When an ordinary family of 4 takes a summer vacation together at a peaceful lake house, their sun-filled fun is disrupted when another identical family of 4 starts terrorizing them. How can this ordinary family fight against real people who look exactly like them, move like them, and think like them? This tale of bloody survival takes viewers to a dark hall of mirrors, an eerily empty beach, and a strange, sterile underworld covered in white tiles.
Just as writer-director Jordan Peele's first film, Get Out (2017) offers a creative and haunting metaphor of slavery and racial oppression, Us shows a violent and mysterious metaphor of the duality within ourselves. Opposing sides constantly at odds in our own heads, Us is an introspective exploration of inner conflict and the conflict of differing class levels, backgrounds, or societal groups.
Similarly to Get Out, Us also smartly injects unexpected, quirky, dark moments of humor giving the horror film a bit of nuance. The abstract, philosophical angle gets progressively heavy-handed or clumsy the more the story unfolds, so certain moments of poignant revelation and sobering truth don't land well. It felt like the story was trying too hard to explain some of the mysteries that make it unique. But the prickly musical score and slyly edited violence help make Us at least an original addition to the horror genre.
