Category: Thriller

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

Rated: MScary Stories To Tell In The Dark

Directed by: André Øvredal

Written by: Dan Hageman & Kevin Hageman

Screen story by: Guillermo Del Toro and Patrick Melton & Marcus Dunstan

Based on the series by: Alvin Schwartz

Produced by: Guillermo Del Toro, p.g.a., Sean Daniel, p.g.a., Jason F. Brown, p.g.a., J. Miles Dale, p.g.a., Elizabeth Grave, p.g.a.

Executive Producers: Peter Luo, Joshua Long, Roberto Grande

Starring: Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Abrams, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, and Lorraine Toussaint.

“Sarah Bellows, tell us a story.”

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark pieces together the fabled fiction of Alvin Schwartz (who wrote the series), where screen story writer Guillermo Del Toro (along with Patrick Melton & Marcus Dunstan) hang the film on the idea that: “Stories can hurt, and stories can heal”.

Set in 1968 where, ‘If it’s in the newspaper it has to be right,’ but really there’s a lot wrong, like the Vietnam War and the fact Stella’s (Zoe Colletti) mum has left her with her dad (Dean Norris); Stella’s only friends in the world, Chuck (Austin Abrams) and Auggie (Gabriel Rush).

But having buddies makes life easier to live until they decide to show new-kid-in-town Ramón (Michael Garza) the Mill Valley haunted house. On Halloween.

The story of the haunted house being the young daughter, Sarah Bellows was a child killer.  That she killed the children of Mill Valley who listened to her scary stories on the other side of the wall of her locked room.

Her family hid Sarah away because they said there was something very wrong with Sarah.

So when Stella finds Sarah’s book of scary stories in the haunted house, she thinks it’s a good idea to take it home to read.  She’s a writer too.

Then new stories start appearing in the book.  New scary stories like, ‘Who took my toe?’.  It’s worse than it sounds.  Particularly when the stories start coming true.

Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark feels like one of those coming-of-age movies but really, it’s a scare-fest with body parts that come to life and bugs crawling out of empty eye-sockets.

The monsters are impressive with director, André Øvredal not holding back on the nightmarish imagery, while adding subtle details like the skin chewed around Stella’s fingernail.

I was absorbed and surprised as monsters came to life in cornfields and glaring red-lit corridors… But then the film became a crusade.

The story still holds and hey, it had to go somewhere; but I just couldn’t put myself into the shoes of Stella because there didn’t seem to be any fight or build to the strength of her character.  How did this kid suddenly get to be so strong?

Ad Astra

Rated: MAd Astra

Directed by: James Gray

Written by: James Gray & Ethan Gross

Produced by: Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, p.g.a., Jeremy Kleiner, p.g.a., James Gray, p.g.a., Anthony Katagas, p.g.a., Rodrigo Teixeira, p.g.a., Arnon Milchan

Starring: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, and Donald Sutherland.

‘I will not be vulnerable,’ says Roy McBride (Brad Pitt) in a monologue that threads the story of the film together; it’s a voice that measures the thought processing behind those blue eyes with green specks.  A thought-process hidden, because the person Roy shows to others is a performance, ‘my eye always on the exit.’

Set in the near future, Ad Astra is a mystery set in space, the story based in commercialised space travel to the moon, to rockets that blast toward the human inhabitants of Mars, to go further, for Roy to reach Neptune in search of his father who began the Lima Project thirty years before; his father’s purpose: to find evidence of extra-terrestrial life.

Instead of science fiction and the practicalities of space travel or even the exploration of physics to understand human existence, Ad Astra, at its heart, is a drama.

There was plenty of opportunity to get technical, but the film skips over the science behind the impending disaster from outer space so the story jumps while the movement in space is slow and calculated.

So although there’s a disturbing beauty to the tense moments of guns fired from space rovers and visually stunning scenes of a reflection of darkness across the orange visor of a helmet that looks like a faceless being, I felt like the story was missing the factual backbone to hold up the idea of the mysterious father figure who has dedicated his life to science and space exploration.

