*Spoilers will follow. There is no way to talk about Us without extending my analysis to the film's final moments. So if you haven't seen it, what are you still doing here?*
There is a darkness at the heart of America.
It has lurked and toiled below the surface of the country, waiting for a chance to return. And now, it is finally ready to come back, to wreak havoc and take its revenge on society. That darkness is quintessentially American; it is a part of every one of us. But if this darkness, this evil enemy of American society, is making its return in the hopes of creating chaos, we are equally prepared to do what we have to do to fight it. We are on the righteous side of the war, fighting for innocent people who did nothing to deserve such a grisly fate.
But what if we're wrong? What if this darkness, this oppressed army of our own creation, actually has the moral upper hand? What if the clear-cut, unambiguous nature of our position is actually revealed to be folly? We are one of them, just as they are one of us. Good and bad are tethered together yin and yang, dark and light, blurred beyond distinction.
From this thematic set-up, Jordan Peele's Us is born, a film in which the writer/producer/director himself claims to be addressing the notion that "[w]e are our own worst enemy." That's a great catchphrase to sell a film, but what is this story actually trying to say? What's the greater symbolic significance? After Get Out's devotion to an overarching metaphor about white liberalism and cultural appropriation, what is the central message of Us? What does it all mean?
At a certain point, there's only one conclusion to be made: Jordan Peele is kinda messing with you.
Though I certainly did come away with more specifically critical things to say about Us, everything circles back to the idea that Peele is toying with his viewers. Even as I've deliberately avoided reading many in-depth pieces prior to writing my own, it's impossible to be a card-carrying member of Film Twitter without noticing how many different interpretations have hit the web in response to Peele's much-awaited follow-up to Get Out. Some have insisted that the highly controversial ending muddles the film's thematic impulses beyond comprehension, while others have suggested that Us is reckoning with topics ranging from assimilation to double consciousness. In a widely shared and acclaimed article from Shadow and Act, Brooke Obie suggests that the film is ruminating on issues of "perspective" and the cyclical nature of "deadly silence."
All of these observations are valid and correct; I have yet to encounter a theory that I believe to be missing the mark or stretching Peele's film in unreasonable ways. Much like the logo used in the same trailer Obie highlights as a possible source of clues, Us is a Rorschach test what you take away from this ambitious horror/thriller will solely depend on what you're looking for. This is not a film that can be solved, where each piece of the puzzle clicks perfectly and symmetrically into place as an ingenious metaphor; if you try, you're destined to end up falling down a rabbit hole from which you'll never escape. Instead, Us is a powerful and thrilling slice of blockbuster entertainment precisely because it rejects such a simple metric Peele provides a core thematic template and lets his viewers draw their own conclusions. Everyone will walk away with something different, and I can't help but think that what you take away reflects your own view on the state of affairs in America.
This somewhat heady talk of metaphorical significance ignores a key part of what makes Us such a remarkable film: it's a total blast. The action begins in the summer of 1986, with a young Adelaide Wilson (Madison Curry) roaming the Santa Cruz boardwalk with her parents (Anna Diop and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Amid the eerie mess of the beach, Adelaide gets separated, stumbling into a haunted maze that promises to help visitors find themselves. Inside, she sees something that terrifies her to her core another version of herself.
Decades later, adult Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o), her husband Gabe (Winston Duke), and their two kids, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex), are heading on a trip to their quiet beach house. By all accounts, this is a typical family vacation they bicker in the car, spend a few awkward hours with the Tyler family (Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker, among others), etc. But for Adelaide, this return to the Santa Cruz area is marked by an ever-increasing paranoia, an unshakable feeling that certain things are beginning to line up in strange ways. Symbols from her childhood trauma are re-emerging, and it's starting to freak her out.
