Evil doppelgängers terrorize a family in Jordan Peele’s latest film
A combination of great casting and an engaging storyline combine in ‘Us.’
Summary
The movie “Us” opens on a scene in the year 1986 with a young girl and her parents at the Santa Cruz boardwalk at night.
She ends up separating from her parents to walk out on the empty beach.
Her eyes find an attraction that is on the beach, and she walks into what looks like an abandoned maze of mirrors. In the maze, she discovers something deeply terrifying — her doppelgänger.
After the opening scene, the movie shifts to the present day where the Wilson family is heading to their vacation home. Adelaide, the little girl from the opening scene, is now a mother and is nervous about returning to the Santa Cruz boardwalk.
Her husband Gabe found her reaction to be over-exaggerated, but ultimately tries to help her feel at ease. He wants to take their kids Zora and Jason to the beach to meet up with some old friends.
After one small scare and a number of bizarre coincidences on the beach, the Wilson family returns home for a quiet night in. However, the quiet night quickly turns into a night of horror as they are terrorized by some unlikely trespassers that lined up across their driveway: doppelgängers of themselves.
Review
There are a number of things that I enjoyed about this movie.
I thoroughly appreciate that this movie allows for there to be multiple interpretations of what it symbolizes.
I also thought the casting choices were superb. Jordan Peele casted Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Anna Diop and Evan Alex as the Wilson family members. All of them did an excellent job playing both their main characters and their doppelgängers.
Nyong’o, who plays both Adelaide Wilson and her doppelgänger Red, flawlessly sells the complex nature of both her roles.
The doubles actually maintain a lot of the character traits of the originals. However, all the actors manage to convey this without speaking for the most part, and in such a manner that the clones have this subtly off-kilter manner that is disconcerting.
The movie has plenty of humor to it, most of which ties into the great depiction of the central family unit.
The Wilsons are a close and supportive family that do not get dragged down by the thinly-veiled contempt a lot of movie families have for each other.
They are all quite capable, with the father managing to dispatch his double while suffering from a broken knee.