j* Movie Reviews 2019

Us (2019)

I'm glad I didn't see this in the cinema... I found it in the over-rated category.

Look, I think everyone agrees that Get Out was great. It was a slick creepy story with a cool underlying theme and some poetic symbolism along the way. But Us is not. Us is like a massive mess of ideas and any coherent story is buried deep under someone yelling "this is cool symbolism put it in the movie!" I like the comparisons to some of the M Night-Shyamalan films that just land awkwardly and break their ankles and everyone walks out going "why did we bother?"

The basic premise is that there is a family and they have creepy underworld doppelgangers that have come for them. And that's not a bad premise. And there are a few bits where it is proper creepy, but then too many bits where it's just funny. Then with about an hour to go it's like they realised they'd run out of story, so then tried to level this up as a greater neighbourhood issue.

Now here's the thing, and I know horror is super-subjective, but in a horror film you want to be kept on edge and constantly in a state of shock and awe and maybe even fear about what you're seeing. But so many actions in this are predictable. My mate and I were both sitting there "forseeing" the film... like "here comes the head snip" and "thunder egg in three, two, one..." and "oh, one of them is clearly not dead..." It was all a bit like a paint by numbers where you don't even need the numbers to know what colours you're putting where.

The premise is way creepy, and the execution is visually beautiful. But then it's just like all the proportions got out of whack and they crammed way too much symbolism in for the story... and then never gave it any resonance or poignance. Like the rabbits. I was well buckled up for a rabbit wild ride and then... well... nothing. The obsession with scissors and the line of people and the red suits... visually gorgeous, clarity of mud.

And I spent a lot of time googling the symbolic interpretations afterwards and everyone just keeps talking about how cool it all was without actually understanding the purpose of symbolism to begin with, nor coming up with a coherent story. It's like symbolism as xmas tree decorations... throw on all those snowflakes and angels and shiny balls and hope it looks good!

None of this was helped by Jordan Peele's quote around rabbit use:

"They're an animal of duality. They're adorable but they terrify me at the same time. And they got those scissor-like ears that creep me out."

And paired with his:

"There's a duality to scissors — a whole made up of two parts but also they lie in this territory between the mundane and the absolutely terrifying."

All I can understand is that I'm apparently not creeped out by either scissors or rabbits and thus this film was never going to work for me.

There are also like a gazillion plotholes around the function and malfunction of "the tethered" who can be super-conveniently controlled but only at super-convenient plot moments.

Being over-rated is probably it's biggest crime.

J* gives it 3 stars.