************************This review contains spoilers****************************
“Once upon a time, there was a girl. The girl has a shadow; the two were connected.”
Us is the hotly anticipated follow-up to writer/director Jordan Peele’s paradigm shifting directorial debut Get Out. The film follows the Wilson family which consists of husband Gabe (Winston Duke), son Jason (Evan Alex), daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph), and mom Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o). The family decides to vacation in Santa Cruz, CA at the beachfront home where Adelaide grew up as a child. Unbeknownst to her family, the Wilsons’ matriarch is haunted by a traumatic experience from the past at that same beachfront where in 1986 she encountered a mysterious girl who looked exactly like her in an amusement park attraction. Adelaide becomes scared that the event will resurface and endanger her family and those fears become reality when four strangers identical to the Wilsons invade their home, forcing them to fight for survival.
Jordan Peele has stated that his inspiration in crafting Us was an exploration of the current sociopolitical zeitgeist and the increasing notion that the United States is in danger from outside forces that wish to harm it. Peele uses this story to push back against that narrative and instead ask if what we truly have to fear is ourselves. And indeed, Us does make the argument that our misdeeds will always eventually find us, and that attempting to cover them up and bury them only makes the day of reckoning that much darker. We find out during the film that the doubles of the Wilson family belong to a group of people who live underground called the “Teathered.” The Teathered are the result of experimentation in controlling people like puppets gone wrong and are then left to rot as the project is abandoned. They are forced to live lives involuntarily mimicking the movements of their above ground counterparts in a sort of mirror effect. They have come to the surface to exact revenge and execute a sort of conscious uncoupling, severing the link between themselves and their surface counterparts by killing them while also making a statement about their existence and treatment that cannot be missed, by replicating the Hands Across America campaign from 1986.
America feels more divided now than it has been in quite sometime, with the source(s) of said division being hotly debated from Russia according to certain vantage points or immigrants from another. But the true root causes of America’s divisions and social strata run far deeper and can be traced to our own history of mistakes and misplaced policies. The notion that the biggest boogeyman one has to fear is themselves can be a challenging one to face in real life, much less in a motion picture that is supposed to be entertaining. America is currently struggling with this notion, blaming Russian interference for the victory of President Donald Trump while ignoring the fact that while Russia may have flooded the U.S. with online propaganda and social media bots, the foreign nation did not touch the screens on any voting machines, American voters did that themselves; as evidenced by similar Russian campaigns in European nations that did not bear similar fruit in the form of electoral outcomes. As Jason says during a lunch scene in the film, “When you point at someone, you have three fingers pointing back at you.” The inability to deal with one’s own misdeeds to the point you attempt to bury them and pretend they don’t exist only serves to allow those same misdeeds to grow slowly to the point where when they inevitably resurface, they come back stronger and ready to inflict more damage, as Red and the rest of the discarded Teathered have. I took this to be the explanation for the use of Hands Across America; like a public display of humans holding hands across a continent, when your misdeeds make themselves known to the world, they will be obvious and hard to miss.
The ending of Us includes a mind-bending twist that the audience doesn’t see coming and changes the questions right when you think you’ve compiled all the answers. In a surprise, we learn that when Adelaide first encountered Red as a child, Red forced her underground then returned to the surface to change places with her, explaining why “Adelaide” could no longer speak when she returned and why “Red” was the only one of the Teathered that could speak. Which begs the question: What was the true source of Adelaide’s fear of Red; fear of what Red would do to her and her family, or that Red would expose their life-long secret and who Adelaide really was? This question expands upon the sociopolitical allegory at the center of Us; the hateful climate surrounding the “other” that permeates American society right now is simply misplaced fear that the arrival of these others and their attempts at asserting their humanity and what they are owed will lift the veil off of us and reveal our own misdeeds and who and what we truly are at our core.
Much like the tethered and the above ground humans serve as mirror opposites of each other, Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke serve as the yin and yang to one another in terms of their acting performances. Us is very clearly Nyong’o’s vehicle with her serving as the lead and the actress fulfills that role in the best way possible. Nyong’o elevates the film with two distinct performances for two different characters that both reach the highest highs possible for an actor onscreen. Both the antagonist and protagonist roles are emotional ones, but on opposite sides of the spectrum and Nyong’o is able to deftly portray both simultaneously, at once being menacing and scary while also frightened yet resilient in the face of danger, confusion, and uncertainty. She follows in the footsteps of Toni Collette and Tilda Swinton in 2018’s Hereditary and Suspiria respectively or Isabelle Huppert in this year’s Greta as actors who give powerhouse, awards caliber performances in genre fare. Let us hope that the prevailing hesitancy in recognizing non-drama or art house films won’t cause the latter two actresses to be left by the wayside as the former two were last year. Winston Duke shines as a source of levity in film that requires concentration and provides plenty of scares. He is able to give Gabe a lovable, goofy dad personality that makes audiences laugh even when in the midst of extreme danger. His character is comic relief but in a way that complements the horror onscreen, avoiding undercutting any of the drama or becoming a buffoon-like caricature of himself. The kids in Us are required to do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of their roles and both Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex perform admirably.
Us is an engrossing horror film packed to the gills with thrills and ambitious, layered storytelling. This ambition does hamper the film to an extent as it stuffed with so many threads and meanings that the average moviegoer could find it all confusing to process and comprehend, especially upon first viewing. From the fact that “Jason” is always carrying a mask (Friday the 13th homage) to multiplying rabbits that could represent anything from multiplication of the surface humans to the metaphorical concept that our sins multiply when left to fester while hidden. Due to this complexity, Us could very well be the type of film that benefits not only from multiple viewings during its release, but continuous critical reevaluation over time that will elevate its standing in the minds of the cinematic zeitgeist as time passes. In the present day, the film exists undoubtedly as a vehicle for Lupita Nyong’o to display her immense acting talent and range, commanding her ability to emote and create two completely different characters within the same film. Her performance will be discussed all year and most likely, well into the future of the horror genre. Winston Duke shines as a complementary supporting actor, bringing some light to the film’s dark elements, accompanied by skilled child actors in Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex. Comparisons to Get Out, while inevitable, should not factor in to your analysis of Us’ worth as a film. Us is not as good as Peele’s directorial debut, but it should never have to be in the first place. As with all films, Us should be extended the courtesy of being judged on its own merits and if afforded that courtesy, it is clear that film while flawed still contains a good amount of quality and ambitious elements that make it a worthwhile watch.
Image: Universal Pictures
