US the movie

Jordan Peele’s second horror movie, Us, dropped this last weekend, and it’s making quite a splash. But is it good?

I quite enjoyed his first movie, GET OUT, even though I found it somewhat racist and unnecessarily focused on divisive politics. Just the same, it was a taut, well-constructed, highly atmospheric film.

US let me down. I’d hoped for the same level of quality as GET OUT, but unfortunately US is a bit of a mess. It can’t quite strike a consistent tone, the pacing is off, and the tacked on scientific explanation at the end proves that sometimes less is more. The best episodes of Twilight Zone were the ones where they didn’t try to explain what you just watched.

And if you are going to explain things, action must follow that explanation. You don’t have a strange story, then an explanation at the end, and that’s it. Something must follow that explanation. It must go somewhere. Otherwise it feels like the filmmaker simply justifying the movie.

But that’s pretty much what we get in US, followed by what might be the most telegraphed reveal of all time.

The actors uniformly do a great job, the atmosphere is taut, until a few misplaced jokes are fired out, and the film contains some fun, original ideas. Bonus points for that.

Bottom line: for horror fans, US delivers a taut, original narrative, so it’s definitely worth a watch. But the execution is muddled and the whole is not as satisfying as GET OUT. C+

Looks like that’s about where the audience score for Rotten Tomatoes is. Never trust the critics, especially for a movie that has been politicized, as US has.