Rising to your feet your eyes dart about in search of shelter, somewhere to escape from the growling all around you. A Church, there must be one, this is a graveyard, surely a chapel at least…there! Rising like a mirage from the mist is a dark stone building with a crooked steeple. You run.

Dodging left and right to avoid the crumbling decrepit tombs and gravestones you quickly arrive at the front of the church where your reflection in a large window draws an involuntary cry from your lips. You look behind you for any sign of pursuit then back at the…window? No, a door, and made of dark, damp wood, then why? No time for that now, the growls are getting closer. You grasp the iron ring of the door handle and wrench it open, slamming it behind you and slapping the bolt closed.

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It’s gloomy in the church, the windows yielding little light…when did it get so dark outside?

Slowly you become accustomed to the dim space and make out two lines of pews with a tattered line of carpet sandwiched between them. At the end of the carpet stands a simple altar, cobwebs hang limp between two candelabras set on top of it. This place hasn’t been used in a long time.

Off to your left a faint glow catches your attention. A strip of yellow outlines a small door set into a stone pillar. Stepping over to it you pull the door open and peer inside. Steps. A spiral staircase leading not up, but down. Electric lightbulbs strung together like a line of paper dolls disappear round the bend…a crypt?

Down seems to be the last place you want to go right now, down is dank mortar and mould, down is grave worms and rot, down is death.

A crash echoes about the church as something slams against the front door.

Down it is.

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Now this all sounds very dramatic and ambitious for a horror film, but Peele keeps it tight and keeps things focused on the Wilsons. Almost all of the film is set around the 4 of them and we know only what they know, we have no insider knowledge and that’s what stops this film from becoming detached from the horror, we fear for this family.

We don’t just fear for them though, we root for them. I’m not ashamed to say that in quite a few horror films I couldn’t care less about the protagonists and sometimes I’m actively hoping they don’t make it. Here though, the 4 family members, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), Gabriel (Winston Duke), Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex) feel like a real family unit, like real people and not just actors in a film. Though speaking of actors, all 4 are excellent and it’s their work which brings those characters to life and makes us want them to succeed, makes us afraid for them but also…wait, no, that’s for the spoiler section. Let’s just say the actors had to work twice as hard in this film, but man, it looks like it must have been so much fun.

If I was to describe the film as a totally made up genre within Horror, I’d say it’s ‘Psycho Home Invasion on a Grand Scale’. The scope and the ideas behind the film are huge and intriguing with a nice chunk of disturbing. ‘Us’ is creepy, it makes you think ‘What if?’ and in your mind you berate the people who designed your home for making it so linear with so few exits. ‘Us’ is also funny at times, particularly when Gabe is on screen, he provides the comic relief to Addy’s serious, haunted tone. Another amusing character is Ophelia, but we’ll get to that in the spoilers.

The music. Oh wow. The music in this film is excellent, fun when it needs to be fun, and down right creepy when it wants to be. Special mention goes to the opening theme ‘Anthem’ and my personal favourite, an incredible orchestration of ‘I Got 5 On It’ that I’m listening to right now and just…chills.

Score time. I really struggled with what to give this one. I flip flopped between two high numbers but eventually decided on 4 Rabbits out of 5. A few things could have brought it higher. The ending was a little predictable, and perhaps it’s just me but although I was rooting for the main 4, I didn’t feel anything for the other characters in the film, perhaps we’re not supposed to, but it made their fates mundane. Sure the premise is messed up, but frankly I didn’t care. Having said that, this is a clever, fun, creepy and ultimately entertaining film with a mind blowing score that deserves your full attention and I’m looking forward to Jordan Peele’s next one.

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**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

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Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

So the main idea behind the film is that there exists underground doppelgangers of the people on the surface. Clones created by the government and then abandoned when their experiments to control their surface counterparts failed. As far as we’re aware this is everywhere in America. Pretty wild stuff. This is what I meant when I said the scope and ideas were huge. It’s like a zombie apocalypse if the zombies had gold scissors, and were…well…us.

The clones are unsurprisingly played by the same actors as the regular people in the film. This is what I meant when I said they must have had a lot of fun. Imagine getting to play your normal character, and then your character if they’d lived underground their whole lives and where essentially a psychopath. The whole cast did a brilliant job with this, those twins, wow, they creep me out.

Now that we’ve covered that, let’s look at Addy’s clone, Red. We first meet Red at the start of the film when Addy wanders away from her parents at the fairground. She goes down onto the beach and goes inside a hall of mirrors where she bumps into what isn’t just another reflection, but turns out to be Red, her clone. Cut to Addy and her parents at a psychologist because Addy won’t talk any more and is acting odd since she wandered off. Do you see where this is going? So yes, years later, and at the end of the film, we discover that the reason Red was different to the other clones, and the reason she was able to organise them and bring them to the surface to slay their counterparts, is that Red…is actually Addy. This was the twist ending that wasn’t much of a surprise.

Now if I’m honest, at the start of the film this isn’t obvious because you don’t know anything about the doppelgangers yet and it relies somewhat on you having forgotten the beginning scene by later on in the film. So when I say it was a little predictable it was a little, but not glaringly obvious.

Oh yes, that other funny moment I wanted to talk about. Ophelia.

The Wilsons meet up with another family on their holiday, the Tylers, friends of theirs who are staying in the area, and their resort house has an Alexa/Siri type device called Ophelia. Later in the film the Tylers are attacked by their clones. The Father and twin daughters are killed outright while the Mum, Kitty, though injured, manages to drag herself along the floor and ask Ophelia to call the police. Ophelia plays ‘Fuck the Police’ by NWA. It’s a nice nod to how infuriating these devices can be and adds a bit of humour to an otherwise gruesome and horrific scene. Though to be honest, this family was annoying…

The last scene I’d like to talk about is where that brilliant version of ‘I Got 5 On It’ comes in. Addy and Red fight in the underground facility and Red (Original Addy), lithely avoids Addy’s (Original Red’s) attacks. The movements flow with the music and the scene inter cuts with one of the two girls, years ago performing ballet in front of an audience. One on a grand stage, the other in a dark underground corridor. It shows brilliantly how their lives have switched and how different circumstances effect what is essentially the same person. It’s so well done. Hmmm…maybe it does deserve a 5…no, I’m sticking with 4.

Now if you’ll excuse me there’s some strange people outside…