US

A good horror movie requires several elements, from scares and originality to consistency and following its own rules.  Us, the latest movie from writer-director Jordan Peele, manages the former pretty well but falls short of the latter.

Back in 1986, young Adelaide wandered away from her parents at a carnival in Santa Clara.  She wound up at a creepy, dimly-lit hall of mirrors ("find yourself") where she saw something that left her traumatized.

In the present, Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong'o) finds herself on vacation at a summer house in Santa Clara with her family: laid-back husband Gabe (Winston Duke), cell phone-focused teen daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph), and young son Jason (Evan Alex), obsessed with a magic trick and usually wearing a monster mask.  They meet up with friends and have a good time, but Adelaide feels like several coincidences are building up around them.

Things start to happen late at night when the Wilson family find themselves under siege by their doppelgangers.  Four people, dressed all in red and wielding extremely long scissors, are pursing the Wilson family -- and the duplicates are seemingly stronger, faster, and more twisted than the originals.  Red, Adelaide's duplicate and the only one who talks, explains that the copies are the Tethered and they want to kill the originals, or take their places, or... something.

Us has its scary moments, but the movie makes less sense the more one tries to think about it.  The motivations of the Tethered seem to switch from scene to scene, as are their abilities.  Some plot elements are forgotten about, while others seem to come and go as is convenient for a specific scene.  And there's one big plot twist that simply makes no sense.  The cast of the Wilson family do double duty as themselves and their evil counterparts, and Lupita Nyong'o has a lot of intensity as the mother fighting for her family, but Us is just uneven.

Overall grade: C+
Reviewed by James Lynch