The Failure Of "Us"

Enough time has passed for me to talk about this movie and talk about it I shall since I've been wanting to ever since I watched...or read the spoilers (I'm sorry, "Hereditary" taught me to never trust a hyped movie again) and now that we're a year and some change after its release I figured spoilers can now abound. From the title, you can tell that this won't be a flattering review but it won't be a scathing review either. Rather it'll be a review of the 2 critical failures that make "Us" an unfortunate attempt at being deeper than what it already was. So SPOILERS ABOUND, let's dive in.

Rethinking Ari Aster

Okay, listen, I still think "Hereditary" sucks, let me be clear, the performances are great, the directing and cinematography is great, and aside from the wasted use of Gabriel Bryne, I'd say overall "Hereditary" is a technically sound movie through and through, but just because it looks good doesn't mean it is good and the story could have been told A LOT better, the characters could have been a lot stronger, especially Peter but unfortunately he turned out to be your typical high school senior obsessed with girls and smokin' pot, so when the bad thing happens to the poor boy you can hardly say it was that bad as the boy barely had character, to begin with. But I digress, all of these are issues I had with "Hereditary" and I'll be happy to discuss them with anyone but I'm not here to talk about "Hereditary", not entirely anyway, I'm actually here to talk about its writer and director, Ari Aster. Very few in Hollywood can claim both writer and director of their own projects and usually, when that happens it typically means the studios has quite a bit of faith in them.

"Hereditary" despite my best understanding has somehow managed to become a massive cult hit, and while I'm not the only one who doesn't like the movie, I'm the only one (that I'm aware of) who doesn't like the movie because of the story and how its told. But I digress, so Ari Aster's next film "Midsommar" which does look interesting enough to warrant my observation as details emerge is now on everyone's radar as being the next cult hit. So I wanted to take a look at Ari Aster's available body of work and stumbled upon his film "The Strange Thing About The Johnsons" and this began my rethinking of Ari Aster. I'll explain what I mean after the break. Spoilers of "Hereditary" and "The Strange Thing About The Johnsons" below.

Let's talk about "Hereditary"

If you've read my Strange Log then you know I've been waiting to watch this movie for a good while. I've heard nothing but praise for this movie from various viewers I respect (Chris Stuckmann, Jeremy Jahns & ATZShow) and praise from others as well. The hype machine has gone ga-ga over this movie and this had me intrigued. Many were calling it the horror movie of the decade, best horror movie ever, etc. etc. and this just set my curiosity ablaze. I decided this was gonna be a movie I was gonna go in as cold as possible, so cold that I didn't see a trailer for it, didn't read a plot synopsis or anything, I wanted to know as little as possible going into the movie so I could be shocked, surprised and terrified as much as I possibly could. When the day came, I finally picked it up and blu-ray and watched it yesterday (as of the writing of this article 9-10-2018) and now after having seen it, I have much to say. This will require a preamble and SPOILERS. Let's begin.

PREAMBLE: Before I begin with the article proper I need to address a few things, the elitism of the people who liked this movie vs those who did not. Before we go any further let me say firmly that I did NOT like this movie at all. It was well acted, well directed, well shot and well written for what it was. But this movie presented its self as a horror movie a movie in which its intentions are to scare its viewer and I was not scared. I judge scared based on whether or not I'm capable of sleeping calmly at night and while I didn't sleep calmly, that was mostly due to my son getting up every 15 minutes as opposed to any psychological distressed the film attempted to inflict upon me.

The reason I'm stating all of this here in this preamble is because it seems those who liked this movie believe their tastes in horror films are better while others who did not like this movie are merely looking for cheap scares (jump scares, slashers, torture porn and the like)...ya know bottom barrel stuff, and that those who didn't like this movie are merely teenagers who don't know good horror or they just didn't understand the movie. Let me refute those in my case: I hate jump scares because they're not scary they're an activation of your fight or flight mechanism in your brain, that doesn't invoke fear it just means you were startled, surprised, caught off guard. I've ALWAYS hated slasher movies, Freddy Kruger, Jason, Chucky, Michael Myers, they're all bad jokes to me and they're all goofy to me. I can't take any of them seriously, even as a kid those films never scared me. Freddy made WAY too many jokes, Chucky's scream always made me laugh and Jason just looked too damn cool to for me to be afraid of him. Torture porn, I'll admit it, I enjoy the "Saw" films, not because they're scary but I love the traps and eventually the filmmakers caught onto that as well. But films like "Hostel" and all the others similar...no...watching someone get tortured for 2 hours doesn't sound appealing to me at all.

Lastly, I did understand the film completely, I have no misunderstandings about what I just watched, and I'll prove that not only when I discuss the film with spoilers but when I offer a critique on what I think would have improved the film, in my opinion. In conclusion, if you enjoyed this film, that's wonderful! I'm so glad you did. This film has found its audience and you can say that's you. I did not and that doesn't give you the ability to belittle anyone's opinion by assuming things about them. Horror is an EXTREMELY difficult genre to write and I applaud Ari Aster in writing something that many people enjoyed. That being said I did not and if you'd like to know why I'm gonna tell you.  But bear in mind, opinions are subjective and I'm going to explain why this movie didn't work for me. Spoilers abound, enjoy.

Horror & Capability

For the longest time, I've been thinking quite a bit about horror movies and horror as a genre entirely. I've made videos about my ideas of what horror movies really are, they're not about what they're about there more about the idea of what they're about. As an example, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" isn't about some chainsaw wielding nutcase ready to hack you and your friends up, it's actually about being on the outside of an inside joke, the fear of not knowing. Everyone in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" was aware they were leading those guys to their doom EXCEPT for the main characters. That's what I mean; "Halloween" wasn't about a killer, it's about an unstoppable, unreasonable force. But I've recently found myself returning to more Lovecraftian notions of horror and really re-thinking what makes horror horror and what exactly makes it scary and I've discovered it comes down to one factor, what is that factor? Find out after the break!

Why The Horror Genre Fails...

And we're back, once again talking about a topic that I have already addressed but unfortunately something came up that just lit a fire under my butt to re-address this topic. What am I talking about you ask? I'm talking about horror movies and why the vast majority of them (recently) unfortunately SUCK raw ass through a straw! I should preamble this by saying that I haven't seen EVER SINGLE horror movie ever (as horror is one of my least favorite genres) and I openly acknowledge that horror is PAINFULLY subjective and therefore what I find scary might not be what everyone else finds scary. Furthermore I should say that regardless of the acclaim they get, classic horror movies were NOT SCARY! Jason, Michael Myers, Freddy Kruger, Pinhead, Chucky...every last one of them FREAKIN' STUPID AND NOT SCARY AT ALL! Blasphemy, I know but that's how I feel. Anyways let's get to the meat...