The Story of Us

By Paul Go

A spoiler-cleansed review of Jordan Peele’s sophomoric directorial effort, Us

It’s remarkable, really.

Jordan Peele’s follow-up to the wildly successful Get Out starts with written statements about how the United States has a hollow foundation. Apparently, underneath us all snake tunnels of unknown purpose and number. Then the opening credits appear, superimposed on a rabbit, the most docile and vulnerable of animals. As actors’ and filmmakers’ names flicker in and out, the camera slowly zooms out. The rabbit isn’t alone. When Peele is revealed as writer and director, we are faced with a wall full of caged rabbits (only one of which is black). They meekly abide.

And the audience settles in. These two cryptic openings–of subterranean shadows and cuddly creatures–odd in their juxtaposition, nevertheless seem quite fitting. Of course the film should be framed by diverging ciphers.  We expect them to be decoded scene by agonizing scene. Of course when the plot finally kicks in, we expect the characters, the plot, the horror, the violence, the twists to dovetail into one central conceit. It’s all going to be allegorical for sure. Of course every frame of the film will become part of a sly social commentary, shocking but utterly recognizable.

So it’s truly astounding that in only his second feature film as director, Peele has already established his own brand of iconography. That’s how Get Out was so groundbreaking and indelible. It trademarked the slow, simmering creep; the revelation that screams hysteria; the terrible, demented set pieces that complement, emotionally, the satire on screen; the final secret that damns us all.

Fairly or not, Us must do no less.  

Much like many shockers, Us is set up by something from the past. Young Adelaide (Madison Curry), in 1986, goes into a hall of mirrors at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. There, she encounters someone who returns to her life some twenty-plus years later. In the present day, Adelaide (now Lupita Nyong’o) is married to Gabe Wilson (Winston Duke) and has two children, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex). We find her making a typical horror-movie-heroine mistake: she goes back to the location of her greatest trauma. After spending a seemingly harmless day at the beach, the Wilsons find themselves home invaded. As all the trailers of the film reveal, their interlopers are themselves. Or Bizarro versions of themselves.

This freakish scenario is what makes the snippets of what we’ve seen of Us before its release so compelling. The Wilsons’ doppelgangers are played by the same actors (though the doubles have their own names: Red, Abraham, Umbrae and Pluto). The movie seems to truck in what is real–any defilement of home is egregious–and what is supernatural. And the mirroring effect practically begs for some metaphorical pondering. Like the Wilsons, we are trapped but the truth will, you know.

So while Get Out is a slow burn, so to speak, Us is an immediate and constant conflagration. It is more insistent in its conceit and therefore more ambitious because of it.

The way Peele uses doubles and doubling is symptomatic of the far reach of his film. He is at once obvious: mirrors are everywhere, Adelaide’s head is pressed by Red against a fracturing glass table, the Wilson’s family friends, the Tylers, are also a family of four, their accoutrements (home, car, boat, music) are essentially the same, both boys wear masks. Yet Peele can use ellipses and remind us, later, of echoes we’ve unknowingly heard before: that ominous snapping of fingers, those spiders, that ambulance, that Hands-Across-America thing. The director’s perspective and methods are varied and wide. He can only get better.

What do all these repetitions mean? I wish I could tell you. Rest assured, they do mean something. And, in Peele-like fashion, not in any obvious or predictable way. Perhaps the replications aren’t perfect. Perhaps Adelaide and Red are tethered not by similarities but by differences. Perhaps “us” is “U.S.” Perhaps families aren’t supposed to be together. Perhaps they aren’t even meant to survive.

What was great about Get Out was that its horrific allegory thrummed with real tension and whimsy. Us, for all its double meanings, often felt stale and repetitive. Sure, you can admire the witty bourgeois choice of killing implements: a poker, a golf club, a geode but if they are used often enough and with the expected results, can the wit and symbolism make it through? The lack of excruciating scenes of suspense enervates the whole enterprise, which can only be sustained by accumulating terror.

Even the doppelgangers cannot create enough ghastliness. They lumber like zombies; they heave and roar like maimed bears; their faces are contorted in an unabashed parody of the originals’; except for Red and Pluto, they lack any kind of intelligence or cunning.

This makes the Adelaide/Red dynamic fascinating. Nyong’o is terrific. She plays Red as she plays Adelaide (but with the halting speech, abrupt movements and golden shears). Her face does not crease in mock threat; it is merely bland, wide-eyed, open to meaning. When she speaks, no matter that most of what she says is disappointingly expository, her cadence and diction provoke awe, impatience, dread and pity all at the same time. Despite her murderousness, Red seems capable of tenderness and even love. It is this two-facedness–juggled by Nyong’o–that is knee-buckling.

There are many things to admire about Us. Michael Abels’s score is a jarring but effective suite of opera and deranged pulses. Elisabeth Moss, as Kitty Tyler, is a welcome albeit disturbing sight. When “I Got 5 on It” reprises toward the end, it creates a nasty frisson.

Yet the more Us unspools, the more it seems to get away from Peele. His criticism may be spot on but his allegory a bit muddled and too open-ended. For all his world-building, there are too many puzzling and inconsistent moments. The film’s familiar scenes of shock and gore numb–and, most damning of all, don’t provide Us and its ideas with a much needed urgency.

Us is hardly a sophomoric slump by Jordan Peele. For all its faults, it should still make us excited about the further things Peele has to say. After all, his films–in all its weirdness and roundabout honesty–seem to be all about us.