{"id":7111,"date":"2019-03-20T13:37:49","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T17:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=7111"},"modified":"2019-03-20T13:51:13","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T17:51:13","slug":"review-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=7111","title":{"rendered":"Review: Us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jordan Peele\u2019s followup to his Oscar-winning \u201cGet Out\u201d continues a provocative filmmaker\u2019s exciting career.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Lurking within us is another side, another you lying in wait, hiding underneath, looking for the right moment to kill off the other and take over. Whether you view Jordan Peele\u2019s second feature literally or see it as a metaphor for class disparity or mental illness, \u201cUs\u201d will provoke a myriad of spirited conversations among viewers. In the screening I attended, audiences were chatting it up even while the film was rolling. This was distracting, but since Peele aims to be a genre provocateur, such breach of theater etiquette is expected, maybe even encouraged.

As a horror film, \u201cUs\u201d is more frustrating than scary, but it does succeed on the surface to elicit a measure of thrills and chills. The spatter-gore on display checks a box for the average student of all things \u201cWalking Dead,\u201d for example. And the story should be very familiar to a generation raised during the exponential resurgence of the zombie genre, given birth by the late George A. Romero in 1968.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lupita Nyong\u2019o plays protective mother Adelaide.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When the upwardly mobile Wilson family travels to their beach home for the summer, the family matriarch, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong\u2019o), grows more and more uneasy. As a child Adelaide had a traumatic experience at the beach near the summer home. The feelings of that day, where she got lost in a house of mirrors attraction, still haunt her. Adelaide\u2019s husband, Gabe (Winston Duke), and the kids, teen daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and younger son Jason (Evan Alex), are looking forward to hanging out at the very same beach. Of course, a day by the ocean doesn\u2019t help Adelaide\u2019s nerves.

After braving the sun and sand, the Wilsons return home. And that night, they have some unwanted visitors. It starts as a creepy and violent home invasion. Anyone who\u2019s seen the film\u2019s frightening trailers immediately get the idea. But, uniquely, the Wilsons are attacked by a family that looks exactly like themselves. Thrown by this fantastical collection of doppelg\u00e4ngers, the Wilsons are easily overcome as they clumsily flail about, grasping for safety and understanding. However, Adelaide has seen this kind of thing before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A childhood trauma helps prepare Adelaide for the appearance of the others.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Unconventional and mysterious, \u201cUs\u201d takes viewers on a bloody and murderous ride through the eyes of the survivors. We know little of the origin of the deadly doubles that pour out into cities and towns throughout the country, but they are soon everywhere, armed with a long pair of scissors at the ready. And their awkward movements and homicidal tendencies are equally confusing to anyone who is unfortunate enough to encounter them.

Equal parts silly and profound, \u201cUs\u201d uses a zombie-like, end-of-world narrative to suggest many things. And given Peele\u2019s previous film, 2017\u2019s Oscar-winning \u201cGet Out,\u201d it is impossible to read this effort in a vacuum. \u201cUs\u201d could be about class inequality, immigration, mental illness, or some kind of riff on the internal conflicts in which we fight within, with the devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. No matter how you read it, Peele has smartly not given us any of the tell tale keys. There\u2019s no political ideology articulated. Race is never an issue, from what I could discern in one viewing. And there\u2019s no overt mention of a grand corporate conspiracy at play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In a dual role, Evan Alex comes to grips with himself.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But into this violent, apolitical narrative, Peele, who both writes and directs, hints at a mysterious \u201cthey,\u201d who created and trapped the deadly doubles hidden in underground complexes. Making concrete sense of all the craziness is not intended. But as something of a roadmap, the movie begins with a title card that tells us that there are tunnels everywhere under the United States, many of which serve no identifiable purpose. Such is Peele\u2019s meandering story, that we see and experience like any other on-screen participant. And Peele smartly makes us all survivors, condemning us, like the Wilsons, to grapple with all the nagging questions.

\u201cUs\u201d is tense, but not necessarily because of the mayhem that takes hold on screen. The score led by composer Michael Abels could very well be one of the coolest and most effective since last year\u2019s \u201cBlackkklansman.\u201d A combination of pop hits and piercing orchestrations, the music both informs on the action and plays colorfully in contrast against it. It\u2019s a masterful use of score that ratchets up the thrills and puts anyone in the theater gleefully on edge. And to that extent, a casual viewer can just sit back and enjoy the journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Investigating the mystery, Adelaide (Nyong\u2019o) ventures into the tunnels beneath.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But Peele clearly aims for something weightier than just another goofy zombie-esque experience. He\u2019s commenting I think on the current climate, in which children, just like our own, are placed in cages, separated from their parents, who, despite their language and country of origin, are just like us. There are scenes in a subterranean compound, where we seen rows of school desks, a black board, and for some unexplained reason, a number of plump rabbits assembled in cages along the classroom walls. Just what is going on in that dank place? What were these children, later adults, being taught?

The idea of a parallel society that is a shade less than our own and intentionally oppressed isn\u2019t anything new to the metaphorical political and economic discourse. It is, after all, the oppression that eventually bubbles over inducing change. And change hurts. Peele wants us to feel the pain.

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What is Jordan Peele trying to say about us with his new shocker?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1350,105,1159,1161,1351,1352,91,1158,1349],"class_list":["post-7111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-evan-alex","tag-horror","tag-jordan-peele","tag-lupita-nyongo","tag-shahadi-wright-joseph","tag-social-commentary","tag-thriller","tag-us","tag-winston-duke","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7111"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7137,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7111\/revisions\/7137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}