acid reflects

Fresh off the success of Get Out and with the new Twilight Zone series on the horizon, Jordan Peele is fast establishing himself as one of the most exciting filmmakers of late. #Us firmly restates that observation.

Us
Directed by Jordan Peele
R16

The bottom line: A high-concept nightmarish reinvention of the American Dream, when it is turned inside out using a very big and sharp pair of scissors.

What starts off as a typical summer weekend trip to the beach in Santa Cruz for the Wilsons turns into a gruesome, horrific nightmare by nighfall as Adelaide’s mysterious past catches up on her and her family with very disturbing consequences.

For most of the film, it is the stuff of nightmares indeed as it is rife with disturbing images and a cautionary message to remind everyone to lock our doors and windows at night for the rest of our lives.

The beautiful, the talented Lupita Nyong’o carries the entire film both as the mother determined to save her children from this horror and as the creepy crazy doppelganger in red jumpsuits and the bigass scissors whom we definitely don’t want to see suddenly appearing in our living rooms. Nope, nope, nope. But the rest of the talented cast shine as well (Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex as the Winstons) and Elizabeth Moss’s voiceless screaming scene is just incredibly done.

Kudos, too, to the film’s music, photography and editing.

The film’s creepiest are all lumped in the first act – mostly what we’ve seen in the trailers. As the film mystery unravels, it is interesting to see Peele toying with slasher film tropes, slicing in some humor from time to time. Really interesting stuff. However, I must register my dissatisfaction with the film’s third and final act. The mechanics of the story requires some explanation at some point, but lumping it at the end through a narration seemingly betrays the care and detail that the filmmakers have wrought prior to that point. It’s almost a, “What, now?” moment, thowing the last few scenes back into cheesy trope territory. But still with some layered meaning.

It may require several viewings to peel off these multiple layers and commentary that Peele heaped on this tale – not counting how many film genres he seems to have mashed together – but there’s no arguing the obvious that the filmmaker wants viewers to rethink their notions of safety and fear, in these days that terror may not necessarily come from outside but from within.

The flipside is that the film wants us to fear fear again. Best to check if you still have antidepressants in the medicine cabinet.

It’s not surprising that Peele caps the film off with the uppity song Les Fleurs from 4Hero (one of the tracks that I loved listening to back in college.) The song’s animated music video shows society’s underbelly turning things around (making the world colorful) after receiving powers from a mysterious flower (possibly a psychotropic drug.) As if America can’t smoke weed enough.

Do catch Us this weekend.

Trailer here: https://youtu.be/hNCmb-4oXJA
Images and trailer link from Universal Pictures.