Us (2019)

[Adam Lenhardt]

Title: Us

Genre: Thriller, Horror

Director: Jordan Peele

Cast: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop, Duke Nicholson, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Madison Curry, Kara Hayward

Release: 2019-03-14

Plot: A mother and and a father take their kids to their beach house expecting to unplug and unwind with friends. But as night descends, their serenity turns to tension and chaos when some shocking visitors arrive uninvited.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

First Trailer:

 

[TravisR]

I'm excited to see what Jordan Peele does next. As a horror fan, I love that after Get Out he pretty much could have made any movie and he chose to stay in horror.

 

[Jake Lipson]

I don't do movies with jump scares because I have a startle reflex which makes jump scares really painful, but was able to handle Get Out at home with the aid of a remote control (and a friend who told me when to adjust the volume.) From what I've heard so far, it sounds like Us is going to be very jumpy, so I'll probably have to skip it. I don't begrudge Jordan Peele making use of jump scares in his films if that's what he wants to do, but it does take me out of the potential audience for them, which is unfortunate because I really did enjoy Get Out. Oh well.

 

[Sam Posten]

Me:Yassssssssssss

 

[Robert Crawford]

I don't do movies with jump scares because I have a startle reflex which makes jump scares really painful, but was able to handle Get Out at home with the aid of a remote control (and a friend who told me when to adjust the volume.) From what I've heard so far, it sounds like Us is going to be very jumpy, so I'll probably have to skip it. I don't begrudge Jordan Peele making use of jump scares in his films if that's what he wants to do, but it does take me out of the potential audience for them, which is unfortunate because I really did enjoy Get Out. Oh well.

I've grown tired of such films too in my old age. I'm also now having a hard time watching movies in which women or children are abused and terrorized. It's the main reason why I haven't watched "Split".

 

[Jake Lipson]

For anyone seeing this: about how many jump scares are in the film?

As I mentioned when the trailer came out, I normally don't do horror films because I have a startle reflex which makes jump scares really physically painful for me. But I saw Get Out on disc (when I could control the volume and had advance warning from a friend who had already seen it about where the jump scares were) and loved it. So I'm in a weird position for me of being interested in seeing this despite the fact that the trailer looks like it's very jumpy.

If there are two or three jump scares throughout the movie, I could probably tolerate that. However, if it's extremely frequent, I might want to skip it in the theatrical window.

Advice would be appreciated.

 

[dpippel]

I don't know how many jump scares, but if this is as good or better than Get Out, I am SO in.

Jordan Peele! Who woulda thunk it?

 

[Jeff Adkins]

For anyone seeing this: about how many jump scares are in the film?

As I mentioned when the trailer came out, I normally don't do horror films because I have a startle reflex which makes jump scares really physically painful for me. But I saw Get Out on disc (when I could control the volume and had advance warning from a friend who had already seen it about where the jump scares were) and loved it. So I'm in a weird position for me of being interested in seeing this despite the fact that the trailer looks like it's very jumpy.

If there are two or three jump scares throughout the movie, I could probably tolerate that. However, if it's extremely frequent, I might want to skip it in the theatrical window.

Advice would be appreciated.

I HATE jump scares. I'd love to know the answer to this too, as I won't be able to see it until probably Sunday.

 

[Malcolm R]

Word is that it's a more "traditional" thriller than Get Out, so I'd translate that as more jump scares than the prior film.

Thursday previews were $7.4 million, more than 4x that of Get Out and just behind Halloween (which had a $76m opening weekend).

 

[Tino]

I just saw it.

Didn’t jump once I think. Get Out was a much better film in every way.

Although this was an interesting creepy film with a twilight zone vibe and good performances.

Gotta let it sit a while.

 

[mattCR]

No jump scares, but this is a film that can really stick with you for the creep out factor. A lot of subtext in some of the plotting that I found really interesting as well.

