They (Us) were TTH

[HUGE spoilers below if you haven't seen Us.]

"Therefore, thus saith the Lord: Behold, I am bringing disaster upon them which they will not be able to escape. They will cry out to me, but I will not listen to them." - Jeremiah, 11:11

I wouldn't go quite that far in describing Jordan Peele's Us. After all, there are some solid performances and I think the camera work and the lighting and other technical aspects were really well done. But overall, I can't really say that it's a film that worked for me and there are a variety of reasons for that. The largest one seems to be what, on the famous board, we used to call TTH, or Trying Too Hard.

TTH first came up in a discussion about one cultural phenomenon or another. One of the regulars was complaining about something that struck him as being more image than reality; an event that was trying to show how "real" it was, only to make everyone understand that it was more show than substance by trying too hard. He asked for examples from the rest of the board and I remember mine distinctly: "Every Woody Allen film, post-Annie Hall." All of them have struck me as Allen trying too hard to be "Woody Allen"; to present a story and a style that most would identify as his work but without really carrying the weight and depth and whimsy that originally defined it. I think Peele's latest effort suffers from that same phenomenon but, on top of that overreach, I'm not really sure who he's trying too hard to emulate. Is it himself, following on the heels of his excellent debut, Get Out? Is it a pivot toward the Hitchcockian label that many are so eager to hang around his neck? Is it something more Serling-esque? All three and, thus, none of them? I really can't say.

What I can say is that it feels like he was attempting to set up a giant metaphor and wrapped it into a story that had a Twilight Zone-ish premise, but also wanted to keep the pace of more modern thrillers. That's a big ask for any writer or director, since any two of those are not going to cooperate with the third. (e.g. Pick any two: Fast/Good/Cheap.) Apparently, he was directly inspired by the Twilight Zone episode, Mirror Image, and that can be seen in the basic premise of the film: the vengeful doppelgangers, the Tethered, emerging to slaughter their other selves. It's also not difficult to see a lot of the metaphors that he was building into the story, like the references to Jeremiah 11:11, which was the doomsayer's warning against worshiping the wrong things; in this case, rampant consumerism demonstrated by Gabe's desire to keep up with the Tylers. Or the dichotomy of the world's wealthiest nation propped up by the existence of so many who have no chance to take part in that exercise of wealth, whether because of skin color or circumstance. The Tethered are "the other" that so many Americans are whipped into a frenzy about by our xenophobic president, even though many of those "others" are Americans themselves; thus, inciting the quote from Red early in the first confrontation: "We're Americans." That statement is equally one of defiance and condemnation, depending on one's perspective both inside and outside the film.

But I have to say that all of that kind of gets lost under the blood spray and screams of the routine chase sequence that takes up the latter 2/3 of the film. There's nothing particularly innovative or exciting about any of the action. I am most certainly not the audience for this kind of thing, since I find it to be a pretty pedestrian storytelling technique, most of the time. But it's especially so when the antagonists happen to be led by someone who shows regular emotion and stops to disgorge significant segments of the plot not once, but twice, when Peele could have been building tension and/or trying to relay that exposition visually, rather than make the audience sit there and wonder why both we and our protagonists are (also) sitting there listening to someone almost literally tell their life story. In the end, there is some basis for that, given that Red is not like the other Tethered, but that doesn't help me when I drop out of the story like a body hitting the floor because the tension balloon has just been punctured. The reasons the original Halloween spawned an entire genre are because Michael Myers was implacable and John Carpenter, working with a tiny budget, had to perform a lot of low-grade tricks to show things that special effects would have done for him. But that low-grade approach was storytelling and I'm not sure that modern horror films really carry that kind of atmosphere, especially if you've seen more than, say, three of them (which I have.)

Plus, I'm not entirely sure about a lot of the small touches. Why the focus on Hands Across America? Was it because it was more publicity stunt than obvious act of philanthropy; a moment for celebrities to show up on camera while great swathes of the country were excluded? Is that a statement about the artificiality of the 80s where the current consumerist culture really took hold and continues today? Were the references to Black Flag, a band of rebellion in the 80s where the film starts and a note of kitsch today, a further example of that culture? Were the rabbits a statement about the testing that still goes into the products that fuel that culture? Did we need the reference to the actual tunnel networks at the start of the film because Peele thought it would make the existence of the Tethered easier to believe? (It had zero effect.) Was I easily distracted by this stuff because the main story failed to hold my interest?

The key element to Get Out was that you weren't clobbered by those metaphors. Peele made a number of statements within that film about race and racism, culture and style, personal relationships and public ones, and they all flowed together. There were obvious statements and far more subtle ones about the social and sociopathic tendencies of modern America. In the midst of that, there was an intriguing mystery and a gradual level of horror. Us was nowhere near that progressive. We started with a scene of mystery and some tension... and then skipped right to the main event where Adelaide (Luptita Nyong'o) was already worked into a pretty good frenzy by returning to the scene of the crime. That level of discord on her part made the casual attitude by Gabe (Winston Duke) that much more unnatural. She was instantly panicked and he was instantly an idiot. The most natural character (and actor) of the whole film was Shahadi Wright Joseph as Zora, who went from bored teenager to terrified kid to practical actor in what seemed like a normal progression in a crisis (allowing for the usual Joseph Campbell journey in a fictional story.)

I think the only conclusion I can come to is that Us isn't a bad film. It's just not a very good one. Maybe if Peele tried to focus a bit more on what he was trying to say or, for that matter, simply dump the message and go with a good story. Even doomsayers have to be able to sell what they're saying or they just get ignored.