Us - Review

Release Date: March 22, 2019​​​​​​​​

Substantially Soulless

​The most impressive thing about this movie is how consistent it makes Jordan Peele. Us has a level of craft that is reminiscent of Get Out but goes beyond that. Giving Peele a bigger budget was definitely the right call since it allowed him to do more visually. The breadth of locations and how scenes were put together is a testament to how creative these movies are. Just like his first, Us shows off how having great ideas can carry movies a long way, but doesn't account for everything. 

The greatest strength of Us is its actors, specifically Lupita Nyong'o. The believability in how each of them plays their counterparts is concrete; scenes feel like there are two different actors in them when its only one. It's honestly crazy how well this effect works and you simply forget that the creepy doppelganger is the same person. These actors' performances shine so brightly and at the center is Nyong'o. The range in performance is wide and strong, there is no mistaking that the performance is great.

An area of the movie that is not great is the story. The trailers led you to believe a situation is happening to a family, this I have no problem with. I went to go see a movie about creepy clones attacking normal people and instead I got... hand holding. Everything about the movie is great until you reach the end of the second act. At that moment, it asks the audience to provide a reason for the events happening. It was here that the story starts to unravel, but I was still enjoying it. My complete disappointment did stem from the fact that there were no real answers given. Jordan Peele has admitted that he doesn't have any answers for the questions he presented, nor does the story really represent anything. 

I have to give a big shout out to "I Got 5 On It", the song for the trailer, acting as the theme song for the movie. I always love when a movie has an anthem, and since the song was played multiple times, it definitely fulfilled its role. So great choice even deciding for this movie to have one.

One aspect of the movie I thought we had gotten over in the film industry is stupid people in horror movies. Get Out had a little bit of this, but there is so much of this here. There were so many moments I wondered why characters did things that shouldn't be done when someone is trying to kill you. There were also many instances where the attackers didn't kill the victims when they were actively trying to murder. In this respect, the movie felt padded out annoying. 

Us proves that Jordan Peele is a capable director, able to come up with interesting ideas. His presentation is clean and is able to get great actors to provide amazing performances. One of my favorite things that it's not immediately noticeable is that the father in this movie is played by Winston Duke, M'Baku from Black Panther. Other than some pretty annoying aspects, this is a good enough movie.

6/10
The twist is basically useless