When Jordan Peele makes his next film, he deserves a bigger budget. Assuming Universal and Blumhouse executives heed the authority of dollar signs—which Peele’s new feature, Us, is generating by the millions—he is indeed sure to soon receive significant spending leeway. That is good news, given the Tarantino-like prowess with which Peele constructs the settings of Us, which appear to have cost a lot more than they did. The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, admittedly a ready-made set piece, is enhanced by lighting which casts each rollercoaster track and whack-a-mole box in monstrous light. Are we navigating a video game? The Twilight Zone? A stylized vision of decaying American tradition? When a young girl visiting the boardwalk descends a stairwell to a moonlit beach, even the waves are suspect, and the distant cackles of teenagers and families overlap to form a sinister—not encouraging—voice. One of the reasons Us excites is because it expands the visual and auditory horror landscape American moviegoers are used to. Just ask Santa Cruz regulars now wary of visiting the boardwalk, according to local Bay Area news channels.
Santa Cruz is the geographic anchor for Us, which concerns a family’s beach house stay and subsequent home invasion. Due to the film's publicity and hype, most people are probably familiar with the nature of these visitors: each of them is a clone, of Adelaide and Gabe Wilson (played by Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke), and their two children. Adelaide’s clone is called Red, and acts as chief clone executive, directing her fellow doubles to attack the real versions of their respective selves. The clones wear red and carry scissors; they also prove formidable foes, but are necessarily not invincible. Before long, Adelaide and company have temporarily outwitted Red’s army, and fled the vacation residence for help. I will next reveal one of the film’s twists—far from its biggest—because doing so is necessary to judging what happens next. It turns out everyone has clones, newly emergent and intent on murder, so that the peaceful suburban streets where the Wilsons have been residing are soon littered with bodies and blood. Though the clone agenda unfolds and deepens over the course of the film’s nearly-two-hour runtime, the objective for our heroes remains clear: kill their impersonators.
This escapade makes for thrilling—if not outright frightening—popcorn entertainment. There is something unsettling about seeing alternate versions of Adelaide and Winston, but it is a slower-building, less immediately-exhilarating discomfort than that typically experienced in films of this genre; many of the the best scenes in Us (a burning car boobytrap, a glam-fam massacre set to “F**k Tha Police”) also closely resemble Fast and Furious, as opposed to Blumhouse’s typical output. The film consequently feels like more of a blockbuster than Get Out did, a commercialization of Peele’s talent, allowing for the same infusion of commentary and gore, and also a broader scope, a brighter spectrum of color and ideas. How well these ideas work, when slotted into the clones’ grander scheme of malevolence that Peele lays out, is debatable. On the one hand, Adelaide’s descent into what can best (and without spoilers) be described as the clones’ lair, provides by far the film’s most dazzling sequence, an ambitiously-wrought battle between Red and Adelaide in a tiled monochrome hallway, which transforms into a display of physical body poetry, as Nyong’o’s body contorts backwards and forwards, the fight intercuts with ballet (the significance of which will make sense upon watching the film) with such exhilaration that the equivalent sensation on the Santa Cruz drop tower would pale in comparison.
Alternatively, Peele springs some revelations on the viewer that prove confusing and contradictory, maybe with intention but also suggesting lack of development. A seemingly-crucial aspect of clone activity is left unexplained by the film’s end, and though Peele perhaps wanted to blur the divide between informed interpretation and straw-clutching, he fails to establish motive or continuity in the run-up to Adelaide’s biggest revelation. Nonetheless, engaging narrative flourishes abound. The “husband” clones, for instance, make guttural noises, and cannot speak, while the “wife” clones exhibit agency; Peele is thus inflecting his horror with feminism. The inability of a house outfitted with security technology to protect its wealthy residents—even for five minutes—when Wilsons’ modest abode does not inhibit prolonged survival, reveals undertones of class conflict, especially impressive in a film whose advertised purpose is not to illuminate, but to shock. Except Us was expected to deliver such entertainment: socially provocative while also wholly original, funny, and yes, scary. Peele has carved out a new cinematic platform that is enviably intelligent and accessible, undermining the argument that success is dependent on dumbness—an argument that would undoubtedly have been recognized earlier than 2017, had Peele and others like him, sooner been able to speak out.
Fergus Campbell is a freshman in Columbia College.