Two years ago, Jordan Peele gave us the psychological revelation that was Get Out. Now he gives us Us and he has upped the ante. This is one of the most chilling, tense, and smartly conceived horror films I’ve seen in years.
It stars Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o as a woman who was traumatized by an event at a beachside carnival as a kid and now has her own family and they are planning to take a family vacation to yet another beach resort. Winston Duke is her husband and Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex are her kids.
They’re ready for some fun in the sun until one night they’re visited by a mysterious family and they find out that they’re doppelgangers of themselves.
The doppelgangers make their lives a living hell by tormenting them in every way imaginable, but fortunately this is a family that has their wits about them and it makes for some thoroughly frightening and even amusing sequences.
Peele definitely had his moments of Hitchcock inspired lunacy with Get Out and this time, that same lunacy is on overdrive particularly when we get to the climax and it’s a doozy that even Hitch himself would give kudos to.
Nyong’o delivers a magnetic performance as a woman trying to protect her family. Her character is another example of women in movies being the heroine instead of always the damsel in distress. Her role is complex, nuanced, and grabs your attention.
Peele knows how to masterfully craft a horror film with a sense of originality instead of merely giving us (no pun intended) a thriller that’s been cut from the same cloth.
I can’t wait to see what other concoctions are cooking inside his brilliantly twisted mind. Until then, Us gives us a new and refreshing standard of modern horror.
Grade: A
(Rated R for violence/terror, and language.)
