Exposition and Breaking the Horror Code

Rating: 6/10 (9 July 2019)

The problem with Us is that is somehow is guilty of both over exposition as well as not explaining anything. That deserves an award of some sort, I think. There's a scene fairly early on the the movie in which one of the antagonists goes on a long diatribe providing a whole lot of telling of information that should have been covered by showing. Show don't tell is the very basics of storytelling, but somehow Peele forgot about it for a chunk of this movie. Then the rest of the movie could have used quite a bit more explanation. This movie is guilty of hinting at themes, but not providing a payoff. There are viewers and reviewers guilty of pretending they understand the themes and subtext of this movie when there really isn't any subtext and the themes lack dimension and aren't far from fully fleshed out. Instead, it's like everyone decided, "I don't know what this movie is trying to say, but maybe I'm missing something. I don't want to look stupid, so I'm going to pretend like I get it and that it's great." When in reality, there's just nothing going on in this movie.
My final criticism is that Peele breaks another basics of storytelling, this time a specific horror movie rule. Don't show your monsters too early. When the under-side family is silhouetted, standing above our protagonists, I was creeped out. Then Peele brings these antagonists out of the dark and into the light and most of the fear is lost.
It's not a bad film, and had the chance to be great, but it falls far short from its potential. I feel like the ideas had such potential that I wish Peele could go back and give it another shot. Let's call it Us 2.0