Us

Following his debut success with Get Out (2017), writer-director-producer Jordan Peele has created an insidious, unsettling, nightmarish horror thriller. In 1986 at California’s Santa Cruz beachside amusement park, young Adelaide (Madison Curry) has a terrifying experience after wandering into an eerie mirror funhouse. It’s so traumatic that she’s never discussed it—with anyone. Cut to the present, when vacationing Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o), her husband Gabe (Winston Duke), teenage daughter (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and young son (Evan Alex) wind up at the same beachside amusement park. Back home that same evening, a menacing family of four, clad in red jumpsuits and carrying huge scissors, suddenly appears in their driveway, trapping the Wilsons inside—and it turns out that they are the Wilsons’ zombie-like, tethered doppelgangers. Adelaide’s covetous twin has lived a life of surreal misery, so she and the others have come to un-tether themselves. Fleeing to the home of friends/neighbors (Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker) only causes more brutal carnage, and the twists and turns continue. Inspired by the “Mirror Image” episode on TV’s Twilight Zone, Us delivers plenty of chills and thrills. Recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include the behind-the-scenes featurettes “The Duality of Us” (10 min.), “Scene Explorations” (8 min.), “We’re All Dying” (7 min.), and “Tethered Together: Making Us Twice” (7 min.), as well as deleted scenes (7 min.), and the production segments “The Monsters Within Us” (5 min.), “Redefining a Genre: Jordan Peele’s Brand of Horror” (5 min.), “As Above, So Below: Grand Pas De Deux” (5 min.), and “Becoming Red” (4 min.). Exclusive to the Blu-ray release are bonus DVD and digital copies of the film. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a fine horror thriller.] (S. Granger)