Film Review: Us Dir: Jordan Peele

0

Starring: Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker

Here’s 13th Floor’s Andy Baker’s take on the record-breaking horror film:

I walked into US with high expectations after Jordan Peele’s 2017 directorial debut horror Get Out left me pleasantly stunned and questioning for a long time after watching. I walked out of US with even higher expectations for his next film.

The Santa Cruz boardwalk amusement park sets the stage for the eerie ‘would I even have wanted to go here 20 years ago let alone now?’ feel. The middle class Wilson family are in town for their annual summer weekend at their holiday home. Hyper-excited and endearingly funny father Gabe (Winston Duke) just wants to be boating and beaching. Teenage daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) looks typically bored and frustrated being stuck in holiday confines with her younger brother Jason (Even Alex) who is obsessed with wearing a rather creepy mask. The mask and character name combination is a rather nice unsettling reference to the character Jason from the Friday the 13th film franchise.

Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) as mum, looks obviously uncomfortable with the whole affair from the get go. Even more reluctantly, Adelaide agrees to have a day outing at the boardwalk and beach with their friends the Tyler family.

The Tylers are parents Kitty (Elisabeth Moss) and Josh (Tim Heidecker), and twin teenage daughters Becca and Lindsey, played by twin sisters Noelle Sheldon and Cali Sheldon. Moss and Heidecker exude their characters’ superficiality perfectly. One of the funniest scenes is when the Tyler’s AI ‘Ophelia’ responds to their scream to call the police by playing Fuck Tha Police by N.W.A.

Flashbacks to Adelaide’s past show her entering the “Find Yourself” mirror maze attraction on the boardwalk as a young girl, and then being confronted by her doppelgänger young Red (both played by Madison Curry). I found this to be one of the most unsettling references in the film is young Adelaide/Red wearing a Michael Jackson Thriller T-Shirt, given the recent Leaving Neverland documentary. Adelaide emerges unable to talk after the harrowing experience, and as we find out later discovers herself through dance.

The tension is ramped up with Jason, wearing a Jaws T-Shirt, wandering off at the beach to use the bathroom without telling his parents setting Adelaide into a frenzy of parental panic.

Then comes survival of the fittest when the families are faced with their doppelgängers in utilitarian red jumpsuits wanting to replace them but have them suffer in the process. Nyong’o as Red is beautifully terrifying in her intensity throughout. The same has to be said of her as Adelaide. Even Alex as Jason/Pluto had my skin crawling while feeling I wanted to protect both Jason and Pluto.

Although the film does overtly address racism and issues of nationalism, it does so more subtly than Get Out. The protagonists are the African American family, but their white American neighbours get the treatment often characters of colour would receive in films in the twentieth century, particularly in action and horror films, satirically highlighting the insidiousness of racism and targeting of the ‘other’.

The choreography of the dance scene showing tethered shadows (doppelgängers) stuck underground living in the most abject conditions having to mirror their above ground movements is mesmerising. Reminded of Suspiria (2018).  The cinematography is exquisite, particularly the scene where we first enter the underground hall dotted with rabbits, the space reminiscent of a contemporary fine art exhibition.

Likewise in my personal favourite, the opening scene, we see rabbits in cages, the camera slowly zooming out for a full few minutes to reveal a seemly never ending grid of caged animals. The tethered are forced to feed off the rabbits to survive. Are we just rabbits being eaten by our societal norms of individualism? Each person for themselves over the other, no matter the consequences to those less fortunate, and thus considered less human, even though as older Red states “we are human too”.

The most poignant message in the film then comes in the form of the statement “we’re America”. The message is portrayed most strongly in the visual cues from the hands across America scenes. The final scene knocks then you over the head with its sinister punch. One that I saw coming but my companion did not. I left with two political messages in mind. No matter race, nationality, age or gender we are all human, and thus discrimination and abuse is absurd. For me it was also a satirical dig at the rise of right wing nationalism in contemporary western society globally, particularly in regards to nations creating fences to keep migrants out.

By the end of the film I wasn’t sure whether I felt for Adelaide or Red the most. Who is good and who is evil? I could certainly empathise with both while leaving feeling delightfully sickened. US is horror satire at it finest.

Andy Baker

Andy Baker
Latest posts by Andy Baker (see all)