Us
Directed
by Jordan Peele
Lupita
Nyong’o
Winston
Duke
Elisabeth
Moss
Here’s the thing about Jordan Peele ~ he’s so damn
smart. And he’s funny. AND, he has something to say.
You gotta love Jordan Peele. If you never watched “Key & Peele,” find it
now and watch it. Right away. That is some smart, funny, sketch comedy. And it is thoughtful. Good stuff.
Great. Honestly.
If you saw “Get Out,” written and directed by Jordan
Peele, then, like me, you most likely felt so pleased for him and proud of him
and happy to know him as much as a fan knows the subject of her
admiration. I’m pulling for this
guy. His success makes me happy.
This was my mindset going into “Us.” Oh boy!
Jordan Peele! He’s made another
scary movie! I CAN’T WAIT to see it!
So right there was my problem. I sidestepped one of my own cardinal rules of
movie going: Don’t get caught up in the
hype, even if it is of your own making.
See, God love ‘em, movies cannot rise to the hype. They just can’t. So don’t lay a bunch of expectations on a
film before you see it (I say to myself).
Clear your mind. Go Zen. Start from zero and give the filmmaker a fair
shake.
But the previews were GOOD. Fast paced.
Menacing. Creepy. Hooray!
So here we go.
Reserved seat. Footrest
elevated. Lights out…
“Us” begins with lots of weird foreshadowing. Peele sets up – and sets up and sets up and
SETS UP – a backstory of sufficiently unnerving detail to put a person on edge,
the perfect place to be, right? We don’t
know what happened to little Adelaide in that house of mirrors she wandered into,
but we know she came out changed – a little ballerina who didn’t want to dance
or even talk anymore.
We get that that was back then and this is now and
Adelaide seems pretty OK with her family on their way to the very same beach boardwalk
for vacation – the one she never mentioned to her husband in all their years
together. Even when he said, “Hey let’s spend
some time in Santa Cruz,” she didn’t tell him of a trauma so great that you
could tell by looking she wasn’t a regular little girl any more. Grown up Addie never said, “Disneyland
might be nice.”
So what happens is that we have a series of admittedly
unnerving events leading up to and including their family’s very own creepy
clones sitting across from them in their living room giving them a lot of
exposition about what happened with the
shadow people who live in the labyrinth of tunnels (I told you about the
tunnels, right? Remember? In the opening text) and are tethered to
those of us living above ground.
Well, so you know, they’ve been under there with all
the rabbits – did I mention the rabbits? – since back in the day when Little
Adelaide drifted in, and they’re pretty upset about things. So they’re joining hands across America and
stabbing everyone in an uprising they’ve been planning all this time.
And, to really getcha, we ultimately learn, through
another sequence of tortured exposition, that the angry shadow Adelaide who
planned all this mayhem is actually the REAL Adelaide who originally strayed
into the house of mirrors in the first place.
It’s the SHADOW Adelaide who’s been living above ground all this time
being pretty normal apparently after some therapy or an epiphany or something
where she began talking again.
Now, there are great things about this movie ~ most of
it is Lupita Nyong’o. She is chilling in
the dual role. That voice! That laugh!
Yikes and yikes!
Elisabeth Moss ~ also a little too good on the creep
side of things.
Both young actors – Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan
Alex – do extremely well too, playing themselves and their own alter selves.
But those performances, nor Peele’s allusions to the
division of Americans, nor his tip of the cap to Stanley Kubrick and nod to Rod
Serling, are enough to clear the convoluted path to what we were hoping
for: a scary story well told.
Love ya,
Jordan. Next time don’t
try so hard. You’ll do great, I know it.
6 out of 10 Whiskers
Elisabeth
Moss in "Us"
Elisabeth
Moss in "The Old Man and the Gun" with Sissy Spacek
Sissy
Spacek in "JFK" with Kevin Bacon
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