Jordan Peele is back with more thought-provoking thrills
We’re done being surprised by Jordan Peele making a movie that will tease and tempt us right up until opening day. We’re now to the point of just wondering what it is it’s going to put us through, and what we will walk away thinking differently about. With Us, he goes to dark places (no surprise) that illuminate the complexity inside each of us.
The setting Peele chose is important. It’s summertime. Vacations offer the promise of wholesome family time to parents and lots of boring crap to teenagers. The minute we see Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) and Gabe (Winston Duke) in the car, it’s all smiles and the optimism that only a holiday can provide. The kids, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex) are nonplussed; they’d rather be at home with their phones and toys. The crew arrives at the family lake home, a sign of comfort with a little luxury.
Addy is the lynchpin of this film, and her past is important. Us opens with a traumatic event from her childhood in which she gets lost while visiting an amusement park on the Santa Cruz boardwalk. What she encounters there haunts her for the rest of her life, and for some reason, it’s come back in a big way.
After Get Out, there’s no way to watch a Peele movie without thinking about what’s going on underneath. Not like Stranger Things underneath, but what comment is he making about society, about us. When our family is confronted with a doppleganger foursome, it’s easy to think about the dual nature in us all. Good vs. evil. Selflessness vs. selfishishness. The list goes on.
Then there’s the action. From the moment the threat arrives, Us moves at breakneck pace of survival and violence. We find ourselves rooting for the family we’ve come to know as they encounter danger after danger. The locations are superb for this type of physical drama, from the vacation homes on the lake to Santa Cruz and its environs.
The performances are stellar. Duke is the dad we’d all like to have, unless we’re a teenager who would treat any parent like something stuck to the bottom of our shoe. He’s cool, fun, and stable, a nice mix for a father figure. The kids more than hold their own here. Joseph is adolescent angst that gets pushed to some extreme, though not overly traumatic, moments, and Alex is quiet, but steady amidst all the chaos.
It is Nyong’o who turns this movie from good to great. Whether or not Addy or the mirror image is a more impressive turn would be a fun topic of conversion, but regardless, she slays. The fear and mother-bear tendencies on the one hand, and the straight-ahead iniquity on the other makes for two sides of an extremely compelling coin.
The way Us resolves won’t be discussed here, and honestly, a few sentences wouldn’t give it justice anyway. This is a movie that will sit with the viewer and bounce around for days, forcing contemplation about core issues of humanity, identity, and privilege. Us is another home run for Jordan Peele, and we can’t wait for him to get back up to bat.