SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot.
A middle-class family’s relaxing getaway turns into a waking nightmare when their lake house is invaded by a group of strangers who appear to be their exact doppelgangers. Following the critical and commercial success of Get Out, Jordan Peele cements his position as one of the most visionary directors to emerge from recent US cinema with this politically astute, dementedly funny and frequently shocking chiller.
Kelli Weston, bfi.org.uk
With Jordan Peele’s reanimated The Twilight Zone series soon upon us, it’s fitting that he cites one of the cult TV show’s original episodes, ‘Mirror Image’, as inspiration for this follow-up to his Oscar-winning debut Get Out. ‘Mirror Image’ featured a woman menaced by her physical double, another manifestation of a tried-and-tested horror trope, the doppelganger. From Jekyll and Hyde to the somnambulant alter ego of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, through Sisters’ psychotic twin and the Invasion of the Body Snatchers pod people, these shadow versions serve as canny metaphors to explore hidden desires and darker impulses. Peele is both cinephile enough to reflect those that came before him, and sufficiently smart and savvy to create his own unique mythology, ‘the Tethered’.
Trailers for Us suggested a home-invasion thriller along the lines of Funny Games or The Strangers. But where Get Out was largely confined to the opulent house and grounds of the pseudo-liberal, bodysnatching white family out to get black hosts, Us expands, eventually, to encompass an entire country. It maps a broader, bolder canvas than Get Out’s streamlined slavery analogy. Peele is flexing his filmmaking muscles here, and regularly crosscuts fields of action, from the various family members fighting their vengeful doubles to a climax that elegantly executes an elaborate dance between different time periods and worlds. Accordingly, its ideas are a little harder to pin down, more open to interpretation.
Clues and allusions that pay off later are layered in from the very first scene. Young Adelaide watches a TV commercial for the 1980s charity initiative ‘Hands Across America’, which enlisted some 6.5 million people to form a coast-to-coast human chain to highlight poverty. This striking image is brilliantly repurposed in the film’s stunning final shot, a disenfranchised underclass rising up in solidarity. Earlier, a terrified Adelaide asks her alter-ego apparition Red who she and her fellow Tethered invaders are; Red’s answer, in a guttural rasp with a rictus grin, is ‘We’re Americans.’ Us: literally, the US.
It’s a more inclusive critique, then, than Get Out’s post-racial takedown. Peele addresses race mainly through presenting, without comment, a well-to-do black family as his protagonists: Adelaide, her husband Gabe and their children Zora and Jason. Privilege and oblivious complacency (Gabe regularly envies his friend Josh’s more luxurious trappings) can affect us all. It’s no great stretch to ultimately envisage the film as an adrenalised playing out of Karl Marx’s theory of alienation, people estranged from their humanity by brutal systems of repression and domination. The Tethered, after all, are clad in workmanlike red jumpsuits.
They’re also much more than bogeymen. These are fully rounded characters, and the cast deserve great credit for fleshing out their dual roles. Winston Duke’s Gabe is garrulous comic relief, while his Abraham is a suffering, near-mute man-child. Shahadi Wright Joseph’s Zora is a plucky, frightened teen, but her glowering, toothlessly grinning Dahlia is arguably the film’s most chilling creation. Elisabeth Moss has devilish fun with her extended cameos. And alongside her haunted heroine Adelaide, Lupita Nyong’o’s unnerving physical and vocal contortions as Red embody a reckoning for a lifetime of unwilling, undeserved servitude. #TimesUp, indeed.
Lest this all sound far too worthy and serious, Peele first and foremost provides supremely exciting and effective entertainment. His comedy background and evident love of horror dovetail in scene after scene. A grimly tense and expertly staged attack can be followed, or even spliced, with sudden jolts of humour. One sequence featuring ‘Ophelia’, a non-brand equivalent of Amazon’s talking Alexa, switches from terror to outrageous laughter in the flick of a vocal command. And Michael Abels’s propulsive score effortlessly shifts from dread-tinged minimalism to full-blown operatics, including a mischievous orchestral version of a hip-hop anthem that crops up early on, Luniz’s ‘I Got 5 on It’.
So rich and relentless are Us’s themes and ideas, with exposition still unfolding in its third act, that there’s a nagging feeling it doesn’t quite all fully cohere. Still, Peele is evidently invested in starting conversations and repeated viewings. Younger audiences may want to investigate the relevance of 1980s video-cassette titles (including C.H.U.D. and The Man with Two Brains) displayed in the opening scene; non-religious audiences might now look up recurring Bible verse Jeremiah 11:11. Us follows in the tradition, from Hitchcock to Spielberg, of genre films mining a deeper level than mere surface thrills. And if Jordan Peele seeks to make us confront the man or woman in the mirror, that he constructs such intricate, twisted funhouses in which to do it is a mighty bonus.
