‘Get Out’ was the surprise hit of last year, for it achieved the seeming impossible: a horror film receiving a Best Picture Oscar nomination, and let’s not forget Jordan Peele’s win for original screenplay. For decades the horror genre (along with the fluffy women-only romcom) has been either dismissed by critics or widely panned as something along the lines of ‘stupidly unrealistic’. Unless the film stars acting titans Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster to name a few, or happens to be based on a bestselling chiller novel, horror films just don’t attract even a fifth of the critical or audience hype as superhero blockbusters or high brow biopics. Critical perception of the genre has started to soften in recent decades, however, thanks to reruns on the such-and-suchieth anniversary of films mocked during their initial release (I still don’t understand how people scoffed at Kubrick’s masterpiece ‘The Shining), which have started cult followings and convinced viewers to re-watch those apparently trashy films a second time. This prompts the question, is the quality of horror films becoming more sophisticated? Or are we finally getting our heads around the genre and catching onto what’s been there all along?
Jordan Peele wastes no time in upping the eerie chills in his latest release ‘Us’. Still haunted decades later by a childhood encounter with an exact doppelganger of herself, Adelaide is heading to her family’s beach house in Santa Cruz with her family. Anxious about the trip, as it happens to be the same beach resort where she had the implausible experience she has told no one about, Adelaide is unable to switch off and enjoy the vacation. She has good reason to be apprehensive, as later on four uncanny figures wearing red jumpsuits who look exactly like the Wilson family turn up on their doorstep intent on killing them. Only one of the doppelgangers possesses the ability to speak, Adelaide’s, who goes by the name Red. What’s very evident is how heavily influenced Peele is by iconic horror films, even down to the blink-and you’ll-miss-them details such as the copy of ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ in the DVD cabinet: not majorly significant, but a subtle foreshadowing of the nightmarish events yet to come and ruin the Wilsons’ holiday.
‘Us’ is a terrifyingly apt exploration of Freud’s theory that there is always a return of what we repress no matter how hard we try. The most obvious example of this would be Adelaide’s almost psychic awareness that her past is about to come back and threaten everything she cares for. This element of the film is cleverly executed and gives an interesting symbolic relevance of the doppelganger figure. The film’s strongest aspect is Jordan Peele’s refusal to provide answers to the elusive strangeness throughout, as this enables him to succeed in making us the kind of viewers he wants us to be: constantly engaged and ready to come up with ten explanations for the same thing over coffee afterwards. For instance, the doppelgangers of every living American are kept hidden away in underground tunnels ready to come back and reclaim what was taken from them. My interpretation of this plot twist (spoilers!) is that Peele is ominously warning us against overpopulation, as evidenced in the freakish sequence showing the underworld figures crammed against the walls and dying to break free from confinement. Some will see this differently, which is credit to Peele’s ability to tell weird, creepy and no less provocative stories that make us question the world we live in.
Horror heavily relies on the acting chops of the cast to believe in the story they are telling no matter how farfetched. Despite coming under fire for being open about the inspiration for her doppelganger’s croaky voice, Lupita Nyong’o is excellent at conveying both the fearful vulnerability of Adelaide and the hellbent ruthlessness of Red. Her wide-eyed terror at the situation is entirely believable and commands every scene with mesmeric force. Aside from the many plot holes (how do the doppelgangers feed their ever-growing rabbit population?), my only other reservation with the film is the characterisation of goofy dad Gabe, who seems to do and say nothing sensible. No, Home Alone-style booby traps wouldn’t defeat the ultrafast, scissor-bearing doppelgangers. In a nutshell, Jordan Peele sends us tumbling down the rabbit hole in a fiercely intelligent and uncannily relevant horror. Part political satire, part violent slasher, ‘Us’ is horror at its most unsettling.
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