WARNING: This week’s blog is FULL of spoilers
Let’s get this out of the way, I thought Get Out was a fantastic movie. Furthermore, I thought Jordan Peele was incredibly smart to make his directorial debut a horror film about racism. Because let’s face it – racism is scary.
So it makes sense that I couldn’t wait to see US, the movie. I found the trailer to be both thrilling and chilling (by the way, that trailer editor should win the Golden Trailer Award – yeah, that’s a real thing). I bought my tickets online in January, making sure that my boyfriend, his daughter, my mother and I had our favorite seats at The Arclight Theater in Sherman Oaks. I kept checking the rating on Rotten Tomatoes every few days to make sure it was still 100 percent fresh.
Finally, the day had come. It was time to see US.
The house was packed and buzzing with nervous/excited chattering. I held onto my boyfriend’s arm as the lights went down and the opening scene-music began. Ten minutes in, I was utterly engrossed, trying frantically to play chess in my head with Peele, determined to figure out the plot-twist before he revealed it at the end of the film. My heart raced when the red family suddenly appeared at the end of the driveway. Moments later as the red boy shimmied up a tree like a leopard, I heard myself emit a shriek with the rest of the audience. Out loud, I warned the family away from the windows for fear that they would be easy targets for the red family. But as soon as the red family got inside and the “tethered” Adelaide started speaking, I felt my antennae go up. It was the same feeling I had when I first heard the details of Jussie Smollett’s alleged hate-crime attack.
Hold up, something isn’t making sense here…
Okay, here are my top ten gripes about US:
1) When the “Red” Adelaide enters the house for the first time and tells her long, distractingly tedious, “Once upon a time” story about being a shadow, not ONCE does she mention the fact that she is the original Adelaide, a child who was abducted and placed with clones underground, while her “shadow” assumed her life. Don’t you think that would have come up? I mean, wouldn’t that have been the first thing out of your mouth?
2) This colony of clones or “tethered people”:
She says the government made them and put them down there, right? So was the government keeping them there all those years? If so, how? And why didn’t they provide actual food for them? Also, if they’ve only ever eaten raw rabbit meat, how are they so athletically superior to regular humans?
3) What’s the deal with Jeremiah 11:11? I looked up the Biblical verse, and it still doesn’t make sense.
4) If the captured-as-a child-Adelaide could move around freely and organize all those clones into a whole Hands-Across-America thing, why the F*%k didn’t she go back above ground and run her little butt back home to her real family?
5) And speaking of Hands Across America – what was the point of that?
6) Were some of them ZOMBIE clones? If not, then why didn’t the white-guy clone die after Gabe delivered a crowbar into his skull?
7) Why did Peele decide to over-explain some things and not to explain other things AT ALL?
8) Why did "Red" keep handcuffing or tying up Adelaide when she caught her? Why didn’t she just kill her like she said she wanted to over and over? (I know, I know, we need "Adelaide" for the sequel, but then throw me some explanation as to why “Red” wants her alive please.)
9) What was up with Jason and the magic trick? Wasn’t it just a ring made out of a lighter flint?
10) My biggest gripe:
I was not scared.
I’m not saying that I didn’t jump a couple of times at the pop-outs, I’m not made of stone. But I’m saying that it just wasn’t scary. I’m talking about that kind of bone-chilling scary, scared-to-turn-the-lights-out-when-its-time-for-bed scary, scared-to-look-in-the-bathroom-mirror-for-fear-of-seeing-two-reflections scary.
It just wasn’t scary.
But I do think some people were scared – the critics. I feel like critics were too scared to pan Jordan Peele’s much-anticipated sophomore effort because Get Out was so innovative, fresh and intelligent. And yes, also because he is mixed-race-black (yeah, I said it) and they don’t want to be on the wrong side of history here. It’s kind of like that old children’s fable, The Emperor’s New Clothes. You know the one where the Emperor is fooled into paying for a whole, new invisible wardrobe and all of his subjects are too afraid to admit that they can’t see his outfit, so they praise it instead?
So, in conclusion, I think that the scariest thing about seeing US, the movie, might be admitting to your friends afterward that you just didn’t understand it.