Leigh Singer, Sight & Sound, May 2019
US
Director: Jordan Peele
a Monkeypaw production
in association with: Perfect World Pictures
Presented by: Universal Pictures
Executive Producers: Daniel Lupi, Beatriz Sequeira
Produced by: Jordan Peele, Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Ian Cooper
Written by: Jordan Peele
Director of Photography: Michael Gioulakis
Editor: Nicholas Monsour
Production Designer: Ruth De Jong
Costume Designer: Kym Barrett
Music: Michael Abels
Cast
Lupita Nyong’o (Adelaide Wilson)
Winston Duke (Gabe Wilson)
Elisabeth Moss (Kitty Tyler)
Tim Heidecker (Josh Tyler)
Shahadi Wright Joseph (Zora Wilson)
Evan Alex (Jason Wilson)
Cali Sheldon (Becca Tyler)
Noelle Sheldon (Lindsey Tyler)
Madison Curry (young Adelaide)
Yahya Andul-Mateen II, Anna Diop (Adelaide’s parents)
USA 2019
116 mins
IN DREAMS ARE MONSTERS
Nosferatu (Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens)
Mon 17 Oct 20:50; Sun 13 Nov 15:50 (+ intro by Silent Film Curator Bryony Dixon); Sat 19 Nov 14:10
Frankenstein
Tue 18 Oct 20:50; Fri 28 Oct 18:20; Tue 8 Nov 18:20; Sun 27 Nov 13:00
The Skeleton Key
Wed 19 Oct 18:00; Mon 14 Nov 20:45
Meet the Monsters: A Season Introduction
Thu 20 Oct 19:30 BFI YouTube
I Walked With a Zombie
Thu 20 Oct 20:40; Tue 1 Nov 18:10
Creature from the Black Lagoon (3D)
Sat 22 Oct 18:15 (+ pre-recorded intro by Mallory O’Meara, award winning and bestselling author of ‘The Lady from the Black Lagoon’); Sat 29 Oct 11:40; Tue 1 Nov 20:50
In Dreams Are Monsters Quiz
Sun 23 Oct 19:00-22:00 Blue Room
Kuroneko (Yabu no naka no kuroneko)
Tue 25 Oct 20:45; Mon 31 Oct 21:00; Fri 18 Nov 18:15
The Fly
Wed 26 Oct 21:00
La Llorona
Thu 27 Oct 20:30; Mon 7 Nov 21:00
Celluloid Screams and Live Cinema UK presents: Ghostwatch + Q&A
Fri 28 Oct 20:20
Viy
Fri 28 Oct 20:45; Tue 8 Nov 20:50
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Sat 29 Oct 18:30; Wed 30 Nov 20:50
Candyman
Sat 29 Oct 20:45; Thu 17 Nov 20:50 (+ intro)
Nightbreed – Director’s Cut
Sun 30 Oct 15:10 (+ intro); Sat 12 Nov 20:35
28 Days Later
Mon 31 Oct 18:00 (+ Q&A with director Danny Boyle); Sat 26 Nov 20:45
Us
Tue 1 Nov 20:40; Sat 19 Nov 15:10; Tue 29 Nov 20:40
The Autopsy of Jane Doe
Wed 2 Nov 18:10; Sat 26 Nov 20:40
Let’s Scare Jessica to Death
Wed 2 Nov 20:45; Sat 19 Nov 20:45
Blacula
Thu 3 Nov 20:55; Sat 26 Nov 13:00
Cronos
Fri 4 Nov 18:30; Sat 19 Nov 12:10; Sun 20 Nov 18:30
Fright Night
Fri 4 Nov 20:50; Tue 22 Nov 20:40 (+ intro)
Possession
Sat 5 Nov 20:20 (+ intro by author Kier-La Janisse); Sun 27 Nov 15:30
Ganja & Hess
Mon 7 Nov 18:00; Sat 26 Nov 15:20
Inferno
Wed 9 Nov 20:40; Sat 26 Nov 18:20
The Entity
Fri 11 Nov 17:55; Tue 15 Nov 20:30
Def by Temptation
Wed 16 Nov 18:10 (+ intro); Sat 26 Nov 18:10
Jennifer’s Body
Sun 20 Nov 15:15; Mon 21 Nov 18:00; Fri 25 Nov 20:45
Pontypool
Mon 21 Nov 20:30; Sun 27 Nov 12:20
Under the Shadow
Wed 23 Nov 20:40; Tue 29 Nov 18:10
Ouija: Origin of Evil
Thu 24 Nov 20:40; Mon 28 Nov 18:10
Pet Sematary
Fri 25 Nov 18:15; Mon 28 Nov 20:40
Good Manners (As Boas Maneiras)
Sun 27 Nov 18:10; Wed 30 Nov 20:25
IN DREAMS ARE MONSTERS EVENTS
City Lit at BFI: Screen Horrors – Screen Monsters
Thu 20 Oct – Thu 15 Dec 18:30-20:30
Beyond Nollywood World Premiere: Inside Life + Q&A with director Clarence A Peters
Sat 29 Oct 14:00
Matchbox Cine presents House of Psychotic Women
Sat 5 Nov 17:50
Son of Ingagi + Panel Discussion
Wed 9 Nov 18:10
Live Commentary with Evolution of Horror, Brain Rot and The Final Girls
Sat 19 Nov 18:00
Big Monster Energy
Tue 22 Nov 18:30
BFI SOUTHBANK
Welcome to the home of great film and TV, with three cinemas and a studio, a world-class library, regular exhibitions and a pioneering Mediatheque with 1000s of free titles for you to explore. Browse special-edition merchandise in the BFI Shop.We're also pleased to offer you a unique new space, the BFI Riverfront – with unrivalled riverside views of Waterloo Bridge and beyond, a delicious seasonal menu, plus a stylish balcony bar for cocktails or special events. Come and enjoy a pre-cinema dinner or a drink on the balcony as the sun goes down.
BECOME A BFI MEMBER
Enjoy a great package of film benefits including priority booking at BFI Southbank and BFI Festivals. Join today at bfi.org.uk/join
BFI PLAYER
We are always open online on BFI Player where you can watch the best new, cult & classic cinema on demand. Showcasing hand-picked landmark British and independent titles, films are available to watch in three distinct ways: Subscription, Rentals & Free to view.
See something different today on player.bfi.org.uk
Join the BFI mailing list for regular programme updates. Not yet registered? Create a new account at www.bfi.org.uk/signup
Programme notes and credits compiled by the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
Questions/comments? Contact the Programme Notes team by email