Late at night, after Adelaide has spilled her secretive past to her husband, Jason walks into his parents' bedroom. His next words change everything: "There's a family in our driveway." And as Gabe quickly sees, Jason is dead-on four figures, clad in red jumpsuits, are standing peacefully in the driveway of the Wilson residence, holding hands in a fairly ominous fashion. Then, after Gabe's attempts to scare them off fail, they enter the house. And that's when the real horror starts. Because these invaders aren't just random monsters out for a night of fun. No, they are the Wilson family's alter egos Red (Nyong'o), Abraham (Duke), Umbrae (Wright Joseph), and Pluto (Alex). The call themselves the Tethered, but they don't intend to remain glued to their earthly bodies much longer it's time for the Untethering to begin.
When it comes to playing with his audience like a master manipulator, Jordan Peele is better than any filmmaker working today. Maybe it's just because both of my viewings took place in a theater with a large percentage of college students, but there's a palpable sense of orchestration and control at every turn, an understanding of what makes each viewer tick. Peele knows when to keep pushing, when to make a joke, or when to deploy his biggest twists, further pulling each and every viewer into his grasp. It was an immense pleasure to see an audience so enamored by an original and unconventional experience (you expect this stuff at the Marvel and Star Wars movies), so drawn in that each and every clap, cheer, and scream felt earned.
It is admittedly difficult to make explicit comparisons to Hitchcock after only two films, but beyond his more obvious allusions, what marks Peele as a distinctly Hitchcockian horror filmmaker is his ability to generate suspense and fear in a manner that feels playful and fun. So many horror films these days, with James Wan's Conjuring-verse at the forefront of the madness, tend to make the jump scare the main attraction; setpieces build to the big jump, then the film always slows back down. Peele is a different kind of filmmaker, where each scare and propulsive burst of nightmarish energy accumulates like a snowball effect, pushing the narrative into twistier, more deranged territory. That's not to say that Us isn't a scary or creepy film, but the bloody attacks and the sudden jumps are characterized by laughter and popcorn blockbuster-style extravagance rather than terror; it's part of the reason Peele's films are palatable even to audiences that hate horror films.
On the level of narrative scale and technical ambition, Us is clearly a massive step up from Get Out. Mike Gioulakis' cinematography has been rightly praised, but let me add to the acclaim by saying that this has to be one of the most gorgeously lensed popcorn movies in a long time; the images are rich and vibrant, mixing this sun-drenched, sweat-filled aesthetic with enough gory ugliness to make for an oddly perfect match. Perhaps the imagery is just more immediately noticeable this time, since Peele is taking a chance on a number of bigger, splashier action scenes, all of which work like a charm. The obvious standout is the home invasion set to The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" and NWA's "F*ck Tha Police," a funny, terrifying centerpiece that brings the disparate threads of action together for a midpoint crescendo. Of course, there's also the final duel between Red and Adelaide, a sequence defined by its unusual, striking style of montage, which effortlessly threads the needle between past and present, good and evil. Peele and Gioulakis deserve all the credit in the world, but editor Nicholas Monsour is a huge part of this equation as well.
Which brings us back to the ending. When you have the audience eating out of the palm of your hand, it's easy to mislead them which is exactly what Peele does in the final minutes of Us. In the most literal way, Adelaide is Red and Red is Adelaide; what's presumed to be good is bad and what's presumed to be bad is good. Or at least that's what I think. As the final shot rolled over the hills of the Untethering, I honestly wasn't sure what to make of any of it. Was Peele really saying anything with such a bold switcheroo? Was this indeed the Shyamalan-esque twist some accused of it being? My conclusion is a firm "no," but I understand why that's coming into play.
Ultimately, Peele is aware of the audience's desire to search for a single, concrete meaning of his film, a theory or an explanation that will put all the pieces in place and explain everything. It's about Trump! It's about social rebellion! It's about *insert important issue here*! The final twist is an attack on the spectator who believes they have figured everything out, who put together a theory as they were watching, only to see it get turned upside down. Get Out certainly fit into this box of playful theorizing. Us does not, because in its own bizarre way, it is about everything and nothing at once. Someone could watch this movie and come away with nothing. Another person could see it as a definitive portrait of 2019. Others could place the Tethered as representations of something specific. If, as Obie says in her piece, the ending is about "perspective," then the whole film is about questioning our own limitations, our own interpretations, and ultimately, our own myopic shortcomings. It's an attack on perceiving the world in binaries we are never as righteous or heroic as we believe ourselves to be. In true Rorschach form, we see what we want to see at least until it's revealed that we were the bad guys all along. Our assumptions, our identifications, and our gut instincts are all part of Peele's joke at our expense.
