I wanted to like this movie

Rating: 4/10 (22 March 2019)

Spoilers below

Either the movie was super meta in its genius critique of forced symbolism, subjectivity, the hypocrisy of the woke movement (I know Peele wouldn't think that, but I do), and our overly obsessed culture with useless trivia, or the movie was guilty of it all. Depends on who you ask I guess, but my thoughts are Peele was deliberate about the vague construct of this movie. He has said that Us would be a Rorschach test for audiences. That maybe the only thing that saves this movie.

Initial viewing of the film, I thought the movie was terrible. I honestly still feel like that could be a possibility after more thought, because there were a lot of things I did not like about the film, but if my hypothesis proves true, I can dislike but respect the film. Maybe he's trolling everyone, because the symbolism is SUPER on the nose throughout the movie and somehow the symbolism is also incredibly vague. What I mean to say is that the symbols in movie are too "Look at me! I'm a symbol! I mean something!" I kept thinking to myself, "Why are doing this, Peele? What's the point?" Again, Peele does not strike me as someone who came into this subjectively or haphazardly. He had a clear motivation when he made this movie. Which leads me to my second point.

There's a moment in the film where the father and daughter are behind an ambulance truck and they see the line of the Tethered holding hands. The father makes a comment that it looked like some kind of screwed up art project (this line on the surface is supposed to be a bad dad joke, but I think it actually summarizes the whole point of the movie for me). It's such a blase and throwaway statement, but it makes sense if you, ahem, follow *the white rabbit.* You follow me? You see what Peele is doing that is secretly genius? How many people are going on rabbit trails after this movie? A LOT.

The symbols are rabbit trails.

It's possible that movie is a critique of itself, tying into the whole theme about US, a doubled, layered meaning that we need to deal with us before we deal with others, which in turn will positively affect the outcome of the nation we live in. While I'm definitely not part of the woke, SJW movement, I definitely think before you deal with anyone else's problems, you should remove the log in your own eye first, then learn to help others with the splinter in theirs. That's a message I can roll with, but if it's some vague thing about race, our history, etc. then the movie fails. I hate art that tries to be subjective.

I think he clearly had some good ideas here (I agree with Grace from Beyond the Trailer that I don't think he executed these ideas very well). But I'm not going to trash the film either. At least Peele made an effort to make something unique and different, so I can appreciate that. I just personally was not a fan of the film, but I respect the craft of the game and his hard work put into this movie

That aside, I do have some good things to say about this film.

My praise for this film has to go to Lupita's acting, the third act (I for one enjoyed the final act, the *AMAZING* camera work and cinematography, and the best part of the film: the music. The music was so good, that I literally looked forward to hearing any of it when it came through the speakers in our theater.

End of line.