A FREAKY FAMILY FEUD
There’s a point near the start of “Us,” director/writer Jordan Peele’s largely satisfying and entertainingly discomfiting followup to his 2017 hit “Get Out,” where Rod Serling’s coolly unnerving “Twilight Zone” episode-opening narration would feel right at home.
An average, middle-class American family named the Wilsons — dad Gabe (Winston Duke), mom Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), teen daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and younger son Jason (Evan Alex) — are at the beginning of their vacation in sunny Santa Cruz, Calif. There’s time at the beach and hanging out with summertime acquaintances Kitty Tyler (Elisabeth Moss), her husband, Josh (Tim Heidecker), and their two teenage daughters.
But these laid-back moments of rest and relaxation are soon thrown into shadow by what shows up in the driveway one late night: four silent figures who, at first, say nothing. They come closer and closer and are soon in the house in the creepiest kind of break-in. To make matters worse, the uninvited are dopplegangers that look just like the Wilsons. Well, not just like them; they are twisted, funhouse-mirror versions of themselves — wearing red jumpsuits and wielding large scissors.
Though “Us” has been compared to other home-invasion horror films, Peele isn’t so much interested in shocks as in building an atmosphere of dread. It’s no accident then that Peele says “Us” is influenced by one of his favorite “Twilight Zone” episodes, “Mirror Image,” and that he is rebooting “The Twilight Zone” series next month on CBS All Access.
The chills in “Us” don’t come from the gory and the gruesome but, as in Peele’s “Get Out,” from his playing with the notion that the scariest moments come from inside us.
Unlike “Get Out,” “Us” is not explicitly about race. But having the Wilsons — with Dad in his HBCU (Howard University) sweatshirt
— as the put-upon family be black in a mainstream horror film is still unusual.
Nyong’o delivers the standout performance as both the fierce mom protecting her family and her vicious shadow self. Duke, memorable as the bombastic M’Baku in “Black Panther,” provides the slight comic relief as the loving but somewhat doofus dad. “Get Out,” though, had more explicitly humorous moments.
Adding to the atmosphere is Peele’s use of music, which ranges from the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” to N.W.A’s “—- tha Police” and, of course, if you’ve seen the trailer, Luniz’s “I Got 5 on It.”
The third act and resolution of “Us” may strike some as a letdown. It could be argued that it both explains too much and too little. But it shows off Peele’s ambition as a filmmaker and underscores his desire to generate more than simple frights.
Rod Serling would have been proud.