Nope

 

I was a big fan of "Get Out", Jordan Peele's feature directorial debut. His second film "Us", however, was maybe the most laughably bad movie I saw in 2019. So I was worried about which way this film was going to go. The original trailer was intriguing, but not convincing on it's own. The subsequent trailers were less inspiring and I started having big doubts about how this would all work out. I am relieved to say that the film is solid, with a good deal of suspense, a couple of good scares and some humor. The action based last act seems to come out of nowhere and it feels like a slightly different movie at that point, but not a bad different movie, just not one that feels closely tied to what came before. 

Regular visitors know that I do not regurgitate the plot of the film in these reviews and I avoid as much as possible spoiler material. I am going to share something with you however that may be interpreted as a spoiler by some, so be aware...this movie is filled with red herrings and when it is done, you may very well wonder why they were all there. This is especially true with the flashback sequences to a different horror story that is told in the movie. There is no logical reason for it's presence except as a story telling piece of legerdemain, designed to distract us at times from things that are goin on in the main plot.  It is a well told story with it's own elements of suspense and horror, but it has no relationship to the events that happen here, except both stories take place in the entertainment industry.

Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer play siblings who are part of a show business group that provide horses and wrangle them on Hollywood productions. After the mysterious death of their father (an underused Keith David), they are struggling to keep their ranch together and selling off horses that are part of the family legacy. Kaluuya plays OJ, a man who has a hard time making himself heard on set and off. Keke Palmer is his sister Emerald, who has trouble in the opposite direction, she can't turn it off most of the time. When they discover something unusual taking place in the gulch where their ranch is located, they try to find a way to use that discovery to save them from financial ruin. Down the dirt road is Ricky "Jupe" Park, played by Steven Yuen, a former child star with his foot in a different branch of the entertainment industry, and he too has plans to use the discovery to his advantage. It is the convergence of these two stories that is the only thread which brings the horror elements we are shown together. 

Because OJ is so quiet, his character starts off without much relatability. I did feel that his character grew as a presence in the story and by the end, he had earned a heroic plotline. In one of those red herring sequences in the film, he gets to play against the hard type that he is shown as, and it works as a moment of humor.  Another character, Angel, Brandon Perra, is added to the mix and he also jukes the story humor up a bit while still keeping the suspense going. The slow build first act of the film sets us up really well for the edge of our seats fear and terror of the second act. There are some big unexpected moments, and the twist of the horror/sci-fi concept is revealed and sort of interesting. Michael Wincott joins the group as a mysterious cinematographer, and I don't quite get what his actions at the end are supposed to mean, but he does tend to add a little gravitas to the last section of the film. 

So not everything in the story comes together, and the resolution feels like it came out of left field, but it was fun anyway. I think the movie does mostly what you want a horror film to do. It creates a creepy atmosphere, it tells us enough about the characters to make us care and enjoy being in their company, and it ultimately produces some thrills that are fear based and suspenseful. It's nice when a movie offers you things that you were not expecting, it just odd when those things are disconnected from the plot. Enjoy going down a few dead ends, but you will get a fine amount of entertainment from everything else. 

Us

Back in 1998, M.Night Shyamalan was dubbed the second coming of either Hitchcock or Spielberg.  With his well crafted thriller "The Sixth Sense" he restored our faith in what a good horror movie could be and he provided a twist ending that still impresses twenty years and a million spoilers later. He made two more solid films before he tripped with "The Village" and then fell flat on his face with "Lady in the Water". But it took "The Happening" for audiences to laugh him off the screen and write him off for the next decade. Director Jordan Peele was favorably compared to Shyamalan after his clever and very successful "Get Out" showed up two years ago. It also restored our faith in grown up horror stories and had similar kinds of plot twist moments. Peele however has skipped the next phase of the Shyamalan career, a couple of less successful but still credible films, and he has instead taken a dump that makes "The Happening" look like a modern classic.

I cannot express how disappointed I was at this film as I was watching it unfold. This is a miscalculation by someone who is clearly talented but did not seem to have anything to say with his next film project. "Get Out" had something to show us about race relations and class in a post Obama world. It was also creepy as hell for the first hour and incredibly intense in the second. "Us" does not have the benefit of a whole hour of slow burn, it shoots it's wad in the first ten minutes and then never reaches another moment as effectively again. Oh, and the set up that had the brief flash of excitement and fright to it, was not that great in the opening anyway, which made the movie all the less interesting as it went along. If there is some cultural, political or dramatic concept that this movie is trying to make or subvert, it fails on every point.

A horror movie can make you laugh at a moment as a release from some tension or thrill that it provides. The catharsis such a moment brings is just what an audience wants. If a horror movie is making you laugh at it's premise and the stupidity of the events in the story, you have a bad horror film. That is what you get with this. If you have seen the trailer, you know that a doppelganger family appears to start a home invasion story with our protagonist family. The moment one of those characters starts to speak I had to suppress a laugh, but when another character starts uttering call back sounds, it not only is guffaw inducing, it is ludicrous.  If you are not being terrified by a horror film, why are you watching it? That's the question I started to ask myself along the way. I also asked myself how much worse it could get, and the answer was...a lot.

