PopHorror Let's Get Scared
The best horror often blurs the lines between reality and fiction. When relatable terror combines with the realm of the seemingly impossible in a soup culled in the style of “The Twilight Zone,” the audience is both glued to the screen in fear and mystified by the endless possibilities. This is the world that Jordan Peele cultivated with his 2019 hit, Us. With Us celebrating its five year anniversary this year, let’s take a look back at what made it so chilling.
Us was written and directed by Jordan Peele, following his smash directorial debut, Get Out. It stars Lupita Nyong’o (Black Panther 2018) and Winston Duke (Avengers: Endgame 2019). The plot centers around a family who goes on a vacation together, when their residence suddenly gets invaded by menacing doppelgangers. Suddenly trapped in a small space with partially mute twin versions of themselves, the family is left to uncover an underground world with even bigger plans.
This movie has all the tension of a home invasion like The Strangers (check out our retro review here), while also crossing over into classic sci-fi alien movies of the 1950s, like Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. The family feels real, so you see the emotion of their bond as their future starts to fall in doubt. The score uses slowed-down tracks and off-kilter sound effects to make the audience feel unsure.
Us would be chilling enough if it were simply an unexplained body switching experiment, but it becomes far more than that. It examines the duality of humans, and the possibility of intertwined lives and our decisions having an impact on people that we can’t see. Furthermore, Us is also a class study of the haves and have-nots. This film puts more depth and rationale behind invasion movies than perhaps any other in history, while still being ambiguous enough to leave open-ended questions.
Us is a layered and worthy addition to any horror/sci-fi catalog, and at the time of this writing, is available on Tubi, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.
