Rated: MA15+
Directed by: Jordan Peele
Written by: Jordan Peele
Produced by: Jordan Peele, Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Ian Cooper
Starring: Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Madison Curry, Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon.
‘What do you want?’ asks Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o) of her shadow.
‘What do we want?!’ her reflection, Red replies.
Us is a film of many layers, the use of reflection, of Adelaide talking to herself reflected in a glass window; shadows tethered to bodies, while waving across the sand: ‘Once upon a time, a girl was born with a shadow…’ introduce the folklore of the doppelgänger to create the fear of self as an everyday American family meet their Other selves, while vacationing at their summer beach house in Santa Cruz.
It’s a strange setting for a horror-thriller – going to the beach as a family of husband, Gabe (Winston Duke), wife, Adelaide, daughter, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and son, Jason (Evan Alex); meeting friends, hanging out on lounges, drinking, well husband and wife, the Tylers’ (Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker) drinking while their two teenage daughters Becca and Lindsey (Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon) play in the sand.
And that odd play of normality, just off kilter, sets the tone of the film.
Us is different to what I expected.
I thought I was walking into creeps and super-scary, but for me, I found the film thought-provoking, and sure, suspenseful, lightened by this incredibly dark satire.
Director, writer and producer Jordan Peele states, “Horror and comedy are both great ways of exposing how we feel about things… The comedy that emerges from a tense moment or scene in a horror film is necessary for cleaning the emotional palate, to release the tension. It gives your audience an opportunity to emotionally catch up and get prepared for the next run of terror.”
I wholeheartedly agree there’s a close link between horror and humour. There’s a fine line between the two, tapping into an old part of our brain that can react with fear or laughter, if the moment misses the mark – I’m not afraid of the dark, ha-ha. To tap into this reaction and include a character like husband Gabe bases the film in normality, because that’s the way people behave: tissue up a bloody nostril, and statement, ‘almost looks like some kind of fucked-up art instalment,’ included.
Winston Duke really nailed the character, Gabe and I appreciated this layer of bizarre humour to lighten the strange – as Jorden states above, to, ‘clean the palate’.
Jordan has managed to tie the normality of the family priority: money, cars, competition in the face of brut survival – like reacting to threat with violence being the most normal thing in today’s world. Never forgetting how cool it is to own a boat.
The story hangs on this story of a family, of a mother still traumatised by an incident in her past, back in 1986 when she gets lost as a little girl in a Fun Park, where she meets her Other. And vacationing back in the place of that first incident creates a domino effect of coincidence, until, her family meets… Hers.
But there can only be one self. That’s where the horror comes in, with some good blood and guts – yet the film’s not really about the doppelgänger, it’s more about what the doppelgänger represents: evil, the shadow, the end of times:
The verse from Jeramiah 11:11 also a running theme through-out the film:
There thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.
So, did I like the movie?
Honestly, Us wasn’t as scary as I thought it was going to be.
Yet, the careful handling of timing and layering of complicated ideas and story made a unique viewing experience. And I kept giggling – strangely, the humour was what affected me the most – while also thinking about the comment made about the ones we’ve abandoned far below the tunnels of ourselves.