Review of Us (2019) by Donnyjepp — 07 Apr 2019

While above the (admittedly low) bar for Western horror/thriller offerings and by no means a sign of Peele falling off as a director, Us is likely to disappoint fans of Get Out hoping to see another masterful blend of social commentary and terror.

Stellar acting is hampered by deliberate character ambiguity regarding the motives of the doubles; the movie flip flops between musing over the humanism of these "monsters" and elsewhere reducing them to mindless zombies.

Unfortunately, this insistence on both having and eating the cake comes at a cost to the otherwise very compelling metaphor underpinning the film, and turns what should be a jaw-dropping final twist into a brow-furrowing moment of discontent.

Peele's social commentary is at times outstanding, and Us also has plenty of truly excellent horror moments, but these two things as a rule never occur in the same scene. Us hits all the bases for modern Western psychological horror (regretfully, even the "enormous unexplained plot holes" base) but the ambition of Peele's concept is held back by his inability to execute it gracefully.

The same movie would be much better without amateurish hallmarks like ham-fisted dad jokes, ambiguous sci-fi cop-outs, and immersion-breaking monologues explaining enormous portions of plot.