Ad Astra is not a journey into space but for Roy to find his way back to humanity.

The story circles around to give some satisfaction, to be able to, Let go.

And there’s so much going for the film with the build of tension with the low vibrating soundtrack of a siren; with those crime thriller moments set in space with the slow danger of being in an environment with toxic air, without gravity – in a place no other living Being has ever been found.

But for me, those amazing moments of suspense combined with the beauty of space on the big screen would have been so much more astounding if the story dug just a bit deeper into the physics of the environment – that would have made the film more believable while adding that extra layer to the drama of the story.

Still, an interesting change in pace that adds a mysterious twist to the thriller genre.

Annabelle Comes Home

Rated: MAnnabelle Comes Home

Directed by: Gary Dauberman

Written by: Gary Dauberman and James Wan

Produced by: Peter Safran, James Wan

Starring: McKenna Grace, Madison Iseman, Katie Sarife, Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga.

‘Not all ghosts are bad, right?’

In this third instalment of the Annabelle series, we find Lorraine (Vera Farmiga) and Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) taking the doll, Annabelle off the hands of some very frightened nurses – circa the end of The Conjuring (2013).

The relationship between Ed and Lorraine is as always, close and personal and sweet – unlike their life’s work of containing the demons infesting the lives of those still of this world.

It’s a familiar feeling, seeing the Warrens return, and the doll, Annabelle.

James Wan (director and co-writer of, The Conjuring 2 (2016) and also co-writer of the original, The Conjuring) co-wrote this instalment, along with Gary Dauberman.  But the direction is all Dauberman – his debut after successfully writing the two previous Annabelle films.

And the atmosphere is tense.

There’s something about Lorrain’s eyes that’s used so well here – the expressive concern compared to the doll’s wooden cracked stare.  This is just one of the many techniques used to ramp-up the tension.

The demonologists leave their young daughter Judy (McKenna Grace) in the hands of the ever-reliable baby-sitter Mary Ellen (Madison Iseman) while they venture out to another job.

Most of the film is set in that 70s style house of laminate kitchen, low hanging lights and orange and brown decor.  Back to the house holding the room with three locks and a sign asking, Do Not Touch Anything; filled with all the objects touched with evil, to have a priest pray over every week to keep the demons where they’re supposed to be: contained.

This is the focus of the film, the Occult Museum and the misguided friend, Daniela (Katie Sarife) who releases all within in it.

The film isn’t about Lorraine and Ed, this is about the three young girls fighting for their souls and sanity while the demon that controls the doll Annabelle acts as a beacon that calls all the other spirits.

The suspense is built on the creepy atmosphere of the house, bit by bit – the sounds of static and touches of orchestral sounds keeping up the edge.  And the turn of light through blue, green, yellow and red cellophane revealing hidden spirits turn the house into something like a freak show – all set to a sometimes still silence while you wait and wait for that next scare.

There’s some lightness to break the tension, ‘Don’t touch her, you’ll get obsessed,’ says one kid at Judy’s school.

And there’s a kind of sweetness to the relationship between the girls and the want-to-be-brave boyfriend that manages not to be cheesy, making Annabelle Comes Home not horrific but still scary because of the suspense.

Some of the objects in that room really get the heart pumping – who would have thought a reflection seen in an old tube TV could be so creepy.

So there’s plenty of tension but the violence doesn’t evolve.  It’s more the threat that kept me on edge.

In the end, the film felt more like a homage to the Warren family, with the recent passing of Lorraine Warren: 1927 – 2019.

I wonder if she’s still floating about, haunting anything – like ringing her spirit bells, just for fun.

John Wick 3 – Parabellum

Rated: MA15+John Wick 3 - Parabellum

Directed by: Chad Stahelski

Screenplay by: Derek Kolstad and Shay Hatten and Chris Collins & Marc Abrams

Story by: Derek Kolstad

Based on: Characters Created by Derek Kolstad

Produced by: Basil Iwanyk, p.g.a., Erica Lee, p.g.a.