 

[Robert Crawford]

No jump scares, but this is a film that can really stick with you for the creep out factor. A lot of subtext in some of the plotting that I found really interesting as well.

I don't particularly like these kind of films, but I'll probably see it next week as one of my A-List selections.

 

[Tino]

Many of US’s questions answered.

Beware. MAJOR Spoilers.

https://www.vox.com/2019/3/22/18277163/us-movie-ending-what-happened-adelaide-red-explained

 

[benbess]

Liked it! Rating: "A-"

 

[benbess]

For anyone seeing this: about how many jump scares are in the film?

As I mentioned when the trailer came out, I normally don't do horror films because I have a startle reflex which makes jump scares really physically painful for me. But I saw Get Out on disc (when I could control the volume and had advance warning from a friend who had already seen it about where the jump scares were) and loved it. So I'm in a weird position for me of being interested in seeing this despite the fact that the trailer looks like it's very jumpy.

If there are two or three jump scares throughout the movie, I could probably tolerate that. However, if it's extremely frequent, I might want to skip it in the theatrical window.

Advice would be appreciated.

I am easily startled. But my guess is that I had c. half a dozen "jump startles" while watching US.

 

[DaveF]

“Us” is a decent idea for a 30 minute Twilight Zone stretched beyond its limits for a two hour movie.

I’m not a horror fan, and don’t really go for scares, but Us wasn’t scary or even suspenseful. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s not really a good movie.

 

[DaveF]

I didn’t understand the movie. Intellectually I followed the story. But I didn’t get it emotionally.

There were a lot of partial ideas, all tossed together, not setting up the story nor paying off in the outcomes. I didn’t understand if I was watching horror, sci-fi, psycholgical thriller, or untethered fantasy. I couldn’t find a handhold for the experience to carry me along.

I wonder if my experience with this horror film is how other people feel when they watch Anime and just don’t relate to inexplicable weirdness of it.

 

[benbess]

....I didn’t understand if I was watching horror, sci-fi, psycholgical thriller, or untethered fantasy...

I think you are right—it's all of these. And it's seemingly somewhat of an allegory of some kind as well. Us didn't work very well for you, but I thought it was better than the average horror movie by quite a bit, in part because increasingly it wasn't just about scares, and because it mixed different genres.

But it's obviously totally fine that it didn't work for you! And you're right, I rarely watch anime for the reasons you mention, unless I can get my grown kids to introduce me to a show and explain parts of it to me.

You mentioned that Us feels Twilight Zone-like, and I agree. I think lot of good movies do have a Twilight Zone vibe/plot structure, and this is one of them. Most of them work pretty well for me, but some, like Inception, have let me down—even though most people seemed to love Inception. Some M. Night movies are TZ-like, and I enjoy some of them in part for that reason. I feel like Shyamalan lost his mojo actually when he moved away from that kind of story starting with Lady in the Water—and everything he's done since then. For me his last really good movie was The Village.

Unlike most people, I think Us is better than Get Out. I'm beginning to think that Jordan Peele might be a good person to run the Twilight Zone reboot.

Anyway, here's a good c. 5 minute interview with Jordan Peele, Lupita Nyong'o, and the other stars of Us. This interview has "clues" but imho no major spoilers beyond what the trailer already reveals:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/h...T5VRgX21o2VSzaNR86rjOJAzUEvoFxoTN6Zv-w6sZtxcs

 

[DaveF]

^ I don’t watch horror movies. Since I was making an exception, I wanted to be scared and have that experience. But Us wasn’t scary. That was a let down. And a big part of my confusion as to what I was experiencing.

I’ve been taking with a local friend who is a big horror movie fan, goes to most of them often with her daughter. She really enjoyed as did her daughter.

So I’m just missing something.

It makes me think of the folks that thought Spider-Verse was incorrectly shown in theaters, because they weren’t able at first to understand the new visual language the movie has created.

I feel like Us might be talking in a cinematic dialect that I don’t understand.