This follow-up to Jordan Peele's highly successful hit horror movie Get Out (2017), is a solid, artistic horror tale that gives great attention to details and overall thematic.
The movie begins with a cheezy cold open, set in the 1980s, and using the 'stupid child' horror trope of yesteryears. Such a scene fits at the start of the movie as a nice little throwback to the horrors of the '80: both lowering your expectations and letting you indulge in nostalgia. But you do hope, afterwards, that the rest of the movie isn't going to be a cliché-filled ride of stacking horror tropes upon each other. Meaning: you want the rest of the movie to blow your socks off.
Trust me: US does...somewhat.
A distorted mirror
As the family members (The mother, father, daughter and young son) are introduced one thing is clear from the get-go. This family doesn't seem to fit in anywhere. It's not the silly caricatures of people they meet in the first few scenes that juxtapose them into the ‘outer realm’; they are already a bit anti-social to begin with. Not just the mother, but all of them!
Especially the father is overtly silly as a wannabe alpha male who is a tad unlikeable in his obvious attempt to manipulate his family into doing what he wants to do.
It’s a slightly off-key approach to characters that sets the stage for the arrival of the doppelgangers. Once they arrive there are even more distorted characters present than the main four the movie began with.
Upside/down
US basically becomes a home invasion movie in the first act. So there is no real build-up like Straw Dogs (1971) or even recent endeavours like Keep Watching (2016). Forty minutes of character introduction and BOOM! it happens.
This is interesting because it flips the expectations. Your internal clock knows that the movie only just started and now we are already at -what in many movies would be- the climax.
This allows for all the narrative tropes of the sub-genre you think were watching (the home invasion) to get turned upside down.
The mother, for instance, immediately goes into 'final act of a horror movie'-mode. No dillydallying, she immediately calls the cops and orders her children to put their shoes on. It’s a one woman show from then on. She instinctively knows what to do and within minutes of her becoming this person, you (the audience) trusts her in this role.
Near the end there is even a funny little inversion of the trope of the ‘hero kiss’.
The husband leans in and the mother is damned if she is going to waste precious time smooching when danger is lurking.
The children, in turn, quickly establish themselves as the opposite to many-a child in horror movies: they don’t huddle in a corner to cry: they fight back!
In the first two acts of this three-act story-each and every single trope we think we know gets turned upside down. Like a distorted mirror reflexion. We know what would happen in 'normality' but US brings us something else to enjoy, gleefully so.
It’s then to the dialogue to sprinkle some great (cold) humour on top (It's a horror movie after all so why not throw in some morbid humour.)
At one point the family is discussing murders as if they are deciding where to eat. It gives the movie a slight quirkiness that works with the already 'slightly out there' protagonists in this strange tale about ‘meeting your doppelgangers’.
Without spoiling too much ‘House, house, baby’ is a pretty accurate summary of the three acts of US. And it is the final act that apparently 'feels', as if it should-, after 90 minutes of turning things upside-down, shoehorn some logical storytelling into it all!
As a result this final act takes the more traditional approach (the motivation here is one out of textbook).
I'm being dismissive. But I shouldn't be. Read on...
As the final explanation scene happens the movie tries to bring this supernatural story to a grounded (possible) 'real' level that I didn't much care for. Sometimes not really knowing what the heck is going on is half the fun. Not every story needs to be tied up with a bow, especially not movies that deal with the occult and paranormal.
But still the finale works as a complement of the whole that came before it. This, because the movie hands the viewer a mystery that doesn’t need to be solved in the first place (doppelgangers killing people, why should I care about: why?). Yet, the mystery is solved in the end. It is this extra layer that makes US’s final act stand out.
The audience doesn’t need it. The audience certainly doesn’t expect it. And still the movie gives an explanation of what has gone before –an explanation which actually works!
"What's home alone?"
Telling a story by movie is not just a matter of showing a series of pictures. You need to play with what people see. US does this exemplary!
The first trick is the classic Chechov’s gun in both images and words. US shows the viewer a boat, a lighter and an ambulance. So you know for a fact that this is going to be used later on.
The same goes for verbal foreshadowing. The dad mentions how he hates that his smug friend tries to outdo him on every turn when it comes to success. So, of course, something is going to happen with this concept.
