitty played by Elisabeth Moss, and Josh played by Tim Heidecker, with their twin girls.
Much like Adelaide when she was younger, Jason wanders off and comes across a man standing on the beach in a red jumpsuit with blood dripping from his fingers. But he doesn't tell the worried Adelaide what he saw, until she later notices a drawing he made of the encounter. The now spooked Adelaide tells Gabe of her own childhood all those years ago, and how she feels something is coming for her, Gabe lightheartedly jokes that when the storm blew the lights out that evening, it possibly was herself she saw in the funhouse full of mirrors. Understandable, but when the power goes out at 11:11, and Jacob says there is a family outside, the tension, with score by Michael Abels, could be cut with a pair of very sharp scissors.
Main plot spoiler!
Having set the scene for us Jordan Peele now sets to work unravelling a big ball of string all the way down to the many miles of underground America, and ties us up in knots. For this is no white rabbit filled Wonderland we know.
What if our governments experimented on us? What if they tried to control out minds by duplicating us? Could we have clones that we didn't know about, yet who mirror everything we do above ground, tethered to us like puppets attached with strings. And even wear our exact same clothes. Are they Us if we hadn't had the opportunities in the sunshine? And what would happen if these doppelgängers living underground in the shadows found out about our lives above? Would they feel we had stolen a life that could have been theirs, if they had been given the chance? And if so who would lead them above ground? Surely someone who had actually been above ground!
A terrific thinking movie, with great acting across the board. Not so much a cover your eyes horror, more a terrifying social experiment that went badly wrong. A great duelling pas de deux and many many questions.