Review | Us film review: Get Out director Jordan Peele helms another thoughtful horror triumph
- You’ll appreciate the rare moments of comedy in Peele’s new chiller about a family forced to confront doppelgängers bent on their destruction
- Lupita Nyong’o, Elisabeth Moss and Winston Duke star in a high-concept film that’s sinister but full of surprises
4/5 stars
Jordan Peele, the Oscar-winning writer-director of Get Out , returns with another thoughtful and squirm-inducing chiller. Us may not be as provocative as its predecessor, with its racial element front and centre, but Peele has conjured up a creepy tale that plunges deep into the Hollywood horror well and pulls out something quite icky.
Right from the off, in the 1986-set prologue, Peele plays with scary archetypes, in this case the creaky old funfair. Young Adelaide (Madison Curry) wanders off from her parents and finds a spooky-looking Hall of Mirrors, right on the beach, emblazoned with the legend “Find Yourself”. She ventures inside to find another girl, looking away from her. This is no reflection, but a real-life doppelgänger.
After the even weirder credits sequence – rows and rows of rabbits in cages – we cut to the present day. Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o) is now grown-up, married to Gabe (Winston Duke) and mother to two children, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex).
Holidaying at their summer home, they head to the beach to hook up with family friends (Tim Heidecker, Elisabeth Moss). While Jason sports a Jaws T-shirt, they’re about to face something even scarier than Great White sharks.