Us (2019)

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1. 

   Siskoid

   There is a LOT going on in Us, much of it impossible to unpack if I want to keep spoilers to a minimum. At first, I thought Jordan Peele was going back to Get Out's intent, using the African-American experience to motivate horror tropes. The trailers claiming that we are our worst enemy, and the family's doubles dressed in orange prison jumpsuits set the tone for a play on "who we are vs. who racists think we are". In the imagery - which is replete with "doubling" motifs - there's something very much like Childish Gambino's "This Is America". Except it takes a different turn, and becomes about more than one ethnic group's experience. It's about a divided America (or insert whatever Western country you want), using an 80s symbol of unity turned into its opposite as one of the story's oddest (apparent) non sequiturs. As your perspective of the "doubling" changes, it raises new questions and targets of satire. Peele also indulges in some pretty original world-building (pointing the finger in decodable ways), and provides the suspense and disturbia we require of the genre. Perhaps at times, Us tries to do too much. It needs to show us US after all, and we're not simple people. The structure strains under its own weight, but everything pays off so well, I really don't mind. The biggest compliment I can pay it is that I would have watched that family on their vacation - living through personal comedies and tragedies - even if it hadn't been a horror film beyond the first act. 2 weeks 6 days ago
2. 

   samoan

   Good movie overall. Get out was better. Great ending. But not very scary. Also, there are a lot of plot holes in the film and parts that are never explained. If you haven't seen the movie, don't look at the spoilers ->

   Like why didn't the real Adelaide just leave the underground world? Why couldn't she talk normally, after all, she knew how to speak before she was forced to switch places and stay in the underground? Why did the copies kill random people and not just their originals? Why did some of them act human yet others act like animals, like the underground version of the son? How did the underground Adelaide get out if the escalator only goes down and she had to copy what the original one did? Why did they have to wait 30 years to come above ground and how did they know Adelaide and her family would be returning to the area then Why didn't they surface when she came back to visit grandma? Why did she agree to go back to the summer house if she knew what was waiting for her there? Also, why did they fix the closet door well before that night?

   3 weeks 5 days ago
3. 

   Paravail

   Kinda weak in my opinion. The movie seems to want to be a serious psychological thriller and a campy slasher at the same time. It even turns into a zombie film of sorts around the third act. There's a lot of genre confusion and it keeps the film from being particularly strong at anything.

   I think the big reveal at the end is what really undoes the movie. It's revealed that all the body doubles going around killing people are "tethered puppets" who live in this underground bunker where the only thing they get to eat is raw rabbit. That's a pretty weird concept. It's too specific to be creepy and mysterious, and too out there for people to accept at face value. If the story had been about a woman slowly going mad because she felt a double of herself was following her around, that would be effective psychological horror, since the monster, so to speak, is never explained. In Get Out, the idea of white people scooping out he brains of black people and replacing it with the brains of other white people is weird, but it's understandable. It's a concept you can readily accept. The whole underground puppet people eating rabbit thing is kinda the worst of both worlds.

   2 weeks 6 days ago

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