Us: Review by @Kush_Hayes
Im sorry to report that much like with M. Night Shyamalans Sophomore film Unbreakable, I am leaving Academy Award Winning Jordan Peeles Us with less than enthusiastic feelings. Its confusing everytime this happens with the “hot new director every loves”, but Sophomore project is Sophomoric.
What makes the whole thing confusing is that it checks a lot of the boxes of things that I like.
Kush, what did you like if this isnt a positive review?
Major or minor:
I like the insular premise behind it of a family being home invaded by their homicidal doppelgangers.
Since you now know that theres dual roles, Im happy to tell you I enjoyed how the actors played off themselves.
I like the score, that skin crawling horror violin that just paints more suspense on. It really helped to build tension where there was none. I enjoyed the humor presented in this movie thanks to Winston Dukes timing.
I like that its the second movie in four months to reference the time in Santa Cruz during The Lost Boys era. This one starts in 1986, but mentions “Theyre filming extras over there for something.”
I like one other thing I will come back to after I go on about what I dont like.
I dont like that the doppelgangers go beyond the family we start our movie with.
I dont like that where they could have just left it open to interpretation about the origins of our doppelgangers, they attempt to explain it. And because of that, I question life patterns and time zones, and where did we get our clothes and gold scissors?
Much like I mentioned with Unbreakable it starts with exposition most will miss the first time around and it has a twist that should annoy everyone.
This is definitely a nitpick, but I dont appreciate how everyone ate hard into the hype on this one. I mention a little bit about some of that in Episode 16 of The Kush Hayes Show. Where people went out of their way to ignore conversation of this movie and treat it like confrontation.
This is where I come back to the final thing I like about this movie. As of this writing, and Im sure itll change for the negative much more by Sun Up, but only three hours after this movie, people are having conversations about this. No direct quotes, but the attitudes are “Im sorry you didnt like that, here is why I did like it.” and the opposite of “Thank you for telling me what you liked, I enjoyed this, but didnt care for that.”
For at least the three hours before I wrote this, perfect strangers across multiple platforms were engaged in actual conversation and sharing their thoughts on this totally fresh new movie.
Its because of that I wish I could give Jordan Peeles Us a stronger rating. However:
Three out of Six Blueberries
Rated R for violence/terror, and language.
This review was originally published March 22nd 2019 on Kush And Kai
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