‘Us’ Is a Masterful Horror and Racial Allegory

Five years later, Jordan Peele’s second horror outing stands as one of the most innovative and shocking horror movies of a generation

Credit: Universal Pictures

To follow up on a critically acclaimed masterpiece like Get Out was such an ambitious task that director Jordan Peele jokingly asked for leeway to make a bad movie or two following the seismic success of that directorial debut. With the 2019 release of Us, though, it quickly became clear to viewers that the young visionary director had slain his competition twice in a row with his first foray into the slasher genre.

Creating a film that paralleled the first in terms of fear factor alone would already have been impressive. But more challenging still was prying open the coffin of his horror career and securing the crowbar inside of it before it slammed shut. On almost every account, Peele succeeded. Reprising the ingeniously biting brand of racial commentary that signified his first film, he effectively cemented his place as one of the top creators within the genre.

But Peele expertly succeeded in fitting the movie into the intersecting terrain of that Venn diagram. The social commentary is as pointed as before, but never for a moment feels at the expense of the story told. Where the first movie is direct in its racial undertones, Us stands as more of an allegory to racial disparity and segregation. The political statement isn’t immediately apparent, and it’s not until the final act that the theme becomes clear to viewers. Where Get Out is more overt in its messaging, Us is subtle.

The movie follows the Wilson family, portrayed by Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Evan Alex, and Shahadi Wright Joseph, as they’re pursued by a group of nefarious doppelgangers, known as the “Tethered.” Just as Get Out comes to life in the realism of characters and their interplay between one another, the family Peele depicts in this second movie is every bit as believable.

One of the film’s most distinguishing characteristics is the sheer lengths that its actors had to go in making the story convincing — playing not only themselves, but their evil opposites. The presence that each of their adversaries strike is different enough that viewers could easily be forgiven for believing it was twins or stunt doubles hired to fill the roles. It’s not only a colossal display of acting talent for each of the actors involved, but a cinematic feat to capture so many scenes with these characters as well as their mirrors. Where the regular roles they play are members of a relatively well-adjusted family, their inverses are unkempt, erratic, and viscerally unnerving.

They’re a far less ordered sort of evil than anything depicted in Peele’s prior movie. Where Get Out’s Armitage family is quietly cruel and plotting, the Wilson family’s doppelgangers are enigmatic, malevolent, and terrifying from the first moment we see them on screen.

Where Get Out is built off of Peele’s love for the psychological side of horror movies, Us centers around the cat-and-mouse, slasher-style chase scenes that have been so focal to franchises like Halloween and The Nightmare on Elm Street. The antagonists of the film wear red and dash through the night in a way that hearkens back to the masked murderers within both of those iconic horror series. Where Get Out’s score is cerebral and slow-building, Us’ score, composed again by Michael Abels, is more frenzied and discordant.

Another one of the film’s most impressive accomplishments is its ability to recapture the jaw-dropping twist that was so fundamental to the first movie’s conclusion. Keeping viewers in the dark throughout the movie, Peele shocks them with a revelatory payoff twice in a row.

One of the few shortcomings in Get Out was that Peele was a less established director and he decided on a more restrained and sanitized ending for that first film than the one he’d initially written. He wanted his movie to make a statement, but not too much of a statement. He wanted to send a message, but not so much of a message that it would send critics into a tailspin and ensure that his directorial debut marked his first and final movie.

Us is the work of a director who’d found enough of his footing in the industry that he was willing to take more risks. And the end result is masterful. The final act features some of the most dementedly novel imagery that I’ve ever seen depicted on film. It’s disturbing, haunted, and oblique. It’s horrific, sinister, oddly beautiful, and twistedly congruent. The film’s prologue is cryptic, but by the conclusion we understand the story behind those opening shots and images.

Us is also a movie that sits for me in the perfect middle ground of Peele films. It’s a project put together by a wiser writer and director than the one who released Get Out, but still shies away from the arguably overloaded territory that many felt his third entry, Nope, would.

As with the similarly minded visionary, Ari Aster, it’s their second, middle child films that stand for me in a proud Goldilocks zone.

By the time they’d move onto their third projects, both directors had begun to entertain some of their more excessive creative whims. Those tertiary endeavors are put together with that same signature prowess we’d come to expect of the two directors, but both Beau Is Afraid and Nope mark the films where the two auteurs began to drift astray from much of the greater public’s interest. They appear like the product of artists who’ve become just a tad too comfortable in the spotlight, while their second outings, Us and Midsommar, strike a more elegant balance between ingenuity and self-indulgence.

The final image that Us leaves us with may be the most pointed and eerie from the entire movie. It’s strange, ambiguous, and has become a healthy source of speculation among fans. But it’s also the sort of mystery that makes endings like those within The Shining so appealing. It’s strange, impactful, and open to interpretation. And it serves as the menacing bow to tie together a nearly perfect horror film. Five years after its debut, Us is every bit as fresh, chilling, and magnetic as the day it first released.

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This article was originally published on Medium.

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