‘Us’: The Horror News Network Review
This review contains spoilers.
Get Out was a smash hit on all metrics. The movie earned $255 million on a $4.5 million budget and it wowed casual fans, horror aficionados, and stuffy critics alike due to its expert blend of tried and true horror tropes and an adept level of social commentary that ties the picture together. Get Out also solidified writer/director Jordan Peele as one of the premiere horror storytellers of our time after a long and successful career in comedy. His well-deserved Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay broke barriers for an institution which typically rewards standard drama storytelling over specialized genre fare, and it drew even more attention to his knack for threading symbolism and allegory through a tightly constructed, self-contained horror story. Throughout the pre-release hype for Us, audiences were constantly reminded that this movie would have an even greater emphasis on horror than Peele’s freshman outing, and the film’s trailers expertly presented the terrifying tropes of the home invasion, the fear of the other, and ghastly sharp objects front and center. All of this build up led audiences to believe that Us would contain- above all- a great horror narrative. What we ended up with- however- is a movie that relies much more heavily on allegory than story, and the story suffers as a result… even in spite of phenomenal performances by a stellar ensemble cast.
