In 2017, Jordan Peele set the world alight with his break-out directorial debut, Get Out, a film which would take in nearly $300 million from cinemas all over the world, and a ton more on the home formats – that’s from a reported budget of just $4.5 million. The film also scored Peele an Academy Award, so it was safe to say that he was free to do whatever he wanted with a sophomore effort.
That film is Us, an intriguing second feature which stays in the same horror genre as his debut flick, but one that has a dark humour running all of the way through it.
I will attempt to recap the plot but that will include some minor spoilers, most of which were revealed in the film’s original trailer.
The film follows an American family – the Wilsons – who take to the road to their beach house in Santa Cruz, California where its matriarch Adelaide (Lupita N’Yongu) grew up as a child. Along for the ride is dad Gabe (Winston Duke), and their son Jason (Evan Alex) and daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph), all of who are looking forward to a relaxing break. Of course, things go according to plan and one evening the Wilsons are confronted in their driveway by their doppelgangers – an accurate human reflection of each of them. These duplicates have nothing but bad things in store for Adelaide and her family, and soon, wreak havoc.
To put Us firmly in the horror genre is a little over-egged. True, there are genre elements to it, but the film is also part magical fantasy-adventure and part-black comedy. It is also Peele’s love-letter to the movies – certain elements pointing towards Wes Craven’s A Nightmare On Elm Street series and the slasher genre as a whole, The Lost Boys via the seafront fairground Santa Cruz connection, and even Night Of The Living Dead with a dulicate race of humans rising from below ground. He sprinkles additional references everywhere, as well as heavy symbolism – the duality an ovbious one, but another in terms of religion – biblical connections are rife throughout.
The film features a fantastic cast. Led by N’Yongo in quite the role; strong and confident as the maternal leader in Adelaide, but equally menacing as the main villain of the piece, Red. In fact, all of the leads are superb in their dual roles.
Peele’s love of the genre comes through in quite an ambitious, thought very solid second feature. The film literally has a bit of everything and lovers of horror should lap every up every frame – and, oh boy, what an ending! Accessible, hugely enjoyable – not all that scary – but a truly original, fun, cinematic delight in an otherwise lackluster 2019 spring/summer season.
Extras
As you may expect, the Blu-ray is littered with bonus material to compliment such a good genre movie. There are four ‘making-of’ features which, while a little heavy on spoilerific clips from the movie, a wonderful fifth segment ‘Becoming Red,’ showing N’Yongo ‘in-character’ as Red between takes, three scene explorations which follow the construction of a scene from pre-vis through to shooting and post-production, customary deleted scenes, ‘We’re All Dying,’ which focusses on a seemingly improvised scene between Winston Duke and Tim Heidecker on the beach, and then finally, ‘As Above So Below,’ a little feature on the ballet contained in the movie. Strong bonus material though sadly no Peele commentary.
Us is available on DVD, Blu-ray and digital now.
