The opening 30 minutes of Us is well photographed, and the scenes are full of foreboding and suspense as one might expect. Jordan Peele is very good at composing shots and moving the camera ominously. The entire production feels well executed. I also enjoyed the 1987 setting in the initial setup of the story. This spate of 1980s nostalgia is very bankable these days-Stranger Things, The Goldbergs, and Ready Player One are recent examples.
The underlining political message of the film is essentially about what privilege and class does to people in American society - spoiler alert - it’s bad! Popular culture can be an effective vehicle for promoting or expressing political ideas. The political messages in recent Hollywood productions are more obvious these days. I never subscribed to the idea that there can be non-political art. The question for me is execution. Big Hollywood films are supposed to be entertaining. That’s what most people expect when they pay to see a major American movie. The entertainment value of a film lowers when the message is primary. One’s agreement with the preceding sentence has entirely to do with whether a film’s message comports with the given viewer’s beliefs, and that is why politics in entertainment is contentious. It’s because that’s what politics is. I think what rankles people is when the politics are shoehorned into the narrative, or when the internal logic of the story is affected because of that shoehorning (at least that’s what rankles me).
The entire premise of Us depends on our suspension of disbelief, and the politics are the driving reason. In order for the argument that nurture wins out over nature in social development, every person must have a doppelgänger created by some unexplained organization. Every person in the US has a double? Over 300 million people? Living where? The film opens with a caption saying: “There are thousands of miles of tunnels beneath the United States ... Abandoned subway systems, unused service routes, and deserted mine shafts ... Many have no known purpose at all." That’s the only explanation for how millions of people lived unnoticed by society since 1987 until Red (the main antagonist and double of Adelaide - the hero) leads the glorious rebellion from underground. That’s over 30 years- it’s silly.
I know this sounds churlish to many, especially because Peele is being hailed as a genius and this film is a “masterpiece,” but so much of the story or action is contrived that I have to obliterate my disbelief - not just suspend it. many convenient plot points are clearly there just to move the story in the direction that Peele wants it to go. When the Wilson family (the good guys) first encounters their evil “tethers” in their driveway at night, the father’s (Abraham) timid response to these strange trespassers is just weird. I remember thinking “swing the fucking bat.” Most fathers or husbands (I would hope) would take more forceful action to protect the safety of their family, but Abraham hides behind the locked front door as the tethers pound it down. He is eventually wounded and given a limp in order to help us believe this 6’5” man can’t pose more of an obstacle to the bad guys - it’s silly.
Another mainstay of the horror movie genre appears: lack of police response. Even the lowliest B movies have to explain why the police aren’t responding. Adelaide calls 911, but the cops never show up, thus allowing the second act to unfold. The tethers get into the house and now have the Wilsons at their disposal in front of the fireplace. So why didn’t they just kill them right off the bat? Because that would not allow Red to move the story forward with her expository soliloquy in her weird scary voice. Adelaide was literally chained to the table - the father was helplessly on the floor after being beaten. There are many more contrivances throughout the film. For example, each family has their own elaborate individual scenarios with their double. An unconscious Abraham is taken by his double onto the lake in a boat only for Abraham to regain consciousness and have a dramatic fight in the water - why not just knife him while he was out? The Wilson family becomes quickly adept and comfortable at killing, even though they are supposed to be sheltered middle class Americans who likely have no experience with violence.
I think most reviewers are ignoring the flaws of the film because it has such a potent and popular political message. They are committing the same sin as Peele i.e. allowing their personal or popular politics to lead in their aesthetic and critical judgments. I also think many in the entertainment industry want Jordan Peele to be the second coming of Hitchcock that they are going to simply will it into being. This has a erie parallel in many big media outlets’ coverage of most things lately (see the Russia collusion fiasco). In many ways, Us is a product of our time. We see want we want to see.
