MOMENTS OF TERROR
Dare you delve into Us?
LOS ANGELES Jordan Peele’s sweet spot as a filmmaker is the “pit in your stomach” moment. That thing that happens when you realize the woman stirring the tea isn’t just there for conversation. When you notice that the help is a little off. Or, as in his new film Us, when you see that the family of four standing in your driveway late at night looks exactly like you.
Peele knows how to get under your skin and stay there, and it’s what made him the must-see horror filmmaker of the moment. Us is only his second movie and yet it’s been an event-in-the-making ever since it was announced. That’s what happens when your debut is Get Out.
Get Out wasn’t even finished when the former sketch-comedian started cooking up the idea for his followup about doppelgängers, loosely inspired by the Twilight Zone episode Mirror Image. Then the wild success of Get Out — four Oscars nominations, one win (Peele, for original screenplay), more than US$255 million in tickets sold against a US$4.5-million budget and general cultural impact — put Peele on another level. So by the time Universal Pictures agreed to make Us, not only did he have a budget more than five times higher than his first, but he had his pick of collaborators, too.
“Because of Get Out, I was privileged enough to be able to tap the best talent in the industry,” Peele said recently.
That goes for stars Lupita Nyong ’o and Winston Duke — who play dual roles as the nuclear family, the Wilsons, and the terrifying red-jumpsuit-wearing and goldscissor-wielding Red and Abraham. And it goes for the below-theline talent: Production designer Ruth De Jong (Twin Peaks), cinematographer Mike Gioulakis (It Follows) and costume designer Kym Barrett (The Matrix) among them.
“I had an amazing team on Get Out,” Peele said. “But this group sort of allowed me to stretch a little bit more.”
Duke was impressed by his calm. He knew there were “sophomore pressures” — he had his own after his breakout role as M’Baku in Black Panther — but said Peele never brought any of that to the set.
“Day 1 (Peele) said, ‘Before we do anything I just want to let you guys know that I’m here for you. I won’t stop until we get the shot. When I say cut, we got the shot. So trust me, believe in me,’” Duke said. “And I was like, that’s all I need.”
Duke and Nyong ’o already had a shorthand working together. Yes, they had just both been in Black Panther, but they were also both Yale Drama School graduates and have seen one another do everything from clown work to Chekhov.
“It was great to be able to perform with someone who I value as much more than a friend — I value her as a cohort. I value her as an ally. I went to work every day trying to make sure we could create a space where she could excel. I thought that was my duty,” Duke said. “We had a female lead and in our climate in Hollywood we were doing the work and leading by example.”
And Peele put them both through the wringer. The days on set as the Wilsons were full of laughter and fun. But the days as the murderous doppelgängers known as The Tethered, Peele said, felt like “a morgue.”
“The air getting sucked out of the room is an understatement. But it was kind of cool,” Peele said. The actors went “pretty method” on those days.
Nyong’o had it especially hard. She’d chosen to affect a strained vocal condition — spasmodic dysphonia — to make Red even more haunting. And she had to do Red’s first big monologue 11 times with that raspy, painful sounding voice.
Us is chock full of pop culture references, subtle and overt: A Jaws T-shirt here, a C.H.U.D. VHS there. Even the setting, the Santa Cruz boardwalk, is a callback to The Lost Boys. And every reference works “on two different levels and hopefully more,” Peele said. But don’t stress if you don’t catch or decipher them all.
“There are many of these things that only I will ever know,” Peele said.
Although one thing is not really up for interpretation: The genre. He tweeted recently that “Us is a horror movie.”
“I can see the debate already beginning and people are calling it different things. I have a little bit of fun with the big genre conversation,” he said. “But I saw enough little pieces of like ‘horror-thriller,’ ‘horror-comedy,’ ‘social-thriller,’ out there that I just want to make it nice clean and defined: It’s a horror movie.”
Nor has Peele tired of explaining that Us isn’t about race — though he understands why people might think it would be, considering Get Out. “I know the way we are, the lack of representation in the industry and genre has led us to this point where it’s almost impossible to not see race in a movie with a black family in the centre. And I wanted people to be ready to expand their expectations,” Peele said. “My fear was if I didn’t say anything, that people would take away that this was a movie about black-on-black violence — which was not my intention.”
As for whether Peele has felt internal or external pressures to match Get Out’s magic? “There are, but it’s OK,” he laughed. “It’s just movies.”
My fear was if I didn’t say anything, that people would take away that this was a movie about black-on-black violence — which was not my intention.
Love of money is not the root of all evil. The root of all evil turns out to be a dilapidated funhouse on the beach at Santa Cruz, Calif. In 1986, it went by the name Vision Quest. These days it’s called Merlin’s Forest. But the secondary sign that reads “Find Yourself ” hasn’t changed. And Adelaide Wilson (Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o) does just that.
The newest from writer-director Jordan Peele (2017’s Get Out, the upcoming Twilight Zone reboot) opens in 1986, with young Adelaide (Madison Curry) straying from her parents and meeting something spooky and decidedly un-fun in the funhouse. Actually, it opens with some onscreen text about tunnels, which by the end of the film’s fast-moving two hours you may decide was one clue too many.
But the bulk of Us takes place in the present. Adult Adelaide is staying at a summer cottage not far from Santa Cruz, along with husband Gabe (Winston Duke) and kids Zora and Jason (Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex). She experiences a number of mildly creepy coincidences,
culminating in a calm, chilly statement from her son: “There’s a family in our driveway.”
Indeed there is, and this is where Peele’s horror really takes off. It features shades of the recent sci-fi Annihilation, the excellent 2014 horror It Follows, and even the royal drama The Favourite (all those rabbits!), but it is still its own story, captivating and original, though sometimes maddeningly under-explained.
It’s also not quite the equal of Get Out, which dealt with America’s toxic relationship with race, and won an Oscar for its screenplay. Us — parallels to the short form for United States, and the notion of “us and them” are entirely deliberate — casts a wider net, suggesting a metaphorical rot under the floorboards in Peele’s homeland. Notice how the evil entity introduces herself: “We are Americans.”
But that nebulous nefariousness means the film has to lean heavily on more traditional scares, which it admittedly does quite well. With a nod to Funny Games — one of many touchstones Peele has named — the Wilsons find themselves beset by crazily smiling intruders, though in this case they’re odd doubles, primal and half-formed. Imagine the worst version of you.
Only Adelaide’s opposite even seems capable of speech, and she sounds like talking and breathing at the same time is almost too much for her to handle. The others mostly grunt, howl and wield ferocious scissors, generally against their direct human counterparts, but they’ll attack anyone who crosses them.
Peele’s comedy roots sometimes show through in the timing and reactions of his characters, and a recent preview screening brought forth numerous bouts of nervous giggles from the packed house. Take Gabe’s cut-rate outboard motorboat: Its engine’s tendency to stall rivals most actors’ understanding of timing.
Primed on trailers and the genius of Get Out, I was a little underwhelmed by the relatively thin story and modest scares of Us. (I only had to hide behind my splayed fingers once!) But it’s still miles above the average horror fare. Peele spoiled us with his last film, and his delivery of a merely moderate success with this one is hardly cause for alarm.