<Review by: Sailesh Ghelani>

Directed by Jordan Peele. Starring Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex

Running time: 1 hour 56 minutes

Scary movies have become so predictable with the haunted houses, the scary little ghost girls and formula frights, which is why Us brings something different to the screen.

While most scary films have white protagonists with the occasional token black person thrown in to be killed off half way through, Us puts a middle-class African-American family front and centre, making it different right from the get go.

Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o) is a great mom to her two kids Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex). Her husband Gabe (Winston Duke) is a funny fellow who loves the beach and is a great dad and partner. But Adelaide is still traumatised by an incident that occurred in her childhood in a house of mirrors at the fair down by the beach where she saw a girl who looked just like her staring back…

Of course, they end in a house by the same beach with her family, and her memories come back to haunt them all. I could go into what exactly happens and tell you the story but I’d rather not since that will just give away the twists and the surprise.

Us explores a duality of human personality and also delves into the psyche of similar people that are raised differently, in a different environment and shows us how they can turn out startlingly opposite to each other in many ways but surprisingly the same in some.

You’ll leave the film with a lot more questions than answers to the mystery regarding some of the story and the ‘how’ and ‘who’ of it all. This is a good thing compared to most other films where you forget about what happened the moment you leave the theatre. There’s lots of unanswered mystery that you want to find out about. I told a friend that it’d probably be in the sequel.

I also loved the fact that an African-American family gets to have a go at a scary film. The humour, slapstick and cultural nuances of that are so refreshing. All the actors do a great job and director Jordan Peele has certainly shown he can make a cult-ish film.