Tether Ball

Rating: 7/10 (4 April 2019)

Jordan Peele's follow up to his hugely successful "Get Out" is another horror film that has something to say about the world and how we see each other. This time though, the message is a little more overt and the plot a little more contrived which leave "Us" in the good/not great bracket.
Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o) and her family visit a beach resort town, which was the site of a childhood trauma for her, as she went briefly missing from the funfair when she was a child. Her paranoia and feelings of dread grow across the day, until the evening, when the family notice another family standing on the edge of the driveway. To their horror and disbelief, the second family are their exact doubles.
It's going to be difficult to talk about my perceived failings with "Us" without drifting further into spoiler territory that I am usually willing to do in my reviews. I'll start with the positives then. The principle cast are great. Away from Adelaide's increasing paranoia they feel like a realistic family with plausible interactions between each other. I loved Winston Duke as Gabe, the father in the family. The Music is great, the film is often quite funny and the camera work is dynamic and interesting. The early part of the interactions between the families is genuinely creepy as is the sense of dread that inhabits the initial part of the film is palpable.
I get the allegorical nature of the story, and I appreciate that. The class differences that display between us can often be traced to a few, or even just one decision that ends up defining a person. Or even just an accident of birth location. The Mexican or Polish person "coming for your job" isn't some sort of monster, they are a human being with wants, needs and dreams just like you. They are "us".
Where it falls down is as the film opens up. Spoilers ahead !
Somehow, the horror situation becomes less scary as the scope becomes larger. It's the difference between a slasher movie and a Zombie movie, neither a less valid but one speaks to individual fears and the other societal horrors. At the same time, logically, the film begins to breakdown here. It's just impractical to live underground your whole life, eating nothing but Rabbit and function properly. The rules of "tethering" seem pretty ill-defined too, as sometimes they mirror above as below, and sometimes not.
It's not a bad film, not at all - I enjoyed my time with it, but it does leave you with more questions that it answers.