The Best Film of 2019, James Whale Would Be Proud!

Rating: 10/10 (14 April 2019)

Us is a movie that I've needed for years. It's not merely the fact that it's great (Though it most certainly is. It's the best film of the year and I can't imagine anything topping it), but it's a return to a more civilized and artistic age of Horror that I had previously thought to be long dead. Us captures the artistry, beauty, melodrama and emotional power of 30s and 40s Universal Horror films in a way I haven't seen since Johnston's exceptionally underrated remake of The Wolfman. It warms my heart that such a well-crafted and captivating tribute to that Golden Age of Horror is getting much more of the praise and attention it deserves the 2nd time around.
The big question remains; is Us a better film than Jordan Peele's previous outing, Get Out? As a major fan of both films, absolutely. Us is more clever, more nuanced, more interesting, scarier, funnier, grander in scale and more well characterized. A big part of what makes Us work (And what garners my comparisons between this and the classic Universal Horror library) is its examination of internalized vs. externalized monsterhood. Peele is able to create a monster in Red and her family that we can accept and sympathize with as both victimized and unprivileged while still making them a truly frightening and imposing threat, all the while never quite demonizing them. The Tethered are figures that earn our discomfort and fear, but increasingly become harder and harder for us to witness the Wilson family butcher, much like the antagonists of a James Whale film.
That's not to say the Wilson family themselves aren't likable or that we don't want them to survive. The character of Adelaide is one of the most genuinely complex and fascinating Horror leads of the decade, deeply morally ambiguous, but still deeply sympathetic in her own right. Without spoiling anything, I think any audience member can sympathize with her wanting to put her nightmarish past behind her and protect the warm, loving family she's built to create a sense of normalcy and belonging, but its her lenient set of ethics in regards to protecting that status quo that's truly divisive. She's certainly an antiheroine if ever I've seen one and the ending gives a strong feeling of intentional emotional emptiness where I'm not quite sure how to register the choices she's made. Winston Duke's Gave Wilson is a much stronger character than given credit for as well, a character that's never really questioned his life as he knows it (Or his place of immense social privilege) to the point where he knows very little of his own wife's personal life. He comes off as a lost puppy of sorts; book smart, but street stupid, bumbling into a world he doesn't understand and barely knows how to stay alive in. I think the argument could be made that Gabe is something of an audience insert, or, at least, how Peele views his audience; well intentioned, bright and friendly, but ultimately naive and ignorant to the larger world around them.
I'm amazed at how well Peele is able to modernize the stylistic choices of 30s and 40s Horror while still keeping the film starkly modern. The film's campy, kooky sense of humor, its grand and luxurious sense of aesthetic style and its theatrical melodrama concerning Adelaide's mysterious backstory and her struggle to cope with what she is and what she's endured would feel right at home in a James Whale or Jack Arnold film. The performances reflect this kind of style wonderfully as well, Lupita appropriately chewing the scenery as the ghoulish, sinister and wide eyed Red; a performance feeling like a cross between Elsa Lanchester's Bride of Frankenstein and Ernest Thesiger's Dr. Praetorius. Alternatively, her emotionally shattered, frantic and increasingly unstable performance as Adelaide recalls a stronger, more proactive take on Bride's Valerie Hobson as Elizabeth Lavender, the previously hopeful and happy Cinderella-esque figure slowly counting the last minutes until midnight. Her nuanced, diverse and animated facial expressions in both roles and especially her chilling, Campfire Story-esque delivery as Red have garnered Oscar buzz and, while I'd certainly argue this is the best performance of the year, it's almost too good for the same upturned noses who gave Green Book a Best Picture award.
Winston Duke's affably dorky and absent minded, but ultimately rather bright, Gabe Wilson also evokes many acting performances of the 30s and 40s, bringing an almost modernized Vaudeville sensibility to the film's comedy. I can only hope Duke grabs more leading roles as he's a very welcome presence both humorous and sympathetic here.
It's additionally charming how well Jordan Peele is able to blend modern aspects of our pop culture with this classic 1930s-1940s style; the use of NWA's "F the Police" against a slow, atmospheric confrontation between Zora Wilson and The Tethered in their neighbors gorgeous mansion brilliantly combines the subversiveness, edginess and cultural diversity of modern Horror with the artistry, majesty and tension of classical Horror to create a sequence that's truly timeless.
That lovely sequence aside, all the visual storytelling in Us is similarly detailed and meaningful. Its use of patterns and their repetition in the narrative to foreshadow plot points, the costume choices of its characters being especially deliberate and specific regarding their personalities, the visual parallels in the journeys of Adelaide and Red; the film has as much deliberate artistic vision as any movie nominated for Best Picture in the past 60 years and its a joy to see it get recognition for it among critics and audiences.
Us is a masterpiece. It's a revelation. It's the must-see event of 2019 and a film that can be watched over and over again while still picking up on countless new fascinating details regarding its characters, thematic content and visual storytelling. Furthermore, it finally marks the return of classical Horror into the modern mainstream. James Whale would have loved Us.