Us

Jordan Peele: Two sentence horror story to freak you out? All I need is two words: "It's us".

Director Jordan Peele is a genius. The best movies are the ones that keep people thrilled and pondering for days after they leave the theatre. In that sense, Us is yet another major addition to Peele's blossoming repertoire and his unique style of dropping subtle messages and over-arching themes that we should realize as living beings. Yet, how could a story about doppelgangers possibly have to do with anything more profound than horror? Well, that's the captivating aspect of this film. As we have seen in Get Out, Jordan Peele's style is mosaic of his own fears, his inventiveness with subtlety and his social commentary. In the moment, the scene is riveting and fulfills the film's purpose to terrorize our souls, but it makes no thematic sense. That is, only in the moment. Us is no different. Peele encourages his audience to latch onto their trepidation for a few more days and unravel whatever message that lurks in every corner of every scene. It was simply a matter of searching for the answers on our own.

However, Us is comparably more open-ended than Get Out, especially with the ending. It is almost so open-ended that it treads within a precarious zone between freedom for interpretation and bad writing. Yet I prefer to lean more towards an optimistic attitude because... it's Jordan Peele. Whatever that I didn't understand in the moment was too complex for my pea brain, but after giving my reflection a bit more time and a couple of YouTube videos, it all made sense. Mostly. We already know that Peele formulates his ideas around the dark spots American history and intriguing perspectives about the human mind. It helps to know that Us revolves around class/race conflict and is arguably a symbolic depiction of American capitalism. Even though the unlikely connections are still difficult to be made on the spot, the best part about watching Us (or any movie, in fact) is also understanding the motive while also relishing the incredible acting, the spine-chilling soundtrack and the new face of horror. It's just ridiculous what Jordan Peele can do with only $20 million; nothing flashy, nothing but genius. It's enough to freak you out for the next two weeks.

*All images on this post are legally owned by Monkeypaw Productions & Perfect World Pictures.