Us (2019)

Film: Us (2019)
Stars: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Elisabeth Moss
Director: Jordan Peele
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Two years ago Jordan Peele changed the game of horror with his Oscar-winning Get Out, a movie that combined mainstream horror filmmaking with a genuine conversation about race in America.  Horror has been taking this sort of prestige detour for decades, but I can't think of another director that did so in such a successful, commercial way while also maintaining prestige (it was nominated for Best Picture, one of only six horror films to ever gain such a distinction).  With Us, Peele had the seemingly impossible task of trying to followup a zeitgeist film that some declared a landmark, and pretty much everyone proclaimed a cut-above.  Could he find a recipe to craft together an equally impressive film, or was this destined for sophomore slump?

(Spoilers Ahead...and I mean it) The film unfolds in a few different patterns, and it's hard to discuss without getting into clear spoilers, so we're just going to dive right in.  Essentially the film tells the story of Adelaide, a young girl who as a child was briefly lost and supposedly met a girl who looked just like her in a mirror funhouse.  This caused her to be traumatized and not be able to talk for a while.  As an adult (Nyong'o), she's going back to the cabin and the beach where this happened with her husband Gabe (Duke) and their two children Zora (Joseph) and Jason (Alex).  That night, doppelgängers of the family show up on their doorstep in creepy red outfits, and begin to terrorize the family, essentially trying to kill and replace them.  These doppelgängers, referred to as tethereds, don't speak save for Adelaide's, whom the credits refer to as Red, but tell of a story where they lived in underground tunnels and spent their lives mirroring exactly what was happening above ground (a heinous thought if you think about it for longer than two seconds, not least of which because all they had to eat was raw rabbit).  Eventually each of the tethereds are destroyed by their above-ground counterparts, but not before we understand that Adelaide, the adult Adelaide, is not in fact the little girl who was in the funhouse but her tethered, who broke free and replaced Adelaide, something Jason discovers on the ride away, as the tethereds begin to recreate Hands Across America.

There's a lot more there (I skipped over the entire subplot of a boozy Elisabeth Moss, who plays the couple's friend, being terrorized and completely acing her work as the tethered), but that's enough for us to discuss.  The big question here is how you judge a film like Us when it comes to its screenplay, which is taut and well-executed, but super easy to guess.  In an era that prizes the shocks and jumps (not just in horror or film-look at a TV show like Game of Thrones or Westworld and most of the conversation is about the shocking twists that are about to emerge), is it a debit against the film that you can see the entire story coming a mile away?  I figured out almost within the opening scenes that the Adelaides would swap...but ultimately didn't really think it mattered since the film was finely structured.  I had this same problem with Get Out, but I actually liked Us better because it feels more confident in damning the players, and freer to give us a richer background to the characters themselves.  Still, one has to wonder what Peele could do with a screenplay that was genuinely a guessing game.  That might not be the point for Peele (the film is a clear & sharp metaphor for classism in modern society), but I think his best film might still be to come if he sticks to the horror genre, as one that's a genuine guessing game AND well-executed could be more interesting.

The two best attributes of the movie are the acting and the score.  Duke is hilarious as a "hot, but very much 'dad joke' dad," and as I said above Moss is terrific in her small part.  Best of all is Nyong'o, who gives her finest performance to date as Adelaide (but more so as Red), altering her voice, clearly finding physicality as a former dancer, and creating two very distinct journeys for her characters.  The scene in the underground classroom, where she faces off against herself, two different women shaped by their own desire to live, is staggeringly good.  It's aided by a mesmerizing score from Michael Abels, instantly iconic in a way few musical scores are able to achieve.  It's hard to tell what kind of Oscar history a sophomore effort will do (it's still a horror film), but if anyone gets cited it's likely to be either Nyong'o or Abels come next January.