Us - When shadows come to play (Movie Review)

I remember seeing the trailer of this movie sometime last year and it looked like something I'd like. But you know when you see something you'd like but because you're not one to download movies on a whim, you save it for later and go ahead to forget, that was what happened with this movie I'm about to review, that led to my watching it just yesterday, even after all the months I've known about it.

Yesterday, the movie Us aired on my Tv and what better way to watch horror movies than at night? So, when I came across it last night, I stayed to watch it. I won't say it was completely a waste of time since most of the time spent viewing was worth it but it could have been better.

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Us is a 2019 psychological horror movie directed by Jordan Peele. It stars Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex as the main characters. It follows the story of a family on a vacation. At night in their vacation house, when they're about to retire to bed, there's a power outage. The mother looks out the window to see an outline of four people who look exactly like every member of her family standing outside the property. Doppelgangers. An experience from her past makes her more terrified than the other members of the family. The father decides to go check why they're there but he is suddenly rewarded with the people dispersing into the bushes nearby and breaking into their house. This marks the beginning of a torturous and fearsome experience through the night.

You know when something goes smoothly and you're about to give it a 5 star rating, but at that moment, they go ahead to do something very stupid that takes them down to a 1 or if you're generous enough, you give them 2 stars, that is just my perfect description of this movie. I enjoyed it a lot from the beginning but the ending was too messed up for me to even know what to say about the movie.

Reviewing the movie now, reminds me of so many questions that were in my mind to ask the director or the writer. Did making it end that way really seem like the right thing to do? And if everything was messed up from the beginning, why then did the supposed villain complicate things by saying different things at the beginning? Or was the movie actually written by two different people? Maybe the person that wrote the ending only skimmed through the expanse of the movie and wanted to come up with a plot twist by all means. This movie actually had the potential to be a great one but like many horror movies of it's kind, it went ahead to be a flop in it's last few minutes.

I actually loved the acting in this movie. The main characters did a good job with the acting and they made my screentime worth it. Lupita's acting was the one I liked the most. She did so well with both characters she played and it was satisfying to watch. The idea of the shadows coming to haunt their owners because they were forced to live through decisions made by their owners was creepy enough to pass as the plot for a horror movie. And that was one of the things that made the movie appealing to me. It had a simple and complex plot at the same time.

I can't say anything for the character development in this movie because there really was none. But the suspense in this movie was well played and since that's an essential trait for movies of the horror genre, it worked for me. I also liked that this movie dealt with more actions than words. That mattered a great deal because after all, we were dealing with shadows. This movie had the potential to be better but because the overall idea was great. But the script was poorly written and that was a huge bummer for me.

I'll rate this movie a 3/10. It was a disappointing watch. About recommending it, if you're someone that watches movies for watching sake and you don't mind if nothing makes sense, be my guest and watch this. You might find it enjoyable. But if you're looking for a well-written horror movie, this might not be one for you.

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