Coming face to face with yourself
Us (15), (117 mins)
Underground passages, an awful lot of bunnies
(some eaten raw), a spooky fairground and a dodgy speedboat aren’t the least of the oddities in this oddest of odd thrillers – a film so utterly bizarre there are moments you wonder whether it isn’t completely senseless. Or maybe it simply so clever that it is beyond the understanding of mere mortals.
Either way, it’s never less than grimly, gruesomely compelling – and precisely the kind of film which will linger in your memory as you battle your way through thoughts of what on earth was going on.
Adelaide Wilson (a superb Lupita Nyong’o), her husband and their two children (Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex) are a relatively normal family bumbling through life, despite the fact Adelaide is still clearly traumatised by a childhood incident which eventually emerges as key to everything.
Off they go on holiday, but it isn’t long before they are confronted by themselves, but themselves with scary unsubtle differences. For a start, their horror doubles are dressed in red boiler suits, brand scissors and are ready to slash anyone. New daddy is conversationally challenged, new daughter has got an evil smile, new son somewhat strangely thinks he’s a dog and new mommy has got the sorest of sore throats. All of them want blood – in a scenario which is seemingly being replicated in deadly fashion across the States.
The imposters presumably are something to do with the family’s edgy sense of disquiet, their feeling perhaps that they are somehow not entitled to what they have got. As mommy zombie huskily tells them, the new family are shadows which were once severed. What follows is a bloodbath – and there is the strangest sense, deliberate or not, that this is comedy horror we are watching. At times it is completely sick; at others, it is thoroughly intriguing as the tales wends its way back to the scene of Adelaide’s childhood trauma. Quite what the rabbits have got to do with it is anybody’s guess and the zombies’ bonkers desire to hold hands in a human chain across American is equally baffling. Us, which is presumably also a play on US of A, is odd, but certainly not without its moments. PPP