Low brow garbage.

Rating: 1/10 (3 April 2019)

You know that feeling of "uhhh huhhh..." when someone tries to sound intelligent about something, and they just came off and sounding foolish and morose? You know that person... They just watched a documentary, or perhaps read a Wikipedia article and then suddenly they were an expert on things like "duality", "tropes", "Jungian Archytypes" and such?
You could say it more succinctly: You know that person who wears the band t-shirt, can name the one hit song that the artist came out with... like... maybe... Thriller... and suddenly try to convince everyone that they were are the biggest fan in the world of that artist?
Same difference.
Thats kind of how this movie was. Peele tries really, really hard to sound intelligent, and to craft an intelligent narrative, but unfortunately falls so hard and so fast that the movie crashes and burns because he doesn't really understand what he is talking about in the first place. He can name drop an idea, he can loosely base an idea off of something ancient, but in the end he doesn't really get it.
He is flat out writing well outside his pay grade and intellect, and trying to pawn it off as a deep metaphor.
This movie is billed as horror, but the only horrific thing about it is that I spent 10.50 on half night movie for me and my wife. It was so bad at times it was cringy. Was it trying to be funny, or was it just so bad that it was funny? You have moments of suspense that almost pull you into the narrative, only to be immediately snapped out of it by a gag.
****Spoilers*****
The ending ultimately did it for me. I was kind of hoping the grand reveal would be a twist that would break my neck. Instead...it was cliche and contrived and really negated everything that could have been interesting about the movie. Oh boy, the old switcheroo... and now it's a revenge story.
That, and for some reason we really needed to hear a 3 minute expletive explaining everything that just happened, rather than letting the viewer sort it out for themselves. I guess Peele never got the memo that like a good joke, you shouldn't have to explain it, and a good story should just explain itself and leave the audience left with a bit of wonder and intrigue.
I've read some of the "easter eggs" and "fan theories" of the show, and for the most part the people who are getting most excited about it are people who got really into high school psychology. Beyond that it lacks any depth, any horror, and any "gotcha" plot twist. In a lot of way's it was more like a cheap imitation of an M. Night Shamalyan film, who if anything was mostly just a cheap knock off of Alfred Hitchcock -- a Copy of a Copy of a, if you will.
Granted M.Night started out pretty okay with Unbreakable, The Sixth Sense, The Village and Signs... but even towards the Village and Signs you could kind of tell that he was stretching, and everything has been downhill since Lady in the Water.
Casting was okay, dad was a dork, the other family was more of a mocking satire than anything else, and while I had high hopes for this film being interesting, it pretty much shattered my desire for ever giving Hollywood any of my money anymore, ever again. It's really time for the land of Stardust and Celebrity to go away at this point. If this is any indication of what Jordan Peele's direction is like, then I weep for his new Twilight Zone Series as it would just be another cheap, uninteresting knockoff of something great...