Us

When it is a director’s second, or sophomore movie, if you like, there is a lot of unfair pressure that finds people comparing the new work to the first one. Especially if that first work has set you up as the saviour of a particular genre, as was the case with Jordan Peele. Get Out was an excellent film for its type – a breath of fresh air, so they say, that subverted what a modern horror movie is and can be.

I actually don’t think Get Out deserves all the praise it gets, to be honest. Because Peele is not on his own in resurrecting dead ideas of what disturbs us, and I prefer both his main sophomore competitors: Ari Aster and Robert Eggers, of Hereditary/Midsommar and The Witch/The Lighthouse fame respectively. The Wasteland has already well documented this triumvirate of chillers, and perhaps only the man who produces the best third film will win the argument…

Not that Get Out isn’t great, in its way. It is. It has a lot to say in terms of social commentary, and plays very satisfyingly for tone, pace and momentum. It also has some wonderful performances at its heart. Which is the main thing that it shares with the less impressive, but equally ambitious Us.

Elisabeth Moss, who is racking up some very nice credits in recent years, is very watchable and sympathetic as the heroine of the tale forced into a survival situation. But it is the consistently superlative Lupito Nyong’o who shines most. Her ability to hold a moment is extraordinary! She has a chameleon quality as an actress, which when you see and understand the theme of this film is indispensable.

In the pivotal and most memorable early scene, her sheer presence and incredible voice fill the screen with dread and eerieness to an almost unbearable degree. It is a wow moment that lasts about 5 minutes. In that part of the film I was prepared to see something very special indeed. Sadly, the tension built so superbly is not maintained for long. In fact it is somewhat thrown away, and diluted by predictable tropes and simple chase scenes, rather than more moments of unique suspense, as it needed.

Note that I am not saying anything about the plot or the premise in any way here – on this occasion, even to explain the basic idea would be to spoil the experience from the start. Peele wants you to discover his themes as The “white” family are discovering them, to increase the creepiness and anxiety of it all. This works to a degree, but all too soon, I found, it becomes a mere slasher chase film, with little extra to say. Anything great about it happens in the first half hour. After that it is still watchable, just not amazing. Even the conclusion is a little flat, which is a rookie mistake if ever there was one.

I think Peele will have learned a lot from this film. Mostly that he can’t just create magic by willing it to exist. He has to hold the reigns a little tighter to create something of equal meaning to Get Out again. Perhaps it is a scripting issue as much as a directing issue, but he wrote it too, so there is no escaping the blame! Saying this, he still retains a lot of potential to go on and fix the things that didn’t work next time. And if he manages to string a good run together then this film will be very interesting to look back on as a cult movie that just misses the mark.

One thing I do like is how he uses images and names and colours etc. to create a larger puzzle within the film. The idea being that every detail is part of a bigger meaning. When reading about the film afterwards, I was surprised and thrilled to learn there were so many intentional nods to a theme and mythology beyond what I had already grasped. Something that is also true of Aster and Eggers, as if this approach is what the new Horror movement is based on – enough background detail to be able to revisit many times and geek out over later on fan forums.

The first thing to debate, and perhaps the last, is the title. Now that does deserve a round of applause. Let’s talk about that privately later… See this movie for Moss and especially Nyong’o, and that one astonishing scene early on. Otherwise it’s a take it or leave it kind of thing.

Decinemal Rating: 66