So what did I take away from the film as a whole? Well, there's certain things that I believe aforementioned pieces have explained better than I ever could. But the film lingered in my brain and haunted me for several days afterwards, partially because of Nyong'o's towering performance. I've seen many characterize Red as one of the best horror characters of all time, but I think restricting her to that villainous box misses the whole point. Red is a figure of immense empathy; if you think about the terrors she endured and suffered for so long, it's enough to give any human being nightmares. Nyong'o sells Adelaide's virtues and Red's anger, but that final switch complicates the dynamic beyond comprehension. On a second viewing, I found myself rooting for Adelaide's demise I wanted Red to take her revenge. Peele has created a film of blurry lines and crazy second-watch revelations, but in my murky, still-not-completely-solidified opinion, Us is, above all else, a film about hierarchy and class. So, the best conclusion I can offer is this.
Out there in the world, there is someone just like us. They are, of course, very different, but also strikingly similar. They have suffered while we triumphed, toiled while we celebrated, and cried while we cheered. We barely know this person, so we think we're absolved of the pain and the suffering. But maybe we aren't. So who's the real bad guy when push comes to shove?
THE FINAL GRADE: A (9.4/10)
Images: Universal/IMDb
There is a darkness at the heart of America.
It has lurked and toiled below the surface of the country, waiting for a chance to return. And now, it is finally ready to come back, to wreak havoc and take its revenge on society. That darkness is quintessentially American; it is a part of every one of us. But if this darkness, this evil enemy of American society, is making its return in the hopes of creating chaos, we are equally prepared to do what we have to do to fight it. We are on the righteous side of the war, fighting for innocent people who did nothing to deserve such a grisly fate.
But what if we're wrong? What if this darkness, this oppressed army of our own creation, actually has the moral upper hand? What if the clear-cut, unambiguous nature of our position is actually revealed to be folly? We are one of them, just as they are one of us. Good and bad are tethered together
From this thematic set-up, Jordan Peele's Us is born, a film in which the writer/producer/director himself claims to be addressing the notion that "[w]e are our own worst enemy." That's a great catchphrase to sell a film, but what is this story actually trying to say? What's the greater symbolic significance? After Get Out's devotion to an overarching metaphor about white liberalism and cultural appropriation, what is the central message of Us? What does it all mean?
At a certain point, there's only one conclusion to be made: Jordan Peele is kinda messing with you.
Though I certainly did come away with more specifically critical things to say about Us, everything circles back to the idea that Peele is toying with his viewers. Even as I've deliberately avoided reading many in-depth pieces prior to writing my own, it's impossible to be a card-carrying member of Film Twitter without noticing how many different interpretations have hit the web in response to Peele's much-awaited follow-up to Get Out. Some have insisted that the highly controversial ending muddles the film's thematic impulses beyond comprehension, while others have suggested that Us is reckoning with topics ranging from assimilation to double consciousness. In a widely shared and acclaimed article from Shadow and Act, Brooke Obie suggests that the film is ruminating on issues of "perspective" and the cyclical nature of "deadly silence."
All of these observations are valid and correct; I have yet to encounter a theory that I believe to be missing the mark or stretching Peele's film in unreasonable ways. Much like the logo used in the same trailer Obie highlights as a possible source of clues, Us is a Rorschach test
Decades later, adult Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o), her husband Gabe (Winston Duke), and their two kids, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex), are heading on a trip to their quiet beach house. By all accounts, this is a typical family vacation
Late at night, after Adelaide has spilled her secretive past to her husband, Jason walks into his parents' bedroom. His next words change everything: "There's a family in our driveway." And as Gabe quickly sees, Jason is dead-on
When it comes to playing with his audience like a master manipulator, Jordan Peele is better than any filmmaker working today. Maybe it's just because both of my viewings took place in a theater with a large percentage of college students, but there's a palpable sense of orchestration and control at every turn, an understanding of what makes each viewer tick. Peele knows when to keep pushing, when to make a joke, or when to deploy his biggest twists, further pulling each and every viewer into his grasp. It was an immense pleasure to see an audience so enamored by an original and unconventional experience (you expect this stuff at the Marvel and Star Wars movies), so drawn in that each and every clap, cheer, and scream felt earned.
