When Get Out was released two years ago, it caused a lot of sensation. This sensation and praise for the film was because of the way it managed comprehensive social commentary in a horror and thriller film genre. It was the first time that Jordan Peele wrote, directed, and produced a film and he still winded up winning an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
Jordan Peele is a comedian, so seeing him write a thriller/horror film was strange. However, the critical appraisal of Get Out made everyone excited about what he would do next. Let’s fast-forward to 2019 when his second film, Us, finally hit theatres this past Thursday. This time, he clearly stated that Us fit better within the horror genre than Get Out.
‘Us’ is a horror movie.
— Jordan Peele (@JordanPeele) March 17, 2019
Us starred Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) and Gabe Wilson (Winston Duke a.k.a M’Baku from Black Panther!) as a married couple who go to their summer house in Santa Cruz, California along with their two children to spend their summer vacation. That night, they are attacked by a family who looks exactly like them.
The film quickly turns into a survival story, as the Wilsons battle the evil versions of themselves and try to survive the night. While they fight for survival, they try to find out what is going on and what do the doppelgangers want from them. The film then starts to carefully unravel, until everyone finds out the truth about the doppelgangers and what it means for the future.
Since this film was being promoted as horror, I thought it would be much scarier in the conventional terms of the horro genre but it really wasn’t. The content was much more suspensful than hororr, much like Get Out was. I think that what caused the film to fall in the horror genre is the subject matter and how bloody it is. The scariest aspect of the filmwas the sound component of it. If you can see this in a theatre please do, it was so well edited and mixed that it was what kept you on edge.
Jordan Peele’s directing abilities greatly improved in this movie, it was much better than in Get Out. This time he decided to focus more on the visual clues that would eventually build up to something bigger later in the film. Get Out was fantastic and this one is even better. If you’ve seen Get Out, you will notice how much better this film is directed and edited.
I loved every performance and the story, especially Lupita Nyong’o’s. Every actor had to play two characters, the good version, and the bad version, and Lupita as Adelaide and Red was truly the most chilling performance. This movie showed us that Lupita Nyong’o has a great acting range and she can do anything. I hope she gets some recognition in the coming awards season.
The one thing that I think could’ve been better was the ending. There were some details that felt were missing once the ending came, I feel that it could’ve delivered more than it did. It was not enough to ruin the movie completely, I still really loved it. There isn’t a lot more than I can say about the story, because this is a highly spoilable film and it’s one that everyone deserves to see and witness so that they can come up with their own interpretation of it, it has plenty. I saw it a few days ago, and I’m still coming up with my own theories about what truly happened and what the ending could mean in the long run. A lot of theories suggest that it might be connected to Get Out, which I don’t agree with because I personally did not find anything that could connect the two and because I believe that both films can exist separately and stand on their own without having any connections between them.
If you were hesitant to watch this film because you think it’s going to be very scary, it really isn’t. You will just be incredibly tense for two hours, which I would take over having nightmares. It was a great film and I can’t wait to see what Jordan Peele does next.
Rating: 4/5