Us

Movie, 2019, R

Premise - A family of four goes on vacation to their summer home, a place where the mother Adelaide has PTSD from an eerie encounter as a child. While Adelaide is eager to leave, the rest of the family doesn't believe anyone is after her, until they are confronted by a family of look-a-likes determined to kill them.

Review - I don't get it.

I HATE having to read film explanations. I can figure out a film for myself, thank you. I sure as hell spend enough time thinking about films. But this one... I left the theater and immediately went on google and searched, "Us movie explained." And even after reading some articles from the director himself, I still don't really get it.

There doesn't necessarily have to be something to "get" for a film to be a success. It could be horror for horror's sake and that would be sufficient enough. It is a very creepy premise, the idea of being hunted and killed by your own doppelganger, who looks just like you except evil, wearing red, and holding a pair of very sharp scissors. That makes for great horror.

But knowing this director, there absolutely is something that we are expected to get out of this. Jordan Peele also wrote and directed Get Out, which I loved, and had a lot to say about modern day race relations, even among those who find themselves to be tolerant of black people. Considering that the protagonist family is black, I had incorrectly assumed that this was also a story about race. I continued to think that for a while into the movie, especially when the film opens to a shot of several cages of white rabbits, with only a few dark ones. I didn't realize that perhaps it wasn't a race relations movie during the scene where we see the white family also has doppelgangers trying to kill them, as does the rest of the world. Race may play a part in the greater picture, but it is much more about inequality and classism in general. And the rabbits? I'm not really sure, maybe it was just something to do with the fact that they were all in cages and their lives somewhat dismissed by the government? Maybe?

How I would understand this film is that their doppelgangers aren't supposed to represent THEM exactly, but someone who could have been them. For every person living well in the United States, there is another human being just the same, who is systematically underprivileged. I think that's emphasized when Adelaide asks the doppelgangers who they are, and they just say, "We're Americans." I like this understanding.

But that leaves quite a bit unexplained. Why is each person and their "tether" linked so closely, in looks and in actions? Another approach would be to say it's about how there is a shadow inside everyone, a dark side to ourselves, but that is more of an exploration into the nature of individuals rather than society. It just doesn't fit at all into what I thought perhaps it was saying about classism, so I'm just confused.

Not to mention the ending, which is the most confusing of all. We find out that Adelaide and her "tether" Red switched places as a young child. So the ENTIRE movie, our protagonist was a tether and I JUST DON'T GET IT. Did she know?? Did she not know?? How do you not know you spent the first 6 years of your life underground?? And maybe that means the girl who was stuck underground spent her whole life trying to bring all the other tethers above ground, and that makes sense, but... why couldn't she just leave if she had control over herself?? And why does she look at her son so weirdly at the end?? Does he know?? How would he know?? He can't be a tether himself because he controlled his tether into killing himself?? I mean what?? I read that Jordan Peele explained the ending to say, "Maybe WE'RE the monster." I guess I would interpret that to mean Adelaide lifted herself into privilege and gave herself a better life, but in order to do so, she had to push someone else down into the sewer, and Red appropriately wanted her revenge. Maybe...

Why are they all wearing red and holding scissors??? How are all these doppelgangers still getting created if the government realized this was a failed experiment generations ago?? There are too many holes left unexplained. Explanations aren't needed to make social commentary, because it can be felt on a more poetic level rather than a literal one. But I do want the explanations just to feel as though there was some concrete narrative I was watching. I was just too confused.

Beautifully shot though. Great music, very stylistically reminiscent of Get Out. The sudden onset of dystopia was a bit similar to the origin story in Birdbox, but the family element reminded me of A Quiet Place. I would say this film is much more frightening than any of the films I previously mentioned though. Definitely one of the scariest films I've seen in theaters if not the scariest. But that's not due to the content of the film, as a lot of the suspense was manipulated by adding music to innocuous events. I think everything, content and style included, was a bit of a stretch for what it was trying to achieve. (63/100)

Quote - "Ophelia, call the police!" "Ok, playing Fuck the Police by N.W.A" [Ophelia being this film's terribly incompetent version of Alexa]

What to watch for - There are a couple of fantastic shots. I would say just enjoy the film for the aesthetic of it.

If you liked this film, I'd recommend A Quiet Place!

Directed by Jordan Peele
Distributed by Universal Pictures