Us - The new Jordan Peele movie

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Dolphin Lundgren

One suave fucker.
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I wasn't a fan of Get Out or Jordan Peele's previous work so I most likely won't get into this that much.
 

AutismSpeaksLoudly

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Just got back from seeing it. It was pretty good, at least on par with Get Out, if not better. Lots of really tense sequences, yet surprisingly light on jump scares, which is refreshing for a modern horror movie. The plot (which I won't spoil) is kind of confusing and ultimately sort of open-ended, though it would probably make more sense on a second viewing, The acting was also very good; all the characters felt like real people, and watching the family interact and work with one another was the most satisfying part of the movie for me. All in all one of the better horror movies I've seen in the last few years.

TL;DR: 8/10 would recommend
 
I uh... am going to go ahead and guess the title is symbolic of a real life societal issue, that issue being the biggest threat to black people is... other black people! OMG it's us!

Just the description of get out is too fart sniffy for me, so I really doubt I'd like this. Again, it'll be praised 25-100% more than it deserves, but will probably be an objectively decent or better movie, for the people that like this sort of thing. I don't think he'd phone it in, Jordan Peele seems to really care about the art of this.
 

Gordon Cole

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Just saw the movie, and I can think of a different two-letter word that can sum my thoughts up: "Ok".

I'll say this, the acting, especially from Lupita Nyong'o and surprisingly enough Tim Heidecker was great, and Jordan Peele really stepped up his game as a director. There's almost Edgar Wright levels of foreshadowing, callbacks and background info in this.

Unfortunately compared to Get Out, the story of this isn't nearly as tight or concise, it often felt like Peele was just throwing "creepy" things on the screen without making them scary, and the end twist for me just raised more questions than answers. And my theater, compared to the screams and cheers of Get Out was dead silent for the whole thing.

It wasn't terrible, but it is something of a step down from Get Out.

The social message here thankfully isn't race again, but is instead about the class struggle. Also, "Us" like the "United States". Geddit?
 

WaltherPPGAY

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The reviews call it a progressive masterpiece, but a perusal of the plot on wikipedia makes it seem like it's actually super racist. I kind of want to see what was lost in translation. Maybe Peele's going to get dragged on black twitter for having a white wife again.
 

Jersey Devil

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This movie was more ambitious than Get Out, but it was a mixed bag. I felt like some things (opening scene, some of the climax) were better directed than anything in Get Out, but there was also a lot of stuff that fell flat on its face. The heavy-handed symbolism/visual motifs were a lot better than the deer/tea stuff in Get Out, mainly because Peele committed more to them and they were more visually interesting. However, I thought that there were parts of the second act that dragged and that the way the concept was handled was a bit unfitting for how weird the premise was. I agree that the plot felt thrown together, which would have been fine if Peele chose not to explain everything and make it more about the imagery. However, that wasn't the case and the movie seems confused as a result.

One thing I dislike in both movies is how there has to be the scene where a character sits down and has the entire premise explained to them. In Get Out it was okay to have a scene like that since the actual premise is weirder than you'd expect from the movie before it, but I thought having N'yongo stand in frame in Us and explain the idea of the Tethered to herself was excessive. I get the whole "we don't want people to be confused" thing but they're literally running around this lab facility that has rabbits all over it, it's pretty obvious that it was some experiment shit and it sounds dumber the more you explain it. Also, I don't understand why she's explaining it when she's the real Adelaide and the other Adelaide would already know this since she came from this facility.

The shot that they used for the exposition dump was good looking though, and the climax was an excellent mix of choreography, editing and directing. I ultimately thought it was a good movie, but I found it way more frustrating than Get Out.

I appreciate that Peele wants to make Twilight Zone-esque movies with social commentary and it's cool that he didn't just take the easy way out and rehash the same race message as before. However, I think he has a very good eye for horror directing and I wish that he would go with balls-to-the-wall surrealism at points rather than flirting with it and then backing off and grounding everything in reality. That could just be my bias towards that sort of movie but I really believe that he has the skills required to make a real top-tier horror movie if he chose to rely on his visual motifs and editing rather than random exposition dumps.

