4 Best And 4 Worst Things About Us

Us, writer/director Jordan Peele's much-anticipated follow-up to his horror masterpiece Get Out, is finally here, and it was worth the wait. What starts as an apparently simple home invasion fright fest quickly evolves into something bigger, as Peele spins bigger and bigger ideas into a movie with bigger and bigger implications. The result is a conceptually weighty horror film that keeps you guessing and thinking right up to the very last minute, and that means we've got plenty to talk about. With that in mind, here are the best and worst things about Us.

Oh, and it should go without saying, but there are SPOILERS AHEAD for the entire movie. You've been warned.

Horror cinema has a huge capacity for pushing actors to their emotional and physical limits, and the genre's long tradition of placing vulnerable women at the center of stories means we've gotten truly legendary performances out of some major talents, from Jamie Lee Curtis to Sigourney Weaver to Toni Collette.

Adelaide, played by Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o, is the center of Us, and she rises to the occasion by adding another legendary performance to horror film history, a performance made all the more powerful by her dual roles. As Adelaide she is vulnerable but strong, scared but determined, loving but savage.

As Red, Adelaide's Tethered double, she is both an entirely different personality and every bit Adelaide's mirror image. She jerks and twists when Adelaide is graceful, grins when Adelaide gasps in terror, and croaks where Adelaide speaks.

It's a magnificent pair of performances, and while there are certainly plenty of other things to recommend about Us, her daring and brilliant performance is the first thing many moviegoers will come away talking about.

The Tyler family who join the Wilsons join for a day at the beach in the first act of the film, are presented as shallow, bickering people with no real sense of love between them. While that creates plenty of opportunities for comedy, it does mean the blow is dulled a little bit when their murders happen midway through the movie.

Yes, that sequence is funny and gets quite tense when the Wilsons show up, but you get the sense that the Tylers didn't really need to be as broad as they are, particularly when the film already roots us in the emotional reality of the Wilsons. Keep watching the video to see the 4 best and 4 worst things about us!

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Best: Lupita Nyong'o | 0:35
Worst: The Tylers | 1:39
Best: The comedy | 2:08
Worst: A grab bag of metaphors | 3:26
Best: The Tethered | 4:39
Worst: That big monologue | 5:33
Best: The visual style | 6:25
Worst: The logistics and the final twist | 7:00