Jordan Peele has tightened his grip in “Us,” a less satirical and more slaughterhouse horror parable than the writer-director’s astonishing debut, “Get Out.” Despite its deficiencies, “Us’ will leave all who enter its shadowy world convinced of Peele’s growing command as a singular conjurer of American nightmares.
It’s a movie moment to savor. When was the last time a filmmaker’s sophomore release was greeted with such anticipation? It’s as if Peele struck such a deep, rich vein in “Get Out” that no one can wait to see what else he’ll uncover. Peele has found a new passageway into American psychology, and we’re all waiting outside the mine for him to call out from the dark with his latest revelation.
‘Us’
› Rating: R for violence, terror and language› Running time: 104 minutes
In “Us,” Peele has produced a terrifying artifact: a sinister ballet of doppelgangers and inversions that makes flesh the unseen underbelly lurking beneath every sunny American dream and behind every contented nuclear family. It’s a scissor-sharp rebuke to anyone who’s ever held hands and sang “Kumbaya.”
“Us” begins on images of one such moment of supposed unity: Hands Across America, that wholesome ’80s experiment in linking arms across the country. It’s seen on an old TV screen with VHS tapes of “Goonies” and “C.H.U.D.” leaning against it. Later, when the Wilson family takes a vacation near Santa Cruz, California, they look out of their window at night and see the ominous silhouettes of a hand-holding family just like themselves outside on the driveway.