EDIT: On a side note, the fucking trailers for Peele's movies are now 2 for 2 on spoiling the twists. I hate horror movie trailers.
 
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Gordon Cole

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Is this actually good or is it more of the "wow black people super awesome and progressive! 10/10 best horror film ever!" nonsense like Get Out was?
Like I said it has it's flaws, but the direction and acting are still really solid. And if it'll help, race isn't brought up at all in the movie outside of like one joke. The main characters just happen to be black.

Or you know, just ignore the critics and watch/judge the movie for yourself.
 
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Jersey Devil

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Is this actually good or is it more of the "wow black people super awesome and progressive! 10/10 best horror film ever!" nonsense like Get Out was?

My favorite part about Get Out was that the people who constantly went on about how it was the best movie in the world because it had black people in it were doing the same shit as the villains in the movie.

The thing I like about Peele's allegories is that he usually does them through a more realistic lens than you'd expect. For any movie with the message of Get Out, you'd expect the racism to be the usual "we don't serve your kind around here" redneck shit but it's actually about annoying, out of touch liberals who don't actually care about the people they claim to champion. Same with Us. Usually that sort of message would have the people representing the "lower class" be actively treated like shit by the "upper class." In this movie they don't know about the people under and are actively confused/scared when confronted with them because they weren't even aware of their existence.

I dunno, I think that Peele is actually better than the critic reduction of "HE SAYS RACISM/CLASSISM IS BAD SO WOKE DUDE" makes him out to be.
 

Next Task

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Just saw it. Really liked it for at least the first two thirds, but the landing didn't quite stick. It felt like there were a couple too many ideas being thrown in, and yeah, the exposition dump really didn't help matters.

Everything before that though was well-done, I thought. It's mostly a 'home invasion' movie, and the humour between the characters worked better for me than in Get Out where it mostly came from one comic relief sidekick rather than any real interplay. It doesn't rely on cheap jump scares, instead working at building a good head of tension. And I found it very easy to watch as just a horror film, rather than as Meaningful Social Commentary.

The film pretty much stops making sense as soon as they arrive at the carnival in the third act. Though they're meant to be shadows, only Jason, the boy, seems to actually have any ability to make his actually mimic him; the rest seem mostly autonomous. And then all of a sudden Adelaide is alone while her husband and daughter are getting an ambulance, seemingly unfazed that Jason's been kidnapped and Adelaide has gone off alone to find him.

The connective ballet dance had no resonance since it was the first we'd heard of it, or even that she used to be a dancer except for one throwaway line. Glazing over the idea that the Tethered were underground then decided to invade would be easier if, as pointed out above, the final twist means the conversation happening doesn't make sense.

And that final twist, that they had actually swapped places back in 1986, could have been taken out and it really wouldn't change the film in the slightest. It gave a reason why Adelaide was special, but didn't change that Tethered Adelaide in the real world grew up, got married, had two children, and could seemingly be a normal person, while 'real' Adelaide apparently never managed to escape even though she knew about the real world. It also means Jason seemingly knowing something was up at the end doesn't mean much, because the swap happened before he was born, so the only mother he has ever known remains the same. It might make more sense allegorically, but I was quite happy to not take the film at any pretentious level so on a basic film sense level, it didn't work for me.

It actually reminded me of Get Out in that regard, where a simpler explanation - in this case, in fighting your demons make sure you don't lose yourself and become as bad as them - gets replaced by a trickier, more nonsensical idea, seemingly just to be smarter, or aware, or something.

And there's this vague suspicion in my head that the film originated with 'What if Hands Across America...but evil?' - which is just silly.

Overall, definitely worth seeing for the pacing, the acting and the film in general. Could have ended better, but that's a problem with a lot of horror, sadly. I really enjoyed the film in total, it just loses its way a bit at the end.
 
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