Spoiler warning: This article contains spoilers for "Us"
Jordan Peele is at it again, taking the box office by storm with his new horror flick, "Us." And just like his last film "Get Out," it breaks the typical Hollywood tropes of horror movies and plays with the audience's mind.
This time, "Us" is about a family terrorized by their own doppelgangers. The doppelgangers represent the most hideous parts of themselves, literally forcing the characters we follow throughout the movie to look into a mirror and question their life choices. Where "Get Out" was primarily about race, cultural appropriation and the exploitation of black bodies, "Us" is much more complicated thematically.
But in short, it asks us and the characters within the movie to face the biggest demons inside of them: Their worst qualities. And by doing so, Director Jordan Peele reflects America's issues with race and class into our faces, where we cannot escape from them. The film is much more about class than it is about race, albeit, the two are inseparable.
Just like "Get Out" the film continues to revolt against Hollywood tropes, in particular, Horror movie tropes. For a horror movie, the film does not actually contain many deaths. Yet, it is more than worthy of the goosebumps and screams it gave my roommate and me when we sat in the pitch black local movie theater to watch it.
This is a testament to the storytelling ability of Peele, the way in which he crafts a scene creates so much more tension than a shocking death. While it is easy, killing off a token minority character is once again proven to be lazy, thanks to Peele's incredible work.
The film's casting, in and of itself, defies traditional horror movie standards. Lupita N'yongo and Winston Duke lead the cast and the African-American cast members greatly outnumber the Caucasian cast. There are many more people of color in this film than in other horror movies and as a result, more people of color are allowed to survive and have thriving characters.
The reason horror films have seemed so stale in recent years is that they have been the same thing over and over again. By using the horror genre as an allegory and a bridge for talking about race and class, Peele has freshened up the genre and made it more terrifying than ever before.
