Note: Due to personal obligations, Sun Day Movie Columnist Tom Sansom is on sabbatical. Movie Columnist Will Moore will be filling in until Tom’s return.
Horror has been greatly maligned, much like comedy, as not worthy of the lofty goals set out by drama. It isn’t hard to see why when the majority of the genre has been reduced to jump scares and overuse of gore. Which is why the emergence of a collection of scary films designed to serve as allegory has been so refreshing. The best of the genre have always tackled issues such as grief (The Babadook, 1944’s The Uninvited) loss of faith (The Exorcist, 2015’s The Witch) and family crisis (The Shining and The Amityville Horror). In the current social climate, there is no shortage of anxieties that fuel our imaginations. And now we have Jordan Peele.
Fresh off his Oscar-winning first film Get Out, Peele has stated that his work will hold a mirror up to society at large. This niche he has carved out for himself is being dubbed “social horror.”
His latest film sees a family going on a summer vacation that starts out ominously. The mother, played by Lupita Nyong’o, has reservations about heading to the beach at Santa Cruz due to an incident she had there as a child. As the day continues, things just feel a bit off. Strange coincidences happen, including almost losing her son. Tension builds as night falls…and then mother, father (Winston Duke), son, and daughter are confronted by a family of doppelgängers. But the less said about them the better.
US
★★★1/2
Directed by Jordan Peele
Staring Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Elizabeth Moss
Rated R for violence/terror and language
None of this would work without said family, similar to haunted house movies. If you care about the family, the more likely we are to follow, like in the first Conjuring film. Another hallmark of the film is how Peele sets them up though common interactions. The best part of the film is the humorous asides by Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex as the main children. Connections we feel towards them build with each scene. So when their doubles show up, we grow attached when they’re in peril. Elizabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker are also a highlight playing the parents’ friends, oozing with such snark and sass that they are non-relatable and relatable all at once.
What follows may seem like a simple premise – yet it is anything but. Like Peele’s pervious film, this one intertwines his tropes and themes like a patchwork quilt, not allowing for simple interpretation, however greatly entertaining nonetheless. It is no wonder that this director has been tapped for the new incarnation of The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling would be proud. Much like best episodes of that show, we are taken on a dizzying ride down the rabbit hole not of who we actually are but a vision of what we have become. We are presented not with us, but US.
(Highly recommended, however due to the graphic nature of some scenes; be advised.)