The actors do their best, Lupita Nyong'o in the lead duo role is effective, but her doppelganger character is given some silly exposition to deliver and it is presented in a voice that instead of being frightening, makes you want to get her some Nyquil for her stuffy nose. Winston Duke fairs better but not by much. He fortunately spends less time in the doppelganger role and he also comes the closest to being a real person in the story. He is a goofball of a Dad, which is of course the preferred way to present an adult male in a family these days. He says the wrong thing to calm down his wife, he is a bit of a joke to his kids, and the whole powerboat subplot exits to create a single scene that allows him to have a moment of success by accident.

If you stretch your imagination enough, there might be some kind of social commentary about keeping up with appearances. The family friends that they connect with seem like cardboard cutout shallow people. Elizabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker feel unpleasant from the moment that we meet them. Their twin daughters are stereotyped mean girls without actually doing anything mean. When the story shifts to them for a few minutes in the middle of the film, it has no tension to it and it only feels different in how quickly events play out and how well everything is lit because they have a back up power generator and the other family does not.

You want to know that you are getting into a bad film that takes itself too seriously, look for an opening scroll that tries to tell you that there is some real idea behind the hoopla. If you think that abandoned subways and tunnels are the lurking places of the bogey man, then maybe you can be convinced that this story is real, HA. Remember how Mark Wahlberg spent an hour running away from the wind in "The Happening"? And do you recall how you laughed out loud when you found out the monsters are the trees? Well that resolution is brilliant compared to the explanation we get here. I have not found rabbits so silly since bugs bunny, and the fear factor in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is eons ahead of this. There is of course a final twist that makes everything that came earlier seem even more preposterous.

In fairness I have to admit that I have not cared for two celebrated horror films of the last few years. "Hereditary" had a lot of visual spark to it but the storytelling fell apart for me. "Cabin in the Woods" is a joke that might work for twenty minutes but takes two hours to get to the punchline. Those movies had moments but "Us" did not work for me at all.  Let's hope that Jordan Peele doesn't screw up "The Twilight Zone" and that his next movie stays out of the water [like M. Night should have done.]

Get Out

Last night I had a disappointing experience. We decided to watch a horror film and we chose "The VVitch" because we'd heard a lot of positive things about it. Maybe it works for other people but I was not happy. In fact I found it quite irritating in the way the story gets resolved, or at least sort of resolved. Today, to wash the bad memory out of my brain, we picked another widely acclaimed horror film. This movie is more contemporary and it has an interesting perspective on the world. I'd seen the trailer and I was afraid it was going to be a polemic on white privilege, instead, the movie twists the idea of cultural appropriation in a way that is totally off the wall and satisfying.

Daniel Kaluuya is a name I did not recognize, but he was in a movie I saw a couple of years ago, "Kick Ass 2". His part in that movie was not significant, but his role in this movie is impressive. He is the lead and he carries most of the drama and horror of the film on his shoulders. The only thing I know Allison Williams from is the highly criticized Peter Pan Live form a couple of years ago. She was also very good in this film and her character has surprising elements to it that will turn the story at some points. Three other well known old timers are also in the cast. Bradley Whitford from the West Wing and "Cabin in the Woods" plays the neurosurgeon father of Rose, the white girl that is dating Kaluuya's character Chris. Dad is just enough of a social justice liberal to be disarming, but still he and his wife player by Catherine Keener, are just a little off.  Mom is a psychiatrist who uses hypnotherapy to help clients deal with smoking and other issues. At first they seem just a little odd but as time passes, Chris begins to listen to the doubts that he might be expected to have as a lonely black face in a well off suburban neighborhood. The third character played by an old hand is Jim Hudson, another blind character played by Steven Root. He turns out to be a key element of the reveal when it shows up.

The slow burn creep factor in this movie is exquisitely patient. We know things are off but we have no idea exactly what is going on. Chris gets warnings from his friend Rod, who is concerned about him going into the country with all the white people.  Rose is supportive in the way a girlfriend ought to be, but she is also a bit nonplussed by the potential of her black boyfriend meeting her parents without their knowledge of his background. All of the family friends that show up at the parents house are also a little too awkward and direct about Chris and his ethnic difference. There are a couple of disturbing or frightening scenes that involve the servants at the house, and there is definitely a Stepford Wives feel to the goings on.

The twist comes and it is a dozy. Suddenly things are more frightening than they might have appeared and the story gets clever with the social conventions but maybe a little to direct with the horror elements. Rod gets some great sequences that add some comic moments to the film, and that makes the story feel a lot more believable than it otherwise would have. I can't give away anything, it's not my style to do so, but I can say that the story is a lot more satisfying than the psychological supernatural film I saw last night. The wrap up to this film may be more conventional, but at least it feels like it is part of the story that we have been watching.

Writer /Director Jordan Peele is a guy I recognize but I have not really paid much attention to. I have seen the routine with the substitute teacher, in fact, I plan on using it in my classes. As an actor, I remember him from the "Fargo" TV series, as one of the FBI guys who screws up massively. This film shows that his talent is not limited to comedy and he clearly understands the check points for a good horror film. This probably does not need any recommendation from me, the movie is doing good business after all, but I will be telling anyone who will listen, this is worth your time. As I said to my daughter at the end of the film, "Now that's how you make a horror film!".