Jordan Peele, the writer, director, and producer of the fantastic film Get Outreturned to theater screens last week with another horror film, Us. Centered on an upper-middle class family during their summer vacation, Us  is a horror film that avoids the cheap and easy gimmicks often employed by lesser films, such as the repetitive ‘jump scare,’ in favor of disturbing images driven by magnificent performances and yet it does not achieve the same heights as get Out  leaving this film as modest enjoyable but subject to several disbelief braking elements.

Led by Lupita Nyong’o as the movie’s central character Adelaide Wilson and supported by Winston Duke playing her husband Gabe, Shahadi Wright Joseph as their eldest daughter Zora and Evan Alex as their youngest Jason the cast is uniformly fantastic. Playing real and relatable characters that draw in the audience’s sympathy their relationship as a family and as individuals powers the emotional heart of this film. Vacationing at Santa Cruz’s boardwalk, in an earlier cinematic decade the site of a vampire infestation in The Lost BoysAdelaide is unnerved by an ominous chain of coincidence echoing her childhood traumatic experiences at the amusement park. Gabe, ignorant of Adelaide’s experiences, insists on visiting the location and as evening falls tensions are running high and Adelaide is fearful of unseen forces when the family is suddenly confronted by doppelgangers of themselves and thrust into a fight for survival.

Much of Us  works beautifully. The characters feel real and their pain and fright are palatable. Lupita anchors the cast’s performances as the emotionally damaged mother giving Winston Duke, perhaps best know for his star making turn in Black Panther  to stretch his comedic chops as a very ‘Dad jokes’ kind of father. Midway though the movie’s second act the story opens up in an unexpected manner raising the stakes and the bring more mystery to the doppelgangers sudden appearance but the third act, while still engaging and superior to many horror films, is hampered by a exposition/info dump that stops the pace cold and pushes too many hurdles for my personal suspension of disbelief. I can’t be specific without venturing deeply into the land of spoilers but I can try to give hypothetical examples of the problems I encountered with the film final reveals.

Imagine a ghost story, going into the film as an audience we are already primed to suspend our disbelief in ghosts. It’s a ‘give’ we are ready to surrender to the filmmaker just from what we have been exposed to in advertising and trailers. Now, as our plucky characters grapple with a vengeful spirit we are suddenly confronted with alien ghost busters who also have been directing human governments and developments since the fall of Rome. This is asking the audience to simultaneously accept too many impossible things and breaks the reality of the story. Us  does not break things as blatantly as my hypothetical scenario but for me the final explanation for the events is far from neat and that I found impossible to accept. The ultimate resolution to Adelaide’s trauma was deep and morally conflicted, I loved that, the grand explanation for the doppelgangers and the wider canvas to story painted starting in the middle of the second act failed for me. Overall Us was an enjoyable film, a cut above most horror movies, though that is a low bar, but not as satisfying as Peele’s masterpiece Get Out.