Us is a new horror film that everyone has been talking about from the creative mind of Jordan Peele who is the oscar-winning director behind the film Get out. The film revolves around the character of Adelaide Wilson(played by Lupita Nyong’o) who experiences something traumatic as a little girl at a Santa Cruz beach carnival. As an adult, her and her family travel back to that beach for a vacation, and they’re visited at night at their beach house by dopplegangers of their whole family. The rest of the film was a thrilling good time that entertained me from start to finish.

I’ll start by saying that I went to see this movie two times just so I could understand it more and analyze it. It’s a very ambiguous film, and many people will either find this to be one of the largest flaws this movie has or one of its greatest strengths. People like to be told in movies what exactly is going on, they like to be spoon-fed information through expositional scenes. I found that the ambiguity was one of the films greatest strengths. I even went to see the film a second time to see if I could dissect it and pick up on things that I hadn’t noticed upon first viewing. I will say that this film might take multiple viewings to understand it fully.  I think I might need to see if even more times. Peele has layered this film with so much depth and detail where I was like, “that’s absolutely genius”(in my head, not out loud of course). He purposefully wants to leave the audience with questions so that we can create theories and speculations about this film for years to come. That’s pretty brilliant. Hopefully this will become a classic of the future.

All the performances were good, the biggest surprises I’d say were the performances from the child actors. Usually I despise child actors in movies, but they added a lot to the movie. The father character(played by Winston Duke) brought so much levity and comedic presence in the movie, which I thought was smart to have. He made the whole family seem more down to Earth because the other family members were seemingly always sulking around for the most part. The stand-out performance has to be from Lupita Nyong’o. Wow. This woman is a talent. Her character Adelaide and Red were so well-done and fleshed out. Not to forget that she brought so much diversity to both her characters yet something about them was so similar. They both had an almost animalistic quality about them. I will say no more, because I don’t want to tread into spoiler territory. The supporting cast did a fantastic job as well.

I will say that I do think this film might have been a little overhyped. With advertisements saying how it’s the scariest movie ever made. I think the fact that so much buzz was surrounding this film that it kind’ve took away from it a little bit. I wouldn’t say this film was very scary. It definitely has themes of horror in it, but when you get right down and deep into this film, it’s really just a very suspenseful thriller. A thriller that has a lot to say about present day world problems and makes us as the viewers question who is really the good guy and who is the bad guy. It makes us think of how we sometimes confuse the good and the bad in today’s world. That’s a great message.

Jordan Peele is a new talent in Hollywood, no doubt about that. I am excited about what else this man makes because I think this genre really needs him. His directing is seamless.

I am going to give Us 4 out of 5 claps.