Tonally Inconsistant, But Entertaining Horror Pic

Rating: 6/10 (22 March 2019)

Everyone wants Jordan Peele's follow up to his breakthrough smash, Get Out, to be equally as brilliant. Us has some great ideas and performances, but ends up a bit shaky due to odd tonal shifts.
Us lays on the mood fairly thick during its first 20/30 minutes as our heroine, Addie (a terrific Lupita Nyong'o) is plagued with what she describes as a "black cloud" over her family's vacation to a beach where she had a traumatic incident as a child. Fairly soon, Addie's fears prove to be well founded when a family of scissor-wielding dopplegangers break into their vacation house and terrorize them.
Oddly enough, the moment the dopplegangers break in is the moment where the film's tone starts swerving in and out of the horror and dark comedy lanes. Granted, a few of the jokes do land because they feel like something a real human being would say/do in this same situation, but a lot of them feel far too goofy and this leads the film into a fairly bizarre 2nd act that feels more like a feel good/kick ass zombie-killing movie from the 80's, destroying the somber tone conjured in the film's first half hour.
This isn't to say that the 2nd act of Us isn't a rollicking good time - it is, but it seems so far removed from what the film had originally been building towards. Imagine if you switched the channel midway through The Innocents and happened upon Night of the Creeps or Waxwork. They're all great movies, but their styles couldn't be further from each other and, if you tried to mix them together, you'd probably get something like this.
Us wraps up with a fairly odd twist that'll probably leave you scratching your head. Perhaps if the film had been more goofy from the start and carried this tone throughout, one could laugh it off and just chalk it up to a fun, cheesy time, but it seems like Us wants us to be scared sometimes, too. It wants us to laugh at the strange, inhuman growls of its antagonists and be petrified of them at the same time and that's just not going to happen.
Don't get me wrong - Us is far from the dreaded sophomore slump for Jordan Peele. He still has an eye for great shots, tongue in cheek humor, and creative storytelling, but it doesn't come together the way it should. It's still worthy of a watch, though.