So this is Jordan Peele’s second horror movie, after Get Out, and unfortunately it’s a sophomore slump situation.

I mean, I don’t want to suggest that Us is a bad movie; it’s definitely not. It’s atmospheric, it’s tense, it’s well-shot. There are moments that are genuinely horrifying, and moments of tension-cutting humor that work really well.

But it’s missing a core. Taken on a straightforward level, there’s just not a whole lot there to this movie; and what there is doesn’t really make any sense — key plot elements are just dropped on the floor (coincidences!), magical elements get a science fictional explanation that leaves more questions than it gives answers, and major twists get very little exploration and make less sