I think the best kind of horror films, particularly those with a supernatural edge, are the ones that don’t try to explain everything to you. They just present a confounding mystery, and let it hang there.
One of my favorite of recent years was “It Follows,” in which people are inexplicably pursued by relentless doppelgangers. I would add “Us” to the list.
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s sophomore effort is superior, in my opinion, to his previous venture, the smash hit “Get Out.” Lupita Nyong’o stars as a seemingly normal woman with darkness in her past that will catch up to her and her family.
Thirty years ago as a child, Adelaide had a chilling experience inside a carnival funhouse, where the image in the mirror turned out to be a real live reflection. Now that person, who has grown up just as she did, returns to the “real” world to exact a blood-soaked revenge.
I don’t want to give away too much, since the very appeal of “Us” lies in its teasing out information and surprises. Suffice it to say, Adelaide isn’t the only one with a nefarious shade following her around.
Winston Duke plays her husband, Gabe, a good-natured guy; Evan Alex plays their son, Jason, who has a few disturbing aspects to his own personality; and Shahadi Wright Joseph is teen daughter, Zora, who makes a show of her independence until it’s time to fall back on her family.
The big twist of the movie wasn’t a surprise for me, but I watch a lot of films and there’s only so many tricks in the bag. But it’s still a very satisfying ending to a terrific movie fraught with frights.
Bonus features are quite expansive and include six deleted scenes, funny outtakes and an extended version of the dance sequence. There’s also an in-depth exploration of the making of three pivotal scenes and five documentary shorts.
“Us” is top-drawer horror, a creepily convincing modern fable that haunts our hearts without getting caught up in the busy semantics of explaining everything. Like “It Follows” from a few years ago, there is a weird, existential threat and all you really need to know about it is that it’s coming for you.
Being of the horror genre its effectiveness is somewhat attenuated by obedience to tried-and-true tropes. The story moves quickly from brutal house-to-house disturbances to systemic society-wide chaos in a hurried way that feels like a reach. And because you know there’s going to be a big twist, it turns out to be not nearly twisty enough.
Seriously, I had it figured out halfway through. So would anyone who’s watched movies, I think.
That quibble aside, this is a much more interesting and better picture than Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” which I thought solid but overpraised. “Us” has a tactile feel to it, and it’s almost as if we can sense the scrape of scissors against skin or the globby drops of sticky blood.
Lupito Nyong’o plays Adelaide, a 40ish wife and mother of a prosperous, happy family. They are heading to their summer home near the beach: her husband, Gabe (Winston Duke), is big, goofy and loveable; their daughter, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph), is a typical teen girl, plugged into her phone and tuned out of her family; and son, Jason (Evan Alex), is pleasant if a bit odd, prone to occasional epithets and wearing a monster mask wherever he goes.
This same beach town, though, holds tragic memories for Adelaide. In the flashback prologue, we witness her being separated from her parents as a little girl in 1986, wandering away from the carnival into the “Vision Quest” funhouse, which for some reason has been built facing the beach rather than the boardwalk.
There she encounters her own reflection -- except it’s not a simple refraction in a mirror.
Without giving too much away, it turns out that this twin is not just a figment of her imagination, but a very real figure. It seems she has been living in shadow ever since their childhood encounter, nurturing a growing resentment that has turned into a murderous rage.
There are others who come along with her and act as her companions, an inverted version of the family. They all wear red denim jumpsuits and carry large golden shears.
Nyong’o uses an eerie breathless voice while playing the “other mother,” which at first may tempt you to laugh but quietly burrows under your skin like a seeking insect. Her followers are even less verbal, confined to beastly growls and howls.
“Us” starts out like a standard horror thriller, as the marginal hunted are quickly sliced up, though more pivotal characters escape their tormentors, fight back and eventually become the hunters. Then the story gets bigger and bigger, losing the intimacy of close-bodied assaults and strangled threats. By going meta, it loses the wonderfully uncanny minutiae that made it sing.
It wraps up in a satisfying way, though as I said one that won’t come as much of a shock to horror veterans. Sometimes, though, knowing the blade will sink deep doesn’t make it bite any less.
Stretching is good if you’re exercising but not if you’re making movies. “Baywatch” is a sorta-spoof of the television show that has about 30 minutes’ worth of decent material, but then tries to string that out to a two-hour movie. The end result is a flick with a few good laughs and a whole bunch of filler in between.
Dwayne Johnson plays Lieutenant Mitch Buchannon, the veteran leader of the local lifeguard crew. (Motto: “Risking Our Lives and Flexing for $9/hour.”) The running joke is that he takes his job way too seriously, behaving more like a special ops operative than a dude in jams and flipflops.
As the story opens Mitch is recruiting two new spots on the team. Matt Brody (Zac Efron) would seem to be the top candidate, an Olympic swimming star who can cut through the water like nobody else. But he’s also an arrogant ass who disgraced himself and is looking to take the next steps.
Summer (Alexandra Daddario) is the competition he takes a shine too, who’s too smart to fall for his bro-dude antics. Rounding out the cast of contenders is Ronnie (Jon Bass), a schlubby but good-hearted guy who would seem to be a long shot to make the team.
It’s a pretty raunchy affair, with the boys showing off a lot more skin than the girls. The plot is a forgettable lark, something about an evil businesswoman buying up the beach. Mitch and his fellow lifeguards take on the extra duty of solving some murder and fraud in between elliptical workouts.
There’s been a whole slew of old TV shows turned into movie spoofs in recent years. I’m not opposed to the idea, but I can’t think of a one of them that’s been better than mediocre. “Baywatch” doesn’t sink, but it doesn’t exactly swim, either.
Bonus features include an extended version of the film with new and longer scenes, plus four-making of featurettes. They’re only available on the Blu-ray, though, as the DVD edition has none.
I never watched a single episode of the "Baywatch" TV show, or wanted to. They couldn't just have lifeguards resuscitating poor swimmers every week, so they brought in drug dealers, inter-squad passion/spats, earthquakes and even a serial killer to spice things up.
It sounded like a weird amalgam of a crime procedural and fleshfest, complete with the slo-mo running "jiggle cam" that became its signature.
Basically, it was a stripper cop show.
"Baywatch" at least seemed aware of its own silliness, and to the extent possible, embraced it. So the logical thing to do if you were going to make a movie out of it is to spoof the TV version, in the way that "21 Jump Street," “The A Team” and the more recent “CHIPS” did.
(Though perhaps these are not the… best examples.)
Director Seth Gordon, a TV and film comedy veteran (“Identity Thief,” “Horrible Bosses”), and screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift start off reasonably well, gathering together a gaggle of eye-pleasing hardbodies and concocting a bunch of goofy, raunchy scenarios to put them through.
But the film loses steam pretty early, and then hangs around way too long -- nearly two hours. If any movie needed to rock an 82-minute run time, it’s this.
It’s very aware of what it’s trying to do, at least for a while. The actors mock the TV show while paying homage to it. For instance, one of the women questions why it is their familiar fire red one-piece bathing suits ride so far up their rear ends. It makes us faster in the water, or something, the other responds… and we all know it’s the “or something.”
Interestingly, a whole lot more male flesh is on display than female which, other than some cleavage and the aforementioned butt-age, is pretty much kept under wraps. That is largely provided by Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron, two famously buff actors who butter their bread with getting their kits off.
Johnson is built like the former WWE and NFL prospect he was, massive in the Schwarzeneggerian mold. He basically looks like an 18-wheeler encased in flesh. Efron, a former teen idol, seems intent on completely ridding his body of all fat to the point he resembles those “visible man” cut-out models you saw in biology class, where every muscle strand and the guts are naked to the eye.
Apparently, this is considered attractive nowadays. I guess the next step is for people to start making their internal organs visible. Soon there’ll be a market for cosmetic surgery of the liver.
There is one schlubby guy, a new recruit named Ronnie (Jon Bass), because it’s supposed to be funny to have the rippled crew running on the beach together, and here’s this big belly sloshing around in slo-mo. But the movie awards him… other attributes as compensation.
Other newbies to the Baywatch team are Alexandra Daddario as Summer, a tough and smart girl, and Efron as Matt Brody, a former Olympic champion more famous for his out-of-the-pool tomfoolery than his gold medals. Think Ryan Lochte with gastrointestinal issues. He’s cocky as all get-out and must be put in his place, starting with Summer responding to his brodude overtures.
Johnson is Lieutenant Mitch Buchannon, a legend on the beach with hundreds of confirmed saves. One of the running jokes is that Mitch acts like a military special-ops badass -- the exact origin of his rank is nebulous -- and people have to keep reminding him he’s just a lifeguard.
Ilfenesh Hadera plays Stephanie, Mitch’s seasoned and capable #2. Rob Huebel is the jerk suit ostensibly in command. Kelly Rohrbach rounds out the team as CJ, whom Ronnie is smitten with, and she might just have a little smit running the other direction, too.
There’s a plot, but that’s not really the point. Something about a powerful businesswoman buying up beach properties, muscling politicos and offing anyone who gets in the way.
“Baywatch” actually starts out pretty funny and fresh, but they only really had about two solid “SNL” skits worth of material to go on. The rest is unfunny filler. But I guess they spent so much effort trimming the fat from the beach bods, they couldn’t bother to do the same with the script.