It is admittedly difficult to make explicit comparisons to Hitchcock after only two films, but beyond his more obvious allusions, what marks Peele as a distinctly Hitchcockian horror filmmaker is his ability to generate suspense and fear in a manner that feels playful and fun. So many horror films these days, with James Wan's Conjuring-verse at the forefront of the madness, tend to make the jump scare the main attraction; setpieces build to the big jump, then the film always slows back down. Peele is a different kind of filmmaker, where each scare and propulsive burst of nightmarish energy accumulates like a snowball effect, pushing the narrative into twistier, more deranged territory. That's not to say that Us isn't a scary or creepy film, but the bloody attacks and the sudden jumps are characterized by laughter and popcorn blockbuster-style extravagance rather than terror; it's part of the reason Peele's films are palatable even to audiences that hate horror films.
On the level of narrative scale and technical ambition, Us is clearly a massive step up from Get Out. Mike Gioulakis' cinematography has been rightly praised, but let me add to the acclaim by saying that this has to be one of the most gorgeously lensed popcorn movies in a long time; the images are rich and vibrant, mixing this sun-drenched, sweat-filled aesthetic with enough gory ugliness to make for an oddly perfect match. Perhaps the imagery is just more immediately noticeable this time, since Peele is taking a chance on a number of bigger, splashier action scenes, all of which work like a charm. The obvious standout is the home invasion set to The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" and NWA's "F*ck Tha Police," a funny, terrifying centerpiece that brings the disparate threads of action together for a midpoint crescendo. Of course, there's also the final duel between Red and Adelaide, a sequence defined by its unusual, striking style of montage, which effortlessly threads the needle between past and present, good and evil. Peele and Gioulakis deserve all the credit in the world, but editor Nicholas Monsour is a huge part of this equation as well.
Which brings us back to the ending. When you have the audience eating out of the palm of your hand, it's easy to mislead them
Ultimately, Peele is aware of the audience's desire to search for a single, concrete meaning of his film, a theory or an explanation that will put all the pieces in place and explain everything. It's about Trump! It's about social rebellion! It's about *insert important issue here*! The final twist is an attack on the spectator who believes they have figured everything out, who put together a theory as they were watching, only to see it get turned upside down. Get Out certainly fit into this box of playful theorizing. Us does not, because in its own bizarre way, it is about everything and nothing at once. Someone could watch this movie and come away with nothing. Another person could see it as a definitive portrait of 2019. Others could place the Tethered as representations of something specific. If, as Obie says in her piece, the ending is about "perspective," then the whole film is about questioning our own limitations, our own interpretations, and ultimately, our own myopic shortcomings. It's an attack on perceiving the world in binaries
So what did I take away from the film as a whole? Well, there's certain things that I believe aforementioned pieces have explained better than I ever could. But the film lingered in my brain and haunted me for several days afterwards, partially because of Nyong'o's towering performance. I've seen many characterize Red as one of the best horror characters of all time, but I think restricting her to that villainous box misses the whole point. Red is a figure of immense empathy; if you think about the terrors she endured and suffered for so long, it's enough to give any human being nightmares. Nyong'o sells Adelaide's virtues and Red's anger, but that final switch complicates the dynamic beyond comprehension. On a second viewing, I found myself rooting for Adelaide's demise
Out there in the world, there is someone just like us. They are, of course, very different, but also strikingly similar. They have suffered while we triumphed, toiled while we celebrated, and cried while we cheered. We barely know this person, so we think we're absolved of the pain and the suffering. But maybe we aren't. So who's the real bad guy when push comes to shove?
THE FINAL GRADE: A (9.4/10)
Images: Universal/IMDb
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