"Us" Or, Our Zombies, Ourselves

     I wasn't intending to see "Us."  I'd seen the trailer and decided that this movie looked 'way too scary for me,

​ But then I read all the critics' rave reviews that the movie was full of relevant metaphors and wit and humor and social commentary and syntax and conceptual...stuff.

      However what ultimately convinced me to go and see this movie was one critic's observation that "Us" was  more ambitious than Jordan Peele's previous hit, "Get out," which I loved. 

    I guess the problem was that I misunderstood the word "ambitious" to mean "wonderful," which "Get Out" was and "Us," frankly, wasn't.  In fact, from the beginning of the film I kept waiting for it to start becoming wonderful. Never happened.  All I could see playing out before me was a zombiesque slasher movie that sort of fell flat early on, specifically as soon as the zombies - or golems, dopplegangers, evil twins, or whatever you want to call them, but this was basically a zombie movie -  mosied on into the house of their look-alike victims, introduced themselves and aired their grievances. 
      These slasher zombiesques, as it turned out, traveled not with the standard-issue random lumbering, slovenly, slobbering pack,

​...but in a small family unit neatly dressed in stylish matching jump suits,

​...each accessorized with a designer scissors,

 ...and they  sought out specific victims, their human counterparts, who'd been plunked by fate onto the first-class deck of the cosmic Titanic, while they'd been shuffled into zombie steerage, as it were, about which situation they were plenty steamed.
       However, instead of spending the movie as they should have, chasing after their human prey, who likewise should have spent the movie trying to avoid their zombie predators - these designer movie-zombie-types made themselves at home, barked orders and waved their scissors around at their terrified hosts, who often seemed not quite sure what they were supposed to be doing, but who definitely lacked the wherewithal to run out to the kitchen drawer and grab some scissors of their own.

   I'm actually making the move sound better than it is.
   I guess it was full of metaphors and symbolism, if you feel like calling all the ins, outs, and what-have-yous going on in the movie metaphors and symbolism. Of course if you want to you can find metaphors and symbolism in every movie ever made, good, bad, or indifferent.
   So I don't know, maybe "Us" did have metaphors and symbolism, but it lacked tension, except for what was created by the plinky, scary-sounding music. It lacked any real scares, unless you count gore. It lacked logic, and even a movie about look-alike zombiesques requires logic within the zombie-world frame of reference. It was just one sloppy, disconnected, indecipherable scene plopped down after another. Until it got downright dumb. Which is actually okay for a movie to be, as long as it's an engaging ride. Which, for me, "Us" wasn't.