Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

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Big Ben
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#26 Post by Big Ben » Wed Dec 26, 2018 3:20 am

The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:
Wed Dec 26, 2018 2:27 am
He's fantastic as a desensitized, trust fund hipster in The Comedy from 2012. It's as far as you can get from the world of Tim and Eric.
Thanks! I'll check it out. I'm all for unorthodox casting. I just don't know how easily some folks will reconcile a serious performance with the man who made this or this.
McCrutchy wrote:
Wed Dec 26, 2018 2:49 am
This looks interesting, and like it could be quite good. Right away, I think Peele has won casting Lupita Nyong'o, but we shall see. Either way, it looks like Peele has grown as a filmmaker since Get Out and the March release date is certainly interesting, too, especially since this will surely be rated R in the US. I wonder if Peele was able to request it or if Universal put it there since it doesn't necessarily see an awards campaign because of the strong horror elements? Or, maybe Universal is hoping to grab up the Marvel fans in between Marvel movies?
I think this'll be easier to market than Get Out for a variety of reasons one now being Peele's pedigree. But a more straightforward horror film has never been Award Season fodder and we all know that.

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Persona
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#27 Post by Persona » Wed Dec 26, 2018 2:16 pm

Trailers that flip pop songs into horror scores is played out as hell but leave it to Peele to riff on that in a way that feels fresh and works like gangbusters. Doesn't hurt that I just love "I Got 5 On it" to begin with.

The imagery is great. I thought Get Out was good but it was better when it was observing human behavior in a heightened way and letting the horror come from that as opposed to all the plot machinations of the last act or so. I might be slightly concerned that this film is basically all about the machinations but the trailer is so effective and definitely looks like, at the very least, an emboldened step forward for Peele in terms of aesthetic vision and craft.

I'm trying to think of the Hitchcock mention and all I got are the rabbits (those hallway shots with them are something else). Could we be in for some Brood-esque psychosomatic manifestations? I don't know and right now I don't care. Creepy uniforms, gold scissors, a family of doppelgangers, classic rap... I am down.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#28 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue Jan 29, 2019 8:42 pm

The Rolling Stone cover story on Peele seems to indicate that this will be less ‘social horror’ and more straightforward scary movie horror.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#29 Post by DarkImbecile » Sun Feb 03, 2019 5:46 pm


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mfunk9786
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#30 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Feb 08, 2019 2:17 pm


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DarkImbecile
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#31 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri Feb 08, 2019 2:19 pm

I just saw this in the wild yesterday, and there were several people walking back and forth and talking about it, including a couple of theater employees

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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#32 Post by DarkImbecile » Wed Feb 27, 2019 12:18 pm

Apparently there will be a print-only interview with Peele by Paul Thomas Anderson in the next issue of Fangoria, of all places

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Big Ben
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#33 Post by Big Ben » Sat Mar 09, 2019 2:29 am

Some positive impressions coming out the film's SXSW premiere. I won't link them all but it might be worth checking out some early reviews online if you're down with whatever Peele has presented thus far.

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Luke M
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#34 Post by Luke M » Thu Mar 21, 2019 11:40 pm

Saw this tonight and think it has a brilliant concept that's executed nearly flawlessly. The more I stew on it the more I like it.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#35 Post by mfunk9786 » Sat Mar 23, 2019 1:43 am

I truly disliked this film - it started promisingly enough, but from the moment the "horror" began it went entirely off the rails. Lupita Nyong'o's "creepy voice" is one of the more unpleasantly silly things I've experienced in a movie that's ostensibly supposed to be frightening, and coupled with the dialogue her character reads in those scenes, the movie needed to put in a lot of leg work to earn me back. But instead of doing that, the plot becomes foolish on an outsized level, almost as though Peele had more social commentary that he muddied or removed in an effort to make a more straightforward horror film. And in that (theoretical, as I have nothing to support this) process, he managed to make the film veer into being a flabby and inscrutable Zombieland-meets-Funny Games that never knows what in the world it ultimately wants to be. It feels during the third act like this film might never end. Thankfully it did.

I expect big things from Peele in the future, and I thought Get Out was one of the most original films of this decade, but this was a giant dud.

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Finch
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#36 Post by Finch » Sat Mar 23, 2019 3:11 am

Us is the first disappointment of the year. It feels flimsy and unfocused, both things that Get Out, while no masterpiece, wasn't. The comedy fell flat, too. If I hadn't known beforehand that Peele was responsible for Get Out and now this, I wouldn't have guessed it from this film. It's a mess and it achieved what I thought impossible, making Elisabeth Moss borderline annoying.