Starring: Keanu Reeves, Halle Berry, Laurence Fishburne, Mark Dacascos, Asia Kate Dillon, Lance Reddick, Saïd Taghmaoui, Jerome Flynn, Jason Mantzoukas, Tobias Segal, Borban Marjanovic, with Anjelica Huston and Ian McShane.

Time is a running theme in this third instalment of John Wick, building the pressure after Winston (Ian McShane), Manager of The Continental, New York makes John excommunicado (re-cap: The Continental being a hotel that’s a safe haven for assassins seeking sanctuary under the rule of the powerful organisation and international assassin’s guild, The High Table).

John has broken the one rule that cannot be broken: killing another assassin under the protection of The Continental.

Winston has given John one hour before the end of his protection leaving him exposed to an open contract sent to every assassin in the world; the bounty: 14 million dollars.

This is the consequence of John’s revenge.

All he wanted was peace.  But for John to find peace, first he must make war.

I found myself immensely satisfied in the continuity of seeing John Wick in action, 10 minutes after the hanging end of John Wick 2.

The bones of the series continues here, with the same operators taking the same calls for the same organisation.  But take that continuing thread and pull tighter.

The action here is phenomenal – I’d go as far as saying more entertaining and fiercer than the two before. I’m talking knives, hatchets and ninja moves.

Like the familiar Continental concierge, Cheron (Lance Reddick) says, ‘This is serious business’

It’s like watching the fight scenes live, Keanu going into four months of intensive training before shooting so he could fight the scenes himself.  And he outdoes himself, again and again while retaining that incredibly likeable dry sense of humour.

Just when I felt myself start to loose focus, John Wick starts slapping a guy, another assassin appears out of the shadows, the dogs start attacking.  And it’s all played-out in settings of old world charm filled with red velvet and ballerinas to the vibrant burnt orange sands of Morocco to the steaming streets of New York and artefacts set in glass creating a maze so the slash of samurai or the jab of a dagger splinters the glass or John just gets thrown through it.

Aside from the returning favourite characters (can’t forget Laurence Fishburne as reigning Bowery King) there’s new characters to build another dimension and give context to the man, John Wick: The Director (Anjelica Huston) who runs a school for assassins, hinting at John’s Romani past and Sofia (Halle Berry) from John’s origins, a fellow assassin (and the best role I’ve seen Halle Berry in years).

I’m such a fan of Asia Kate Dillon in the TV series, Billions, I was chuffed to see her cast here as The Adjudicator played with cold calculation as she deals out The High Table’s demands with predatory eyes.

So the action is ramped-up with gritty realism, and we get an expansion of the John Wick universe.

Look, some of the story gets a bit thin in places, but it’s so entertaining and the character John Wick is so likeable I was happy to let some of the dubious motivations slide.

I’m still reeling from those fight scenes that somehow managed to tap into that fight response fueling the experience with adrenaline.  It’s just relentless, the hit after hit, I could feel the force as I laughed and cringed and grinned through all the blood and violence because it’s so hardcore it’s funny.  On purpose.

Instant action-thriller classic.

The Realm (El Reino)

Rated: MThe Realm

Directed by: Rodrigo Sorogoyen

Written by: Isabel Peña, Rodrigo Sorogoyen

Produced by: Gerardo Herrero, Mikel Lejarza, Mercedes Gamero

Starring: Antonio De La Torre, Mónica López, José María Pou, Nacho Fresneda, Ana Wagener, Bárbara Lennie, Luis Zahera, Francisco Reyes, María De Nati, Paco Revilla, Sonia Almarcha, David Lorente, Andrés Lima and Oscar De La Fuente.

Spanish with English subtitles

A fast-paced political thriller, The Realm follows Manuel López Vidal (Antonio De La Torre), a Party member who’s just been given the nod to become the next Party leader.