But then there are the things in the background. A VHS-tape of C.H.U.D. (1984). The colour red. The various T-shirts (and mask) the kids wear. The shadowspiel the movie plays with. A long (long) escalator.
Like the Jaws shirt.
Which rather fits because the movie uses a lot of shots that hide the evil from the protagonist at the time.
Like the swimmers couldn't see the big white shark.
Or the constant reference to Jeremiah 11:11 (which isn't the most positive Biblical reference to see in the movie; dealing with the lord's wrath and all).
I had to look it up in my copy -any movie buff has to have a Bible: Hollywood loves referencing to it.
All this combined gives the movie a well thought out ‘feel’. Like everything has meaning. The director and his crew didn’t just place some board-games in the closet. No! They handpicked them for thematic reference. This gives the audience the reassurance that every single shot in the movie is intentional (or Kubrick-al).
One could play quite a game picking this movie apart.
Slight Spoiler: Working with mirror images as a theme (as this movie obviously does)
it is fun to see those little things in the reflexion of the family.
The werewolf mask is an obvious one, or the fact that the boy never gets his lighter
to work whilst his copy can make fire in an instant.
The usage of sound in US is quite intriguing. The swish sound as the evil mother unsheathes her scissors. The way she speaks. I all adds to the suspense and insanity of it all.
One sound effect I truly enjoyed was the loud blast during the first real scene of terror. There’s a loud blast and then the movie waits for a second or two before showing the source. This is textbook suspense that is wasted in the hands of bad movie makers. They want the camera to show the source of the noise instantly. No, in US the movie lets us wait in fear for a moment before revealing what made that sound.
Then the movie brings with it a great suspenseful (at times a bit more artistic but very suitable) score. The music is invisible when it isn’t needed only to make a great operatic comeback when things start to become weird.
A smart track happens in the last act. As the situation needs to heighten the tension a track with hand-clapping kicks in making you feel that the somebody is watching you...constantly.
It was fun to hear that 4 hero –les fleurs over the credits.
I hadn't heard that song in years.
As the farther says halfway through the movie (to paraphrase): ‘ah a classic!’
Intermezzo: Agenda?
In this day and age every movie made by a female or an African-American is expected to refer to the struggle of their demographic. This is a new thing.
The best Pet Semetary (1989) was still directed by a woman. With –I think- no female agenda. No agenda I could see anyway.
Of course Jordan Peele previous movie Get Out was filled to the brim with references to the struggle between the White and the African-American community, or the financial classes. And yes this does appear in US as well. But less so than it did in Get Out and therefore US runs the risk of people (me) reading things into this movie that maybe aren’t there. For instance:
The movie opens with a reference to unused tunnels in the United States. My mind immediately made the connection between the Afro-American family and the underground railroad from the Civil war.
Also US can be read as the abbreviation for United States. Is the movie calmly stating that African-American’s are Americans too? And that the reference to theses escape tunnels symbolizes people escaping their oppressors and becoming equals (emphasized by the ‘holding hands’ commercial)?
In this sense it is interesting to see an African-American upper class family as protagonists. After centuries of racism, discrimination and dehumanization practices, this family today managed to break free from the oppressive forces. Yet the movie punishes them for it (in the same way as people like to say: ‘don't forget where you came from!’).
But maybe I'm reading into it too much because US is far less about discrimination than Get Out was. The class struggle is still in there, though. That’s obvious.
Where Peele's Get Out was basically a remake of The Stepford wifes (1975). US is, pretty much, a retelling of Invasion of the body snatchers (1956, 1978). My biggest critique on his part, therefore, is that he doesn't have an original spark of an idea for a movie. But, like Get Out, what he does with the original concept is vastly different.
Like the million version of Romeo and Juliet going around in cinema Peele merely uses the absolute stripped down core of an old horror classic and spins a completely new tale from it.
US is a movie full of thematic references, in-jokes and (probably) the tiniest bit of politics. And that’s even before you realize that you are also watching a very effective horror movie.
I wouldn’t call this movie a real drama though. The characters are all a bit too quirky to begin with to be fully relatable. But as terrific suspenseful movie that manages to give solid story with the occasional fright or two US is an instant classic.
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