About thirty minutes or so into the film, I checked out emotionally. Barely cared who lived or died. There are aspects of the film that feel like they are there to advance the story regardless of whether the film progresses in a way that feels natural: for example,
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one character realises they can get their twin to mimic their own movements. As far as I can recall, the film hasn't hitherto given us a reason for why the twin would suddenly do that.
It was very jarring. I don't understand why this is getting mostly positive reviews. I thought this was an alarming drop in quality from the first film to the second.

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Finch
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#37 Post by Finch » Sat Mar 23, 2019 3:37 am

Also, I find that many of the positive reviews kind of read like back-handed compliments: "the allegory is a bit shit in this one but it's a nice surface horror". Except for me, and mfunk, it appears, it doesn't succeed as surface horror either. I like Peele but I really get the impression that this was two drafts or so short of an actual shooting script and nobody dared to say that this needed quite a bit more revising!

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Finch
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#38 Post by Finch » Sat Mar 23, 2019 3:50 am

Walter Chaw has possibly the harshest review of the film yet
Get Out won its writer-director Jordan Peele accolades and the type of laurels (the next Spielberg!, the next Hitchcock!) that, the last time they were handed out (to one M. Night Shyamalan), did the recipient no real favours. And where Get Out asked the question of what Peele's limits were, Us answers it immediately--and decisively enough that it feels almost cruel. Us has a couple of vaguely interesting ideas it fails to develop, a few set-pieces it fails to pay off, and a central metaphor--literal upper and lower classes being tethered together along some socially-engineered psychic conduit--that it has no real idea what to do with. The two choices for any conversation about Us, then, are to continue treating Peele like a holy, anointed savant/prophet until he makes The Happening
and Richard Lawson articulates the same frustration I had with the film
It pains me to say this. I spent a good deal of Us straining to like it, to get on its slightly preening wavelength, to be nourished by its heady stew of tropes. I couldn’t get there, though. As loaded up on stuff as Us is, there’s not enough to grab on to; it’s an alienating idea piece that lumbers away just as it’s about to reveal its true nature.

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John Cope
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#39 Post by John Cope » Sat Mar 23, 2019 4:32 am


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mfunk9786
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#40 Post by mfunk9786 » Sat Mar 23, 2019 1:50 pm

Finch, I will add that the diverse and nearly sold out auditorium we saw it in were laughing in some of the right spots (both patriarchs, one of whom is played by an underutilized Tim Heidecker, have some pleasant enough one-liners), but were murmuring to one another and seemed to ultimately be dissatisfied by the film at the end. Could have been an incredible misread on my part but no one seemed to be moved by the horror aspects of it, just silent. Thought it would be a similarly rollicking viewing experience as Get Out was in the theater, and it wasn't close. Different people, different expectations, etc - but I don't know if audiences at large are going to be as enamored as most critics have rounded themselves up to being.

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The Narrator Returns
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#41 Post by The Narrator Returns » Sat Mar 23, 2019 2:40 pm

I think this is very much the Unbreakable to Get Out's Sixth Sense; weirder, messier, and more alienating to a general audience. I happen to think Unbreakable kicks Sixth Sense's ass, and I'm halfway to believing that with this as well. I certainly can't complain about Get Out being a perfect puzzle of a movie, but I think I respond more to this, which is an allegory that's been muddied by nightmare logic until it's almost indecipherable. What some people have been calling sloppy screenwriting I see as a direct rebuttal to the endless online chatter about how tight Get Out's screenplay is; even the Screenplay 101 callbacks, which helped make Get Out so satisfying to so many, are proven completely pointless in light of where the story actually goes (my favorite is the callback that's proven totally unsatisfying because
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it didn't even happen to the person we think it's calling back to
). But I'll admit that I'd probably like the movie less if not for its final shot, which is so perfect I refuse to even try to unpack it.

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dda1996a
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#42 Post by dda1996a » Sat Mar 23, 2019 5:00 pm

Am I the only one who found Get Out's screenplay miles away from being brilliant, and found it neither very funny nor scary?

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tenia
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#43 Post by tenia » Sat Mar 23, 2019 5:30 pm

I found it brilliant but neither really funny nor scary.