But when a fellow member becomes embroiled in allegations of corruption, the stain spreads as ‘Operation Amadeus’ uncovers the depth of corruption, including Manuel.  Not only is his position under threat but his freedom and even his life.

There’s a lot going on in this film: the layers of character, relationships and Spanish politics.

The dialogue is non-stop with a soundtrack of techno beats as we follow the Party members with hand-held cameras to keep the pace sprinting.  We follow behind Manuel, we follow him into the backseat of a car as the door closes, we see footage from an iPhone showing the Party members living The Life on the sunny deck of a boat as it speeds along the blue waters of their obvious success.

We see Manuel as he fights for his life, using everything he’s got.

The film slows down momentarily when Manuel meets with political journalist, Amaia Marín (Bárbara Lennie), making yet another deal, asking for her patience – they clink their glasses, ‘To patience’.

And there’s the patriarchal figure of the Party and regional head, José Luis Frías (José María Pou) who tries to give pause to the madness of politician trying to out-smart the other: when there’s silence, when a look is not returned, there’s a reason more important than one’s curiosity.

There are many characters, all trying to survive – the film washes over the depth of the many, focussing more on the individual, Manuel, on his intelligence, his family, his cunning.

The Realm shows the underbelly of Spanish politics, shining the light on those entrenched in back-hand dealings made in a government where corruption is the norm; where power protects power.

It took me a while to get absorbed into the pace of the film, to figure out exactly what was going on in the story or where the film was headed.  But the confusion and complication are all part of the intrigue – there’s more to this film than a cerebral political thriller, like there’s more to politics than the game-playing of corrupt politicians.

The Hummingbird Project

Rated: MThe Hummingbird Project

Directed by: Kim Nguyen

Written by: Kim Nguyen

Produced by: Pierre Even, Jérôme de Béthune, Fabrice Delville, Alian-Gilles Viellevoye

Starring: Salma Hayek, Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård.

The film is named, The Hummingbird Project because the beat of a hummingbird’s wing takes less than sixteen milliseconds – the time barrier Vincent Zaleski (Jesse Eisenberg) and cousin Anton Zaleski (Alexander Skarsgård) want to break by building a fibre line from the Kansas City Internet Exchange to the New York Stock Exchange.

If they can transfer data faster than the sixteen-millisecond barrier, they can trade faster than anyone else, making millions, even billions of dollars.

The only problem is that the line needs financial backing and the line needs to be built straight one thousand miles: under 10,000 private properties, under rivers, even through a mountain made of granite located in a protected state forest.

The project is a massive undertaking with all the issues that go along with making the seemingly impossible, possible by throwing millions of dollars and brain power at any obstacle.  Including ex-boss, Wall Street CEO, Eva Torres (Salma Hayek) who doesn’t like betrayal (the cousins quitting and taking their idea with them) from Anton, the technical genius she cared for, who’s obviously on the spectrum and Vince, the cousin she hired so Anton could have a pet.

She has her own project.

Vince and Anton must beat their vengeful ex-boss and her line of microwave towers otherwise the fibre line becomes pointless.

It’s a David and Goliath fight to the finish with pipeline engineer Mark Vega (Michael Mando) asking Vince, ‘We’re David?’  To him it sounds like Goliath against Goliath.

The film is based on the true story Michael Lewis published, Flash Boys (2014): the fight between Spread Networks, which built an 827-mile fibre cable from Chicago to New York, and a line of microwave towers.

An idea so crazy it’s got to be true (as they say).

There’s something satisfying in seeing a large project come together – the technically savvy Anton great fun to watch; he’s the genius coder who just wants to buy a country house for his family to get away from people, AKA ‘morons’.

Alexander Skarsgård shows his versatility in the role of a receding programming nerd, the character’s single-mindedness, hilarious – although the dance scene I’m pretty sure was a copy of Tom Cruise in his role as Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder (2008).

All the roles were well-cast, Salma Hayek showing real bite as the powerful CEO and financial guru – she’s just as good at her job as the geniuses she hires to work for her.

