Us will open doors in Hollywood

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This article was published 30/03/2019 (2450 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Us, the new horror film from Jordan Peele (Get Out), is about a middle-class family whose mirror images — eerily similar but also enigmatic and very, very angry — show up to terrorize them.

The studio, along with movie-industry prognosticators, initially predicted a US$35-million to US$40-million opening for the movie. Actual box-office numbers turned out to be, ahem, almost double that, with three-day takings of US$71 million, leading many pundits to observe — cue the scary music — everyone and their doppelganger went to the multiplex last weekend.

Since that strong opening, there’s been loads of media buzz.

Us is packed with Gen-X cultural references, tricky plot-point puzzles and tiny, meaningful details calculated to send internet theorists down the rabbit hole — this one complete with actual rabbits, by the way. There’s also a killer narrative twist in the film, the kind that warrants repeat viewings, meaning this weekend might continue to build on Us’s momentum.

So why is Us’s boffo box office so good, not just for the talented cast and crew behind this zeitgeisty project but for movie lovers — and their doppelgangers — everywhere?

First off, it’s good for the genre. Horror movies are sometimes dismissed as mindless gorefests. This is unfair — there are plenty of mindful gorefests out there — so it’s nice when young hard-core genre fans can come together with more general audiences and everyone can get terrified together.

And we could use a horror renaissance right now. These are scary times, and the horror genre is made to tap straight into our worst social, political and cultural fears. Us takes the visceral tropes of the home-invasion thriller and turns them into a blood-spattered examination of class, race and systemic inequality. Like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, it’s the kind of film people can talk about at dinner parties.

Us is also a stand-alone movie. It’s not a sequel, not a reboot, not a reimagining, not part of some endlessly extended universe. Original films need to be encouraged, and for Hollywood, big box-office numbers are encouraging.

Another important factor: Us stands as a rebuke to a risk-averse industry, rising up like a jumpsuit-clad Lupita Nyong’o to claim its place under the pop-culture sky. At a time when few directors have blockbuster name recognition — weighty opening-weekend hauls are usually about franchises rather than auteurs these days — it’s significant that Peele is an African-American filmmaker with marquee value.

Us is also led, onscreen, by a black woman. While everyone in the main cast (Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex) is terrific, playing both the reassuringly ordinary Wilson family and their terrifying counterparts, it’s Nyong’o, as the undaunted Adelaide Wilson and her shadowy alter-ego Red, who is at the centre.

While movies helmed by and featuring white men flop all the time without Hollywood execs assuming that the whole “white male thing” is a bust, black-led and female-centred films are required to be exceptional. Even a whiff of disappointment will confirm to a nervous industry that projects focused on women and people of colour can’t draw in general audiences. It’s crucial that Peele’s second project after Get Out — his urgent, mordant suburban horror satire from 2017 — hasn’t fallen into the sophomore slump. Us is more complex, more challenging and — fortunately — looks set to be even more popular.

The success of Us, then, means that we might get more horror movies where the African-American characters don’t die first, where they aren’t briskly picked off before we get to know them, or used as sacrificial offerings, or sent out to “reset the circuit breakers” (or something).

Finally, and this is maybe the best reason of all to applaud the film’s box-office bounty: Us is just a good movie. It’s freaky, scary, carefully crafted and deeply unsettling. Working with economical effectiveness within the parameters of genre entertainment, Peele simultaneously reaches toward something looming, larger and more mysterious. Us delivers a central allegory of consummate social, psychological and cinematic creepiness.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca