The Masks That Bind

Writer-director Jordan Peele, as with his masterful debut, Get Out, doesn’t make films like most of his horror contemporaries. With the intensely personal terror that takes place within Us, Peele’s sensibilities strike akin to that of a cinephile who’s just as thoughtfully engaging as he is aesthetically savvy. His pristine dedication to his craft respectively rewards and welcomes ardent cinephiles and casual moviegoers with a singularly arresting vision of a world shackled with denial, trauma, and self-destruction.

Us follows one wholesome family comprised of Adelaide (Lupita N’yongo), her husband, Gabe (Winston Duke), and their daughter and son, Zora and Jason (Shahadi Wright Joesph & Evan Alex respectively), on a summer vacation to Santa Cruz. While Adelaide enjoys the getaway with her family, Gabe embarrassingly connects with his kids with banter that would make other dads trying to be “hip” blush.

That night, after a day at the beach with their friends, Adelaide confesses to Gabe that she feels as though her past is coming back to haunt her. In playing to one of the many strengths of Us, Peele deftly blends comic tenderness and discreet suspense that effectively foreshadows the tension that breathes as much on the outside as it does the inside. In most horror films, time is usually spent on characters being caricatures or acting scared. Here is a rare, refreshing moment when the characters actually talk about actually being afraid like intelligent and sensitive people.

The family’s idyllic getaway is soon interrupted that night by a home invasion conducted by an ominous gang of four assailants dressed in red, holding hand in hand. At first, they just stand there on the driveway devoid of any life or any care. When the invaders take action, the family realizes a disturbing fact: they look exactly like them, but without proper eyebrows. Even creepier is how Adelaide’s double, Red, speaks English with a dried yawn’s intonation, yet everyone else speaks in deep gasps and grunts. Even Jason’s masked, mute double crawls more like a croaking spider than an actual boy.

The premise alone immediately revitalizes the lost power of the slasher movie. In retrospective, movie serial killers really have no difference from zombies, other than the former being alive and the latter technically undead. The killers, who identify themselves as the Tethered, not only have the menacing intelligence that’s reminiscent of the Xenomorph from Alien, but this is also a slasher film that finally has heroes who are just as smart as the serial killers.

In many respects, Us succeeds in the several ways Get Out previously does: as mentioned, the characters feel like actual people with their own quirks and fears. The horror of Us stems from a deep-seated and suppressed truth about ourselves. On top of that, its themes not only compliment the film’s underlying darkness, but enhances it into an experience that’s far more disturbing than what’s expected. With that said, Us does something extraordinarily different from today’s horror films, even from Get Out.

The monsters within ourselves, as shown in Us, are much scarier than the Tethered. In fact, our own shadows are our own worst enemy. They’re so like us that they easily convince ourselves that the “real” monsters are still out there watching our every move, reading every thought, and discriminating every emotion until they eat away at our souls until we become hallow shells of what we used to be. If Invasion of the Body Snatchers warns of the monsters that control the “other,” Us warns of the monsters that pit ourselves against the “other.”

Us has no shortage of gripping performances, and Lupita N’yongo’s turn as both Adelaide and Red is beyond extraordinary. In fact, the first encounter between the family and the Tethered is a haunting showcase of her emotional range. Where most filmmakers revel in the horror of the scream, Peele continues to terrify with his newly uncommon gaze of frozen, paralyzed, and powerless terror. The stark emotional contrasts that N’yongo illustrates in her acting cements her performance as one of the finest that has ever graced horror cinema.

Us, in the years to come, will continue to warrant multiple viewings, endless debates, and discriminating analyses. While the ambiguity of Us has definitely earned those distinctions, the film’s invitations towards its more hidden meanings occasionally threaten its basic narrative. There are some scenes in the film where Peele feels more conscious of communicating ideas solely through symbols rather than allowing the journeys of his characters to operate them. While the film lacks some of the narrative balance and tight pacing that Get Out perfects, Us still succeeds at everything else in flying colors, and it proves that Peele is still the modern master at conjuring up the scariest monsters that hold ourselves back.