Our screen critic dives beneath the creepy surface
The wonderful thing about film is its duality. A good film is always about something, but it’s also about something else. Just like other art forms, there are themes to be found, characters to be deconstructed, choices to be analyzed.
One of the complaints about film criticism I frequently hear is that critics can never just let a movie be a movie, e.g. they can’t just disconnect and enjoy what’s happening on screen.
It’s a fair complaint, I suppose, but I always wonder about those that can turn off the thinking parts of their brain at will. Why would you want to do that?
Thinking is what separates us from the brutality of emotion and allows us to see just how something is constructed and why. It allows us to make judgments and engage with our surroundings.
If you turn your brain off when experiencing a piece of art, you’re missing the some very important parts of the it. Even terrible films like those found in the Transformers franchise can reveal truths about the world—just watch few Lindsey Ellis videos on YouTube.
There will be people plenty of people who will enjoy Us, Jordan Peele’s latest film, as a simple horror movie. It is that, in some respects, although it’s a particularly well made horror movie. But there is so much going on below the surface of the film that it requires multiple viewings to effectively describe.
Peele’s previous horror film, Get Out, took the common feeling of social anxiety and combined it with the fear of white people in large groups, something that is largely unknown for anyone not belonging to a traditionally marginalized group. Yet, because of clever filmmaking and script writing, Get Out had a wide appeal and set Peele in motion to be something of an auteur in the horror genre (not that horror is short on auteur filmmakers—horror has long been a standout genre for truly talented directors).
By that token, Us has a much broader audience and speaks to a universal truth—not just that mirrors and twins are creepy as hell. Humans are instinctively afraid of the other. In fact, this fear fuels much of Republican policy at the highest levels. Anyone who is different must be dangerous. This idea is highly emotional and easy to exploit, as we can see play out in the news every day.
Fanning the flames of this fear has led to a significant increase in white supremacist groups, domestic terror attacks, and detention camps for children. Us very much uses this fear of the other, but combines it with a fear of the self.
The doppelgangers in the film look nearly identical to the protagonists, but they are damaged versions whose behaviors and motivations couldn’t be more different.
The characters can see the other in themselves and come to understand that maybe the potential for evil isn’t based on anything inherent, but instead on the circumstances surrounding one’s birth. The other is the self, essentially. What we really fear are the things that we are but can’t admit.
This is, of course, just one reading of the film. Others can include warnings about the domination of the underclass by the middle and upper classes or institutional use of our basest selves as a means of control. I’m sure there are others that I haven’t even thought of. These ideas are what makes Us such a fascinating film.
Across the board, performances are top notch, with the careful acting by Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke, who fall easily into place as both halves of a self. One of the things I appreciate about Peele’s filmmaking is how he relies far more on tension than gore to create his scares. Peele is making thrillers in the style of Alfred Hitchcock rather than a Sam Raimi/Evil Dead bloodbath, and while both have their charms, I prefer the former simply because it seems harder to do well.
In any event, Us is well worth the price of admission. It’s another entry into the ever-expanding library of artful, prestige horror that has become the norm for horror films.
It also bodes well for Peele’s involvement in the 2019 reboot of the famous Rod Sterling anthology series The Twilight Zone.
If only CBS would broadcast the series rather than squirreling it away on CBS All Access, a proprietary streaming service known only for a mediocre Star Trek reboot. That’s wishful thinking, I suppose.
I guess there are two versions of CBS, too, and the darker one makes you pay for it.