Review - Us

Us is the second directorial feature from Get Out director, funny dude and general all around nice seeming guy Jordan Peele and so for a lot of you, that should be all the convincing you need to see this film. In fact, with the box office take, it's highly likely that if you're reading this you probably already saw Us last weekend but for those who haven't and want convincing, or those who just want to know my opinion, let's get into it. Us is the story of a family who go on holiday to a location of mysterious previous trauma for the mother. She is trying to cope with this while her husband attempts to impress his rich friends, her son keeps wearing this strange mask and her daughter is doing her best to pay none of them any attention at all. So far, so regular family but all of a sudden, four figures show up at the front of their house in the middle of the night. Are they a family? Are they lost? Are they... Us? The film goes into it from there and spirals out in some wonderful ways but honestly, I don't know how much attention to pay to the plot. It's wonderful and sprawling and slightly incoherent in the way that I love, plus watching it twist and turn is one of the primary joys. It's just that much of what we get seems to be most appropriate when read on a metaphorical level. There's absolute a literal plot to follow, but Get Out this is not; here, the joy is the mania and weirdness of the plot.

Us being a film about doubles, much of the cast have to play double roles. Chief among the cast is Lupita Nyong'o as the mother character Adelaide. So much of the film rests on the shoulders of her mother character and her crimson cloaked shadow and so it's with great relief that she's amazing. Watching this, I realised I've never seen Nyong'o in a film that isn't a huge Disney blockbuster and from now, I'm going to seek her work out because whether twisted or timid, she's a joyous screen presence. Also wonderful (and also coming over from Black Panther) is Winston Duke as her husband. Again, both sides are played superbly, with his joking dad being the appropriate levels of lovable cringe whereas his red self is exactly the kind of figure your racist grandparents assume every large black guy is. The two child actors are brilliant as well, giving a physicality that you don't expect from actors that inexperienced so kudos to them. As the other family in the film, Tim Heidecker and Elisabeth Moss are brilliant too. I'm a fan of both actors and was pleasantly surprised with the amount of screen time they get. To say what they're able to do would again spoil too much but there's one scene with them in the middle of the second act which might be my favourite bit of the film. Basically, two films in and Peele has already got a reputation for assembling incredible casts.

But this is a horror film and really, so much of whether it works comes down to whether it works as a horror film, to which the answer is... Look, it's closer to a suspense thriller, okay? It's tricky to categorise because genre (as my degree has spent two years teaching me) is a very fickle thing. Us isn't horror in the sense of "jumpscare spooky boo" type horror (ironically, like many of the trailers before were), it's closer to the slow build dread and nausea of It Comes at Night, although absolutely with a gentler touch. Because while there are many moments of deliriously spooky tension, there's also plenty of moments that are really funny, as well as the many fascinating plot moments. I saw this film with a huge group of people (big love to my Exeter film crowd, and also Matt) and having everyone around jump, laugh and lean forward in interest is a wonderful experience, one of the better cinema experiences I've had in a while. Pinning down the genre of Us is such a tricky experience because of this but the tension is sweat inducing, the laughs are out loud and often and the intrigue kept me going long after the film ended, plot strands or visual motifs invading my mind even as I write this. All three of those are the things that I just love about cinema and so despite its messiness, I think that's why I ended up absolutely falling for Us.

Comparing Us to Get Out is tricky because while they both carry similar tones and adoration of horror, Us goes real broad with the themes. Get Out was attacking one theme consistently with a scalpel, Us is about a wild swing at a bunch of shit with a sledgehammer. Maybe not to everyone's tastes but absolutely to mine and I'm delighted to give Us a