Us
Year: 2019
Rating: R
Length: 116 minutes / 1.93 hours
I’ve been reluctant to jump on the Jordan Peele bandwagon. This has mostly been because I rarely watch horror films. What initially won me over was the social commentary Get Out (2017) provided. NOPE (2022) was an interesting take on alien films that spoke to the inherently violent nature of animals. With these two movies in mind, I finally filled in the gap and watched Us (2019). Unfortunately, my lack of desire to watch this film when it came out seems to have been justified as I ask, “What was the point?”
I don’t want to spoil too much, but the twist was pretty easy to spot quite early on. Once the premise became clear, the movie seemed to be an excuse to just have the characters fight each other to the death—sometimes in the bloodiest way possible. Even the ending didn’t seem to be anything profound unless I’m missing something deeper that was lost through the ridiculous concept that this movie tries to sell. That there’s no explanation for anything other than “this exists, isn’t that weird?” really doesn’t help.
One of the best elements of Peele’s other films was the suspense and build-up. While there was some suspense in Us, there wasn’t a lot of it once the violence started. This is probably due to the lack of understandable motive that I already discussed above. I still think Jordan Peele’s movies have some merit, but after watching Us, I think they’re a bit hit-or-miss right now. My reluctance to see everything he puts out might still be less now that I’ve seen everything he’s put out, but I’ll also keep some of that skepticism until I see what others think first.
An odd concept with no real explanation, I give Us 2.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
