Netflix Saturdays: Us (Movie Review)

 Happy Labour Day everyone! 

So Yesterday I happened to watch the bone-chilling suspense thriller Us - that finally released on Netflix India.  This is the talented Jordan Peele's sophomore effort, and unlike his startlingly good "Get Out", this movie Us is lot more commercial, yes - but still retains his signature style of blood curdling horror set against the backdrop of an America that we don't know. It's unsettling, an allegory on the political situation in the United States yes, but what really works is that it's an unflinching, tightly wound horror story that starts off as a home-invasion story that soon unravels into an all-out horror-fest that is a fine example of studio filmmaking. 

The movie starts out with an ominous call out to the miles of un-used underground mine-shafts and tunnels running under the cities and towns of America. Then we switch back to 1986, where Addie - a young girl is walking excitedly through the Santa Cruz Boardwalk town-fete. She gets lost, wanders into an underground hall of mirrors and eventually meets something that scares the living bejesus out of her.  

Post this, we switch to the present where Addie, her husband and kids are moving into their holiday home for a vacation. Jordan takes his time setting up the premise of the financially stable well-settled family (albeit Black!) Gabe seems like the usual well-to-do husband, a jolly care-free man with a fixation for 'boating in the lake' and 'chilling by a normal beach with his rich buddies and their wives' expectations. The older girl, a teenager obsessed with her phone, is trying out for the track and field in school and the youngest one, the boy around eight or nine loves his magic tricks and masks and hiding in the closet to scare his sister. Everything seems normal, except that Addie, the mother, still gets flashes of her past from time to time and she is now extremely jittery. They are back in Santa Cruz, California where her past resurfaces giving her the heebie-jeebies, anxiety attacks. Something bad is about to unfold. 

And that very night after they are back from hanging out at the beach with their rich friends, Addie in a full out anxiety attack tells Gabe the story of her childhood. Of how she got lost in the underground warren and the fact that she had actually run into her twin, a girl who looked exactly like her. Soon enough, the impossible becomes true as they all notice four people standing in their driveway, silhouetted against the streetlight, dark, silent and ominous. Until they step up into the light and they all realise that these four are their exact doppelgänger lookalikes. In bright red jumpsuits and wielding hellishly sharp scissors in their hands. And soon enough, all hell breaks loose as these lookalikes break into their house. 

From here, the movie just takes off. It's another hour of heart-thumping suspense, action and thrills. Yes, there is gore and blood, as we watch the hapless family struggle to claw out of this nightmare. But frankly, it is this middle hour that is also the most fun part of the movie. The monsters (The Tethers or the shadow people as they get referred to) are getting chewed up by the faulty motor-boat or getting crunched in the face by swinging golf sticks. But it's a work of directorial virtuosity as Jordan Peele invests every moment, every graphic detail of this harrowing experience with deep psychological resonance, extracting the best out of his actors here. Academy award winner Lupita Nyongo is just stupendous, playing the role of Addie and her monstrous twin. Switching between scared, unhinged and playing that ferociously protective mother bear to her cub. The last few scenes, the tension is so heightened, sharp enough to cut and bleed as we watch that final confrontation, in the background of a beautiful ballet dance that Addie performed on stage as a teenager even as that deadly fight plays out between Addie and her twin Red. 

Peele also weaves in comedy into this unbelievable act - with Gabe (Winston Duke, M'Buku from Black Panther) donning on the role of a macho asshole father who fails to protect his family at first. Special mention of Elizabeth Moses who plays the role of the wife of Gabe's rich white friend Tyler and does a phenomenal act as well. 

The movie slows down a bit in that climactic act where Peele actually tries to explain the whole myth of the Shadow People or the Tethers as they are called. Perhaps the weakest bit of this otherwise tightly plotted horror show that focuses not on external or extra-terrestrial but the human elements (The mirror being a strong allegory through the movie, of finding that darkest monster right within us!) 

So I am sure I missed a lot of the deeper messages in the movie, the messianic prophesies, the finger-pointing at perhaps the wealth or race differences, the American paradise (US is also U.S, as in United States?) of an idyllic countryside vacation being a lie etc, but I truly enjoyed the heck out of this diabolically twisted horror movie. It's a cult classic where Jordan tries to break away from the rules of the Horror House but also is paying tribute in that church. If you were planning to watch just one movie this weekend, I suggest you watch US.