And there’s more to the story than data transfer, problem solving and making money – this is a life-defining project for Vince.  This is about the mystery of life and what he’ll find at the end.

I enjoyed watching this film on many levels.  And it looks good on the big screen, with falling snow, frozen in time; walking over a forest of pine trees like they’re moss covering the ground as thought rises above the project of building this line and seeing the idea and drive to finish as more than the project itself.

An intelligent film with a bit humanity thrown in the mix.

The Curse of the Weeping Woman

Rated: MThe Curse of the Weeping Woman

Directed by: Michael Chaves

Written by: Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Iaconis

Produced by: James Wan, Gary Dauberman and Emile Gladstone

Starring: Linda Cardellini, Raymond Cruz, Patricia Velasquez, Marisol Ramirez, Sean Patrick Thomas, Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen and Roman Christou.

Based on the Hispanic folk tale of La Llorona, The Weeping Woman, the film begins where the curse began – the 1600s, Mexico.

Llorona, famed for her beauty, catches the eye of a rich man who rides into her small village.  Marrying the man of her dreams, she bares two children.  The folk tale describes Llorona flying into a jealous rage when she finds her husband in the arms of a younger woman; her revenge, to kill those he prizes the most.  His children.

She drowns his children.  But when she realises what she’s done, guilt consumes her so she throws herself in the same waters, to drown.  But her spirit remains to haunt, looking for children to replace the ones she has lost.

The film starts scary, with some surprising, brutal moments and angled camera shots that tilt the view through the eyes of the spirit, Llorona (Marisol Ramirez).

Yet as the film progresses, those creaking doors start to lose effect.

In present day Los Angeles, 1973, Anna Garcia (Linda Cardellini) lives as a single mum with two kids, Chris (Roman Christou) and Samantha (Jaynee-Lynne Kinchen).

Working as a social worker, she struggles to balance life, to spend enough time with her kids and to take care of everything on her own.

But it’s a happy family.

Until, visiting Patricia (Patricia Valásquez), a client she knows through work, where she finds children locked behind a closet door covered in drawn eyes.

Thinking she’s saving the children, Anna unwittingly catches the attention of the Weeping Woman.  A spirit determined to drown her children.

It all sounds like a good scary story.  But l lost focus along the way with moments that left me wondering, how does a baseball bat scare off a spirit?

And social workers don’t investigate other colleagues when it comes their children’s welfare.  Well, not officially.

Then along comes the ex-priest – not the one still with the church who loses all credibility when mentioning his dealings with the evil possessed doll, Annabelle.  But the faith healer, Rafael Olvera (Raymond Cruz).

I just could not take him seriously.  And neither could the Garcia family he’s trying to save when he gets them to rub intact eggs along the frames of doorways.

It was like the director realised the film was turning from horror to ridiculous and then used an incredibly dry humour to lift the film from drowning in a wash of boredom.

The film becomes borderline silly with lace and doe-eyed moments stated in dialogue like, ‘She’s come to drown us.’

I felt pretty water-logged.

But then I realised the irony of the faith healer’s humour against the murderous crazy spirit who drowns kids.

Overall, a lost opportunity that turned a horror movie into, something else.

Crime Wave (Ola De Crimenes)

Directed by: Gracia QuerejetaCrime Wave (Ola De Crimenes)

Written by: Luis Marίas

Starring: Maribel Verdú, Juana Acosta, Paula Echevarrίa, Luis Tosar, Asier Rikarte, Miguel Bernardeau and Raúl Arévalo.

Opening in a confessional, with Leyre (Maribel Verdú) attempting to explain to the priest her sins, Leyre asks the priest for reassurance, wanting to make sure of the sanctity of the confession, that her sins would not be passed on to anyone but God.

‘Honey, this isn’t twitter,’ the priest replies, setting the tone of the film.

A thriller and comedy is a strange mix and just asking for the ridiculous.