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domino harvey
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#44 Post by domino harvey » Sat Mar 23, 2019 6:03 pm

dda1996a wrote:
Sat Mar 23, 2019 5:00 pm
Am I the only one who found Get Out's screenplay miles away from being brilliant, and found it neither very funny nor scary?
Present. However, unless you're using Peele's first movie to discuss this one, you should take such queries to Get Out's dedicated thread

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criterionoop
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#45 Post by criterionoop » Sat Mar 23, 2019 6:50 pm

I think the fatal flaw of US is that it is endlessly going to be compared to GET OUT. Regardless of your opinion of GET OUT, the cultural impact of the film (as well as the slew of accolades it received) showed Jordan Peele had an ability to create something that audiences could respond to and enjoy. One of the problems I have with US is that it doesn't seem like it would have the same longevity. On a technical level, it is well-made, and the performances are truly great (especially Elisabeth Moss as her character's double). But it never moved me or made me think, "That was a fantastic film that I want to see again."

Another issue I had was with the tone of the film. Peele wasn't able to strike a perfect balance between comedy and horror, and it seemed like (more often than not) he fell more so into comedy by having characters make a lot of wisecracks during gruesome scenes.

On a minor level, I did have issues with the exposition scenes:
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I pretty much figured out what the twist by the time the doppelgangers came and Red was the only one who talked. Whenever Red told a story (or in the penultimate scene, that long monologue), I kept on thinking "If I were Red, I would not be explaining my revenge plot, I would just be murdering Adelaide."

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Big Ben
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#46 Post by Big Ben » Sat Mar 23, 2019 6:53 pm

It's a weird experience. The film is too self aware to be taken at face value but simultaneously isn't enough of an oddity to exist outside of a commercial product so it exists in this sort of odd state of flux (A Twilight Zone if you will.). The woman sitting next to me was flailing like a frightened child throughout the entire running time. I certainly laughed at parts but I wasn't stressed out or bother but I was disoriented. The film feels a lot like old episodes of The Outer Limits or The Twilight Zone where the overall B-Level production takes center stage alongside some semblance of a moral lesson. The issue here is is that Peele doesn't provide something acutely overt in terms of meaning in the same way Get Out does and in leaving it up to the audience to decide what is going on he's allowed it some breathing room...maybe.

Speaking frankly of the plot in it's entirety itself and what I felt it meant.
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I felt it was about how societies decisions have an effect on things, albeit unintentionally. One decision, regardless of how trivial, can have dramatic effects on others, leading to a great deal of issues for those less fortunate. I could go into concepts of the Many Worlds interpretations of Quantum Mechanics but I doubt y'all want to hear me drone on about physics.
The film hinges I think, on whether or not you want the plot to make logical sense or lyrical sense. If it's the former you're going to have a bad time. If it's the latter I think you'll be more welcoming. There are some really beautiful shots in this film though. Don't want to say too much about that though.

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criterionoop
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#47 Post by criterionoop » Sat Mar 23, 2019 8:08 pm

Unlike with GET OUT where the film is completely entrenched in symbols, metaphors, and allegories regarding racial issues, US veers more toward just a horror film with some tinges of social commentary:
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Zora talking about fluoride in water and how it controls people; Hands Across America; Red responding "We're Americans" and also saying how "They" created the tethered people to control the real people.

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mfunk9786
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#48 Post by mfunk9786 » Sat Mar 23, 2019 10:09 pm

It's a half measure, and all or nothing would have each been better choices, respectively. Instead it just makes the script feel really messy.

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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#49 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Mar 23, 2019 11:22 pm

Big Ben -- Your description makes this sound sort of (but not quite) Kiyoshi Kurosawa-esque...

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Big Ben
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Re: Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

#50 Post by Big Ben » Sun Mar 24, 2019 2:41 am

mfunk9786 wrote:
Sat Mar 23, 2019 10:09 pm
It's a half measure, and all or nothing would have each been better choices, respectively. Instead it just makes the script feel really messy.
I think it's intentional and everyone's mileage is going to vary on that. I found it to be exceptionally off putting, as I noted above. But it's gotten under my skin and I don't quite know why.

Regarding certain individuals and the title:
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While I think it's blase to say the film is about "us" it got me thinking about how we perceive people's motivations in horror films and beyond. For people who exist in a place of relative ease, any disruption of that is a big no no. The Tethered commit atrocities yes but given the context of their predicament, just how justified are they in their rage? They have have had no control over their lives for the most part and we're told they've been essentially left to rot. Given the circumstances it doesn't strike me as the slightest bit odd that they might be just a tiny bit mad about that. I think it's often easy to prescribe moral situations in a horror film because they often feel so one sided but here it's not as clear cut as say, six foot/two meter killer who kills fornicators. To be clear here I don't think they're justified in doing what they're doing but I very much understand why they're doing it. That's a far cry from say, the creature from Carpenter's The Thing were shit is just really bad and no clarification is given.
I hope the film delivers some good discussion as I feel it's going to divide folks here left and right.

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