Film Review: "Us" (2019).

"A new nightmare from the mind of Academy Award Winner Jordan Peele, writer/director of Get Out comes" Us. This horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele. Accompanied by her husband, son and daughter, Adelaide Wilson returns to the beachfront home where she grew up as a child. Haunted by a traumatic experience from the past, Adelaide grows increasingly concerned that something bad is going to happen. Her worst fears soon become a reality when four masked strangers descend upon the house, forcing the Wilsons into a fight for survival. When the masks come off, the family is horrified to learn that each attacker takes the appearance of one of them.

After being dismayed by the "genre confusion" of Get Out (2017), Peele opted to make a full-on horror film as his next project. Peele has said that an inspiration for Us was The Twilight Zone episode "Mirror Image" that was centered on a young woman and her evil doppelgänger. In early May 2018, the title for the film was announced as Us. In late July, principal photography began, and wrapped in early October under the pseudonym Deep Cuts. Prior to filming, Peele gave the cast ten horror films to watch so they would have "a shared language" when filming: Dead Again (1991), The Shining (1980), The Babadook (2014), It Follows (2014), A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), The Birds (1963), Funny Games (1997), Martyrs (2008), Let the Right One In (2008), and The Sixth Sense (1999). Filming primarily took place throughout Los Angeles, especially in Pasadena and Santa Cruz, California, including the Santa Cruz Beach Broadwalk. For the Boardwalk, the filmmakers did not need to do much work on it, as many games and rides are originals going far back as the 1910's. Also, indeed there is an underground tunnel system under The Boardwalk, though it is mostly used for storage and as a shelter in case of any emergency. The hall of mirrors was specifically created for the film as one doesn't not actually exist on the beach. During filming, the rides were all filled with dummies, then CGI was used to create moving people. For Adelaide's doppelgänger's voice, Nyong'o based it on Robert F. Kennedy Jr and his spasmodic dysphonia. The visual effects are provided by Industrial Light & Magic. After scoring Peele's Get Out, Michael Abels was tapped to provide the film's score.

The film's core concept of doppelgängers (or the Tethered, in this case) has been likened to "urban legends" and "xenophobic paranoia about the Other" by numerous critics. This links to the definition of doppelgängers as a non-biologically related look-alike or double of a living person, sometimes portrayed as a ghostly or paranormal phenomenon and usually seen as a harbinger of bad luck. Other traditions and stories equate a doppelgänger with an evil twin. In modern times, the term "twin stranger" is occasionally used. The film contains references to Jeremiah 11:11, which reads: "Therefore this is what the Lord says: 'I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them.'" In addition to Jeremiah 11:11 being seen written on a sign twice , the numbers 11:11 appear frequently throughout this film. When Gabe is watching a baseball game on TV, the announcer says that the game is tied 11-11. When Addie and Jason are talking in his room, the digital clock reads 11:11 pm. Also, a carnival worker in 1986 and one of the twins in the present day both wear a T-shirt for the band Black Flag, the logo of which consists of four vertical black bars that resemble the number 1111.

The film stars Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Elisabeth Moss, and Tim Heidecker. The cast gave terrifically nuanced and terrifying performances that convey strong character development throughout. The film belongs to Nyong'o and her traumatized and sombre filled portrayal of the matriarch of the Wilson family as they are thrusted in a terrifying scenario. The film's ace in the hole is the warmth and comedic appeal generated by Duke's happy-go-lucky patriarch, Gabe. Joseph and Alex's portrayal(s) is a perfect balancing act: Zora and Jason are your typical, average African-American kids, yet their doppelgängers are completely detached from humanity with the murders they commit; unemotional yet animalistic, as well as analytical, violent, patient, and savage.

Peele's Us is a brutal, relentlessly grimy shocker with taut performances, slick horror moments, and a haunting finale. The film has the most haunting finale since Rod Serling's original iteration of The Twilight Zone, which Peele is fittingly reviving for a new generation. The only thing missing is Serling's (or Peele's) opening and/or closing narration. For nearly every film with a Twilight Zone-esque scenario, some parts of the film recall the words of Serling, who may be the first man in mainstream media that dared us to wonder and question the reality we are in. The film stands as one of the most complex and disturbing entries in the horror genre since Hereditary (2018). The film is terrifying and bonkers in a good and entertaining way. The reason to see this film, which is decidedly not for the faint of stomach or mind, is not for the punishment of the fear of "the other", but the many virtues of Peele and company's contributions. The sunny and seemingly mundane background in Peele's terrifying shocker feels a little like the atmosphere Kubrick created in The Shining (1980), a real world with its seemingly normal, mundane and unsuspecting atmosphere with dark secrets and dread hiding in the shadows and/or underground, and that sure makes me think that the film is one of the foremost horror movies of modern times. The film is about the magnitudes of xenonphobic paranoia about the Other, how we are, and should be, afraid of the shadows when yet it is really our darker selves lurking in the shadows. Watching it in a cinema that day, I felt the fear of the dark and what could be hidden.

Simon says Us receives:

Also, see my review for Get Out.