And the main character, Leyre, ex-wife to murdered husband and mother to sociopathic son, Asier (Asier Rikarte) who murders his father with a pair of scissors, is a ridiculous character: tripping over her high-heels and cleavage on show with every outfit.  I found myself gritting my teeth at the ditzy behaviour.

Leyre attempts to cover-up the murder of her husband while her odd son is unable to absorb the seriousness of the crime, being a sociopath and all.  She runs around like a neurotic that in turn, causes a crime wave across the city of Bilbao.

To try to blend the different styles of story, the comedy with the crime, the soundtrack is used to spark that recognition of detective, who-done-it movies, with brass raunchy outbursts (a little like the character, Leyre).  Then we get classical for the son; the best music in the soundtrack for the entire film.  But mostly, it’s that sleezy music that works as a devise for change of tone but didn’t absorb me into the film because it felt like it was trying too hard.

But there’s some clever here with some genuinely funny moments that I just haven’t seen anywhere else: Vanessa (Paula Echevarrίa) the current wife of the murdered husband, manages to include her hiccups into the manipulation of a conversation by explaining they’re a reminder from the dead husband because he used to always hiccup.

And the tape playing English lessons in the taxi as Leyre convinces the taxi driver (Raúl Arévalo) to help her establish an alibi saying, ‘I’m mad.  I’m mad,’ Yes, the taxi driver is a little mad!

There are many moments of the highly amusing including the infatuation of lover boy (and Asier’s only friend), Julen (Miguel Bernardeau), with Leyre – constantly blowing his load while professing his undying love…

And the pace doesn’t let up.

We get the murder of douche bag husband, the coverup, the current wife in dodgy business with corrupt lawyer, Susana (Juana Acosta), the detectives investigating the crime with their own headaches in life and the taxi-driver / bad actor tricked into a false alibi.  It’s nuts!

Of course it’s nuts.  But also, a little brilliant.

Pet Sematary

Rated: MA15+Pet Sematary

Directed by: Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kölsch

Based on the Novel by: Stephen King

Screen Story by: Matt Greenberg

Screenplay by: Jeff Buhler

Produced by: Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Steven Schneider, Mark Vahradian

Starring: Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz and John Lithgow.

Opening on a scene above the trees, it’s like looking above to shed light on the below, on the woods that surround the new home of the Creed family.

When Dr. Creed (Jason Clarke) and his family, wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz) and their two children, Ellie (Jeté Laurence) and Gage (Hugo Lavoie) move to Maine, all they want is peace and quiet.

The next-door neighbour, Jud (John Lithgow) seems like a well-natured old codger.  But the kids who bury their dead pets in the so named, ‘Pet Sematary’, included in the Creed’s newly acquired land, not so much.

Kids wearing animal masks, beating a tin drum while wheeling a dead dog towards a woodland cemetery can be intimidating to a mother still grieving, processing, terrified of her dead sister – remember her?  The one with spina bifida who hated her sister?  Who still haunts her?

I found these bits scarier than the other more supernatural moments.

So, there’s a cemetery and an old codger who knows of an ancient Native American burial ground that brings back those buried there.  Like a dead cat named Church, for example.  Dead things get buried there.  They comeback.  But not the same.

Pet Sematary is a remake of a familiar story.

While watching, I was reminded of the original, Pet Sematary (1989), an, ‘oh that’s right, that happens…’

But also, ‘that’s different. I don’t remember that bit…’

I watched the original film during the day, about thirteen years old, and had to sit outside on the swings till someone came home after.  Didn’t think I’d get that scared.  Then, I read the book, and that was much better, much scarier.

I’m so glad the transfer of the mind of Stephen King and his stories – the telepathy of stories, he might even say – is becoming more successful.

I still don’t think the films get that creeping suspense of the characters slowly losing their mind.  There’s just not enough space to get the build.

The novels are slow, subtle and ultimately terrifying because of the creep.

Here, the film has character, setting and story; the film more story than character.  But the condensing is successful, covered in the dialogue.  Not the same effect, but with a different perspective from screenwriters, Matt Greenberg and Jeff Buhler; the story remains solid.

