US – Review by MaryAnn Johanson

There are so many things to love about writer-director Jordan Peele’s second film, Us, and one of the most delicious is how it opens: with a positively early-Spielbergian flourish of childhood wonder smothered by sad reality. Little Adelaide (Madison Curry), who is perhaps seven or eight years old, is at a magical seaside amusement park, except with her parents: an indifferent dad and a mom frustrated and distracted by him. So she wanders off. And as a thunderstorm is ominously brewing in the twilit sky — and as maybe something ominous is drawing her? — she meanders alone into the creepy and deserted Shaman’s Vision Quest funhouse… where she will endure a terrifying encounter with a very unexpected figure.

Everything after that is… let’s call it post-80s-Spielbergian. Almost literally: that opening segment takes place in 1986, while the rest of the film — with occasional brief flashbacks — is set today. Us could be seen, in the sense that it is partly about the lingering aftereffects of childhood trauma, as a reply to early-Spielberg fantasies: How did the kids from The Goonies or E.T. grow up, and how did their experiences impact their lives? Continue reading…