R, 1h 56m – Horror, Thriller
Opens Today
On the way to the press screening for director Jordan Peele’s new film “Us,” I experienced a rare (for me) nose bleed. An appropriate foreshadowing for a horror movie! Like a nose bleed, a scary film can be surprising, uncomfortable, horrific (depending on how you got it) and frustrating.
A lot of critics are fawning over Peele’s new film. While clever and brilliant on all of its technical, performance and sub-textual levels, I’m not quite there yet. I’m in the odd position where I am going to be a tad critical of a film that I quite liked, but there were a few issues stopping me from giving it an excellent review. The first hour of the film is amongst the strongest and most brilliant I’ve seen in a horror picture in years, but the moment the family deals with their first horrific sequence the film falls into similar tropes and plant playoffs (a technique where information is given early on, then brought back and paid off in the story later) that your average horror/thriller falls into, just done much more effectively and intellectually. This is a clever film steeped in social commentary and politics, but unlike “Get Out,” the commentary is below the surface. It just lost a bit of steam for me in the mid-section of the film.
Casting by Peele and casting director collaborator Terri Taylor is strong as always. The family, played by Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke as Adelaide and Gabe Wilson and Shahadi Wright and Joseph Evan Alex children Zora and Jason, respectively, are top notch. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lupita got nominated for this performance. She was excellent, even if the Academy Awards likes to ignore great horror film performances. Elisabeth Moss (“The West Wing,” “Mad Men,” “The Handmaid’s Tale”) also makes an appearance with Tim Heidecker as friends of our hero family, but it is here that the film gets off track. A second act sequence at Moss’ character’s home is wholly unnecessary and repeats several beats from earlier in the film. Peele could have easily cut out 20 minutes here and ended up with an extraordinarily tight and effective thriller.
The film is being pushed as a straight up horror film, but it leans into thriller territory more after the initial scares wear off. Is it creepy? Yes. Scary? Only for a short while. There is a good amount of comedy that gives the dialog some brevity as well, but it sometimes outweighs its welcome when you are waiting for some frights.
As I mentioned earlier, the technical aspects of this film are excellent. The cinematography by Mike Gioulakis (“Glass”) is a high point, and mixes well with the shot selection by Peele. Also of note is the superb Hitchcockian-style music by composer Michael Abels. If this is really the man’s second feature film as composer, he’s going to be nominated for Oscars pretty early on in his career.
The film is clever in that it can have several interpretations. Some obvious, some ambiguous, and some buried deep beneath the surface, requiring the audience to really consider what they are watching.
That is all well and good and something I can celebrate while watching a film. My issue lies on not just understanding a films subtext but the effectiveness of the action on screen, and what I can say is once the first hour’s shine wore off, my mind wandered a bit. A ten minute monologue by the antagonist to explain away the film’s surprise ending didn’t help matters either. Some things are best left a tad more mysterious. I saw that sleight of hand coming a mile away.
All in all, it is a damn good film that probably requires another viewing to let the impact wash over some viewers, but my initial thoughts walking out of the theater were that we just saw a brilliant filmmaker who pushed a clever idea as far as it could go without getting it quite over the top due to it’s slow second act.
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