It’s a push at times with throwaway remarks like: ‘How far back is the acreage?’

‘Further back than you’d like to go.’

And there were moments where I wondered why you’d bury the dead somewhere you know they’re going to come back?  Bad?  Which is where we get the dialogue to explain the call of the Windego.

This is where the film glosses over character and where the novel digs deep.

What I like about this re-make is how visceral the scenes get when it matters.

And there’s some great devices used here, the montages of dripping blood, the movement of feet while compressing the heart to the flashing of red lights to entice the unsuspecting in front of an oncoming grill of a runaway truck – the red flashing because the ground is sour and woods are calling.

Look, I wasn’t completely blown away, probably because if felt familiar; yet directors Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kölsch have taken this known tale and refreshed the storyline.  A solid storyline with enough scares to satisfy this horror fan.

Us

Rated: MA15+Us

Directed by: Jordan Peele

Written by: Jordan Peele

Produced by: Jordan Peele, Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, Ian Cooper

Starring: Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Madison Curry, Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon.

‘What do you want?’ asks Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o) of her shadow.

‘What do we want?!’ her reflection, Red replies.

Us is a film of many layers, the use of reflection, of Adelaide talking to herself reflected in a glass window; shadows tethered to bodies, while waving across the sand: ‘Once upon a time, a girl was born with a shadow…’ introduce the folklore of the doppelgänger to create the fear of self as an everyday American family meet their Other selves, while vacationing at their summer beach house in Santa Cruz.

It’s a strange setting for a horror-thriller – going to the beach as a family of husband, Gabe (Winston Duke), wife, Adelaide, daughter, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and son, Jason (Evan Alex); meeting friends, hanging out on lounges, drinking, well husband and wife, the Tylers’ (Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker) drinking while their two teenage daughters Becca and Lindsey (Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon) play in the sand.

And that odd play of normality, just off kilter, sets the tone of the film.

Us is different to what I expected.

I thought I was walking into creeps and super-scary, but for me, I found the film thought-provoking, and sure, suspenseful, lightened by this incredibly dark satire.

Director, writer and producer Jordan Peele states, “Horror and comedy are both great ways of exposing how we feel about things…  The comedy that emerges from a tense moment or scene in a horror film is necessary for cleaning the emotional palate, to release the tension.  It gives your audience an opportunity to emotionally catch up and get prepared for the next run of terror.”

I wholeheartedly agree there’s a close link between horror and humour.  There’s a fine line between the two, tapping into an old part of our brain that can react with fear or laughter, if the moment misses the mark – I’m not afraid of the dark, ha-ha.  To tap into this reaction and include a character like husband Gabe bases the film in normality, because that’s the way people behave: tissue up a bloody nostril, and statement, ‘almost looks like some kind of fucked-up art instalment,’ included.

Winston Duke really nailed the character, Gabe and I appreciated this layer of bizarre humour to lighten the strange – as Jorden states above, to, ‘clean the palate’.

Jordan has managed to tie the normality of the family priority: money, cars, competition in the face of brut survival – like reacting to threat with violence being the most normal thing in today’s world.   Never forgetting how cool it is to own a boat.

The story hangs on this story of a family, of a mother still traumatised by an incident in her past, back in 1986 when she gets lost as a little girl in a Fun Park, where she meets her Other.  And vacationing back in the place of that first incident creates a domino effect of coincidence, until, her family meets…  Hers.

But there can only be one self.  That’s where the horror comes in, with some good blood and guts – yet the film’s not really about the doppelgänger, it’s more about what the doppelgänger represents: evil, the shadow, the end of times:

The verse from Jeramiah 11:11 also a running theme through-out the film:

There thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.

So, did I like the movie?

Honestly, Us wasn’t as scary as I thought it was going to be.

Yet, the careful handling of timing and layering of complicated ideas and story made a unique viewing experience.  And I kept giggling – strangely, the humour was what affected me the most – while also thinking about the comment made about the ones we’ve abandoned far below the tunnels of ourselves.

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