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Us - SPOILERS THREAD


elizium

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Us starts TODAY~!

Us_(2019)_theatrical_poster.png

For the benefit of those of us (like me who made noble and dumb promises to their daughters...) who won't get to see this for a few days,  keep the reviews coming but put the plot discussion points in spoiler tags.

I GOT FIIIIIVE ON IT~!!!

Edited by J.T.
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By all accounts, this is going to be incredible.   So, rather than having it split across the Horror and regular movie threads... here is it's own thread.  (I'll be pulling other posts about it into this one.)

Here's a look behind the scenes:

Selfishly, I'm also doing this so this won't be spoiled for me in another thread since I won't get to see it until Sunday.

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Okay since this is now a spoiler thread I'm assuming spoilers are fair game.

 

Really liked this and will probably settle to love because it's sticking with me and there's a lot there to love, but I did have a couple nagging issues which held it back from that.

 

The big one is the whole "It's a US military experiment...somehow? For reasons?" I thought it worked way better with no outward explanation and honestly the bit where they lay it out just KILLS the suspense and momentum. 

 

I would have handled the big ending twist differently, I think. It felt pretty telegraphed and then overdone. That said, thinking back on it does recontextualize the whole film so it's hard to say it didn't work, especially since Peele was going for the Twilight Zone vibe.

 

Everything else is gold. I love the focus on tension and long term creep factor over short term scares. The acting was off the charts great, from Lupita Nyong'o especially but Winston Duke brought it and the kids were GREAT as well. There's a lot of smart pacing notes like how the bit with their friends is handled and acts as the rug pull for the second act stuff. The coincidence stuff was great though it's disappointing it didn't go anywhere after the start. Really close to a perfect horror flick to me which is a lot of why the sticking points hit me so hard because they're all in the go-home. 

 

I'm still gonna be recommending it to friends and going to see it again though because there's a LOT there.

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I'll wait until more people see it before getting into specific story stuff, but I just wanted to talk about the actors for a bit.

This is Lupita Nyong'o's movie. She is absolutely incredible. At first I wasn't totally sold on the voice choice, but got used to it by the end and it made sense to me by the time we get to the end portion. I feel like she'll end up getting lost in the shuffle with this being such an early release, but that was an nomination worthy performance.

One thing about the four leads, I really thought they were a family. Just the way the interacted with each other seemed so natural. I don't know if they had the chemistry coached into them by Peele or if it was just the right collection of actors, but I found myself really caring about them. You never know what you're gonna get with kid actors, but they both nailed it, for both parts.

Winston Duke was hilarious, but I couldn't help keep thinking that he was just playing Jordan Peele. It felt to me like he wrote it with himself in mind and then realized he was just too small for the role or what... Maybe that's just Duke's vibe when he's not playing someone like M'Baku.

AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE RELEASE A SPECIAL EDITION DVD WITH A MILLION MORE MINUTES OF TIM HEIDECKER'S AND ELIZABETH MOSS' BICKERING WASP MARRIAGE!

Edited by elizium
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It was entertaining enough but be honest: it was a dumbed down, exposition heavy, popcorn flick version of a David Lynch film. It paled in comparison to the likes of Mulholland Drive

Edited by CreativeControl
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Just saw it and thought it was pretty dope, my friends didn't like it but couldn't really tell me why.

Loved the performances, the sound design and soundtrack, some really cool/creepy visuals at the end with the dance and the rabbits.

Some gals in the row behind us were laughing a whole lot during most of the movie which I was kind meh and reminded me how I love empty theaters so much.

I have no idea what people are saying about this movie around the internets so I'm gonna check some stuff. Would love to read more impressions on the thread.

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12 hours ago, MarcosLoura said:

I have no idea what people are saying about this movie around the internets so I'm gonna check some stuff. Would love to read more impressions on the thread.

I'm going to see it tomorrow night with my boo's aunt.   She loves horror movies and doesn't get out much, so I'm being a good significant other.. 

My boo owes me big time.

I'll post some detailed thoughts on Thursday morning.

Edited by J.T.
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Just as an afterthought that I clarified with some friends over the weekend.  Going in expecting one thing and getting hard swerved (in a good way - as has been said here, I expected another essay on life of POC in America, I got a Twilight Zone episode) in another direction was something that I think put off a lot of people.  

I am positive when I see this movie again, I'm going to love it.  

Also, my new favorite Display Name on Twitter is "Winston Duke's Howard Sweatshirt" 

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11 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

Just as an afterthought that I clarified with some friends over the weekend.  Going in expecting one thing and getting hard swerved (in a good way - as has been said here, I expected another essay on life of POC in America, I got a Twilight Zone episode) in another direction was something that I think put off a lot of people.  

I am positive when I see this movie again, I'm going to love it.  

Also, my new favorite Display Name on Twitter is "Winston Duke's Howard Sweatshirt" 

Howard University.  The Other HU...

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I got through about half of it and had to split; for some reason I felt like I was going to faint. It wasn't the movie -- I'd been drinking a lot that weekend and not eating well. I'll go see it again sometime, and hopefully not be sitting next to a pair of rich bitches that wanted to talk through the movie again...

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15 hours ago, driver said:

Such an amazing treatise on the failures of the capitalist system and the burden that it places upon us.

Yeah, I definitely got an anti-consumerism vibe along with more than enough hints about the evils of social marginalization.   I loved Adalede / Red challenging Gabe's notion that prestige = safety.  The monsters can't get to us in this rich man's house, right?

It felt like a direct parallel to Dawn of the Dead where the zombie survivors sought refuge in a shopping mall under the assumption that opulence and security go hand in hand.

As for the Bible verse, Jeremiah 11:11 reads:

Quote

"Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them."

So are the Tethered the evil that comes for us (Us? US? United States?) or is the evil the uncountable number of vices and obsessions that Americans use to distract ourselves so that we don't have to take a long, hard look at benevolent society eroding around us and being replaced with divisiveness as the new norm?

It's not accidental that the only member of the Tethered that can speak is Red since she stole her position from young Adalede and climbed her way up the economic ladder from there.   As Adalade said, this is ultimately a story about someone that took something that didn't belong to them, and Red took Adelade's place in the world as well as Adelade's voice when Red strangled her when they were children.

The Tethered are literally the citizens with no voice that have been pushed to the point of violent protest and using the Hands Across America human chain was fucking brilliant, as that was also a movement that was supposed to shame society into remembering the socially and economically disenfranchised people that we'd rather forget about.

Who is to say that the Tethered won't make for better Americans than we did once the 1111 Apocalypse is complete?  They say that we're supposed to be more empathic to one another since we're all the same color on the inside, but the Tethered all wear red.  They're all the same color on the outside as well as the inside.

I loved this movie for reasons far different than I loved Get Out.  I am happy to see Peele take a page out of the Romero playbook and use horror movies as cautionary tales to address social ills, but I prefer the more blunt and direct social chastisement of Get Out to the slightly overly nuanced knuckle rapping of Us.  

Edited by J.T.
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