Review: Us (2019)

Us (2019)

Yes, I am unfortunately a bit late to this party and, I only saw Jordan Peele's much-discussed, Us, last night... so, by this point, many of you have likely already read lots about this film. Nevertheless, I will try to elucidate the masses with my simple-minded thoughts on the film.

My honest opinion is that, unless you enjoy a simple thriller for what it is, you will not board the Us-hype train until you have seen it more than once and read/talked about it for a length of time. That is my feeling at least. When I left the theatre after seeing the film, I had a lot of mixed thoughts rumbling around in my head and, surprisingly, none of them was that I loved the film. However, since coming home and beginning to sift through the myriad of opinion/analysis pieces out there and connecting them to the cryptic clues littered throughout the film, I am slowly getting on board the train.

As most know, Us is about a middle-class American family that heads to their cottage for the summer. While there, they are terrorized by an inverted family of doppelgangers who are seemingly bent on violently destroying them. Though there are some tidbit clues throughout the first half of the film hinting that more is going on under the surface of what we are watching, the film actually plays somewhat straightforwardly as a home invasion-type of thriller/horror. In that, though, the film has been made admirably. Peele once again shows his knack for atmospheric horror, sprinkled with humour throughout (though said humour at times diverted the tension unwantingly). Peele's use of music shines once again here (i.e. the score's creative use of 'I Got 5 On It'), as well, this time he has It Follow's cinematographer, Mike Gioulakis, framing plenty of beautiful shots for him. The full cast also puts in strong performances, notably as having to play two inverted versions of each character. Lupita Nyong'o was easily the strongest and will likely receive some award recognition for her performance as the vulnerable Adelaide and her malevolently evil counterpart.

I think that this is a film that I will appreciate more down the road when the dust has begun to settle and the hubbub of analysis and theorizing has somewhat died down. One of my main issues was that, through the entirety of the film, I was trying to suss out what Peele's underlying message was in the film. Because of the ambiguity of the clues I found myself often distracted from the main narrative of the family, as well, that, for me, at the film's end I was not clearer about the message, all of which detracted from my overall experience with Us. Again, this goes to why I think the film will sit better with me over a longer period of time and with consecutive viewings.
For more discussion about my personal theories on the film, as well as others that I have read about, check out my full post online!

Spoiler Warning:
Now, for the theorizing. Coming from the social messages strewn throughout 'Get Out', I was very much looking for Peele's real 'point' of Us while watching the film. However, at its conclusion I was surprised to realize that I really didn't find myself getting the film all that much. This is a bit troubling as, having read about the film aplenty, there are clearly tons and tons of layers and messages that people are gathering from the film. Yes, I can see where many of them are coming from, however, I honestly think that a lot of it was hard to gather during a first viewing of the film, and that, I think is a detriment. Sure, the film may have a longer legacy for this reason, but I think that it ultimately hurt my initial viewing of it.

My personal interpretation of the film was that of a political one, and, likely, a controversial one to some people. I saw the doppelgangers as being representative of Trump's Republican America, as illustrated by Lupita's doppelganger stating "We are Americans", as well as that they all are wearing the colour red (a fact that is specifically pointed out on the news) and the overall violence and 'destruction' that they enact upon surfacing in the country. This theory lost steam about halfway through though, and so I figured in the end that it was not Peele's idea (at least in full). I have since read about the message being about America's history of spurning subcultures of the country, notably the homeless as illustrated in the Hands Across America motif. Again, here, not being American myself, I was not familiar with the history of this movement - its goal and its ultimate failure - and so I did not fully grasp its historical significance within the narrative of the film. The scientific nature of the Tethered too seemed to make the film's messages about subcultures a bit awkward to fit together though, and the ongoing references to rabbits (assumedly being experimented on) did not seem to fit easily into many of the theories discussed. Again, I guess that the point here is that different people will glean different messages from the film and that Peele has purposefully left things fairly ambiguous. There is the additional Bible reference of 11:11 (the numbers which pop up in other places too), the underground tunnel theme, childhood trauma and the physical 'hands across America' all also found in the found and which may be interpreted in a variety of different ways. The film has a number of notable references to The Shining (camera angles, twins, Adelaide's weapon) and, like that film, one can surmise that Us too will quickly gather its own library of outlandish and creative theories about what the film is truly about.