Us

The other night I saw Us, a horror movie by Jordon Peele. It has a kind of cool story -- about a lower world of "tethers", our shadow selves, that come to destroy us. It's scary but not unbearably so. It follows a lot of traditional genre tropes, but has a fresh, eloquent take on them. It is visually arresting in parts, very well filmed. The lead family's doubles were scary and the idea of a horrific mirror image of yourself is powerful. When the double family first establishes themselves, the son of the "real" family says, in awe, "it's us" -- perhaps my favorite moment. Some of the odd and stark images echoed The Shining, but it was in no way derivative. I'm going to be thinking about the idea of tethers for a long time.