31 Days of Halloween: Us

2019, Jordan Peele (Get Out) -- download

Wandering through the dross, leaving the ones I know I will enjoy to be scattered amidst the rest, so I cannot just end up feeling apathetic about this whole yearly endeavour. Oh dear, even with that sentence I guess I can say that even a fan who enjoys even just the concept of horror movies can be weighed down by just the boredom of much of the genre.

*shake it off*

Jordan Peele comes almost with his follow-up to the pretty much perfect Get Out. While not in the calibre of his debut, it again shows off his fondness for horror and even the whole Twilight Zone affection, which, I guess, is why he is the new Rod Serling? This movie, is like an episode of said show expanded into a full run, with only a slight hint at having stretched too thin.

Typical Middle Class family (this time he dispenses with black social commentary and just gives us a family) made up of Winston Duke (Black Panther), Lupita Nyong'o and their two kids (Shahadi Wright Joseph & Evan Alex) are heading to the summer house for a deserved vacation. Something tense is going on, mom being nervous and depressed about something. Dad is just trying to make it OK.

Oh, noteworthy preamble about mom, as a kid, getting lost on a beach front boardwalk and running into her mirror doppelganger. Afterwards she is just not right.

Speaking of just not right. Lupita presents us with someone who is more than just depressed or introverted. You can see her trying, trying to interact, trying to connect with other people, but eventually giving up, preferring to just be her alone self instead of faking it. That is something to be said of many introverts, even if we don't have a dark trauma in our past.

And then they show up. The movie goes from tense to tense when a quartet of people dressed in red jumpsuits appear in the driveway and see entry to the house. Instantly we learn they are twisted versions of the family them-self. Agenda? Who knows, but escape is on the table. This is where we see Lupita come out of her malaise, to take control, to protect her family, to violently defend. The middle act of the movie is wonderfully tight and nerve-wracking

And then things get even weirder. This is where we enter the Twilight Zone. There are more than just THOSE doppelgangers. There seems to be an emergence of MANY, at least one for each person in this town, if not all America. And they are killing each and every one of their originals. While I can say that this might have an example of over-explaining a weird plot element, I like that Peele went from chilling to weird & absurd. This was right down my wheelhouse, to mix my metaphors as I am wont to do.