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beehammerSo, Us was... muddled. Gorgeous, great, a shitload of fun, fucking terrifying, etc. Gorgeously acted. Winston Duke playing Jordan goddamned Peele for an entire movie was just great. Lupita Nyong'o was amazing. But muddled.
I've spent a couple of days since seeing it gnawing on what was bugging me about it, and I think one of the primary problems is that horror is, at its core, a reactionary genre. When you're making progressive horror, you're fighting an uphill battle against the genre's base tendencies. It can be done, obviously, and it can be done very well, but it means that the messaging and conceit have to be much more focused. Get Out* and Assassination Nation were two good examples of that in action. Us was a lot farther out there than Get Out, and a lot more ambitious. There's a lot more going on there, and it asks the audience to follow it a lot farther down the rabbit hole. I don't know that it necessarily works. I'm also not sure where the twist leaves the main characters.
We don't see a whole lot out of the Tylers' doubles, but they seem a lot closer to the standard-issue "puppet" of the doubles that Red breaks from to become Adelaide than the hybrid children that Red and Abraham produce do. We also see Adelaide start to slip around the edges when she's pushed, and Zora and Jason take to brutality like ducks to water, in a way that raises a lot of questions that are muddied by the way Red becomes Adelaide--becomes indistinguishable from a real person--with time and care and patience and careful parenting. Red's not far off what someone might expect of a nine-year-old cast parentless into a nightmare world where she has no choice but to survive because her doppleganger lives on, but Adelaide was supposedly born soulless and without independent will, and she's blossomed into a normal person in her time above-ground.
If Red's children are capable of more than they should be, and Adelaide's children are degraded in comparison to their "normal" counterparts, where does that leave the film's central thesis? Is Adelaide/Red an unrepeatable aberation, with the doppleganger underclass that Red's leading into the light rendered a grim mistake that should be eradicated as soon and humanely as possible to correct the mistakes of the past?
It undermines the idea that the only real difference between Red and Adelaide is which one was cared for and which one was neglected. It undermines the idea that there must come a reckoning for the exploitation capitalism relies on for its illusion of luxury. It undermines the redemptive message of the film. The family survives and is moving into an uncertain future, but they've lost themselves as much as they've lost their sense of security.
It's muddled. It's a small price to pay for a significantly more ambitious film, but it blunts some of its bite.
*I feel like Get Out is one of those films where you almost can't compare it to anything else, because it's... It's a literal perfect film. I mean, there are literally no missed steps, sour notes, self-indulgent flourishes, or untaken opportunities. It hits every mark it addresses. Especially for a first-time feature director, that pretty much does not happen.
I've spent a couple of days since seeing it gnawing on what was bugging me about it, and I think one of the primary problems is that horror is, at its core, a reactionary genre. When you're making progressive horror, you're fighting an uphill battle against the genre's base tendencies. It can be done, obviously, and it can be done very well, but it means that the messaging and conceit have to be much more focused. Get Out* and Assassination Nation were two good examples of that in action. Us was a lot farther out there than Get Out, and a lot more ambitious. There's a lot more going on there, and it asks the audience to follow it a lot farther down the rabbit hole. I don't know that it necessarily works. I'm also not sure where the twist leaves the main characters.
We don't see a whole lot out of the Tylers' doubles, but they seem a lot closer to the standard-issue "puppet" of the doubles that Red breaks from to become Adelaide than the hybrid children that Red and Abraham produce do. We also see Adelaide start to slip around the edges when she's pushed, and Zora and Jason take to brutality like ducks to water, in a way that raises a lot of questions that are muddied by the way Red becomes Adelaide--becomes indistinguishable from a real person--with time and care and patience and careful parenting. Red's not far off what someone might expect of a nine-year-old cast parentless into a nightmare world where she has no choice but to survive because her doppleganger lives on, but Adelaide was supposedly born soulless and without independent will, and she's blossomed into a normal person in her time above-ground.
If Red's children are capable of more than they should be, and Adelaide's children are degraded in comparison to their "normal" counterparts, where does that leave the film's central thesis? Is Adelaide/Red an unrepeatable aberation, with the doppleganger underclass that Red's leading into the light rendered a grim mistake that should be eradicated as soon and humanely as possible to correct the mistakes of the past?
It undermines the idea that the only real difference between Red and Adelaide is which one was cared for and which one was neglected. It undermines the idea that there must come a reckoning for the exploitation capitalism relies on for its illusion of luxury. It undermines the redemptive message of the film. The family survives and is moving into an uncertain future, but they've lost themselves as much as they've lost their sense of security.
It's muddled. It's a small price to pay for a significantly more ambitious film, but it blunts some of its bite.
*I feel like Get Out is one of those films where you almost can't compare it to anything else, because it's... It's a literal perfect film. I mean, there are literally no missed steps, sour notes, self-indulgent flourishes, or untaken opportunities. It hits every mark it addresses. Especially for a first-time feature director, that pretty much does not happen.
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Date: 2019-04-03 11:20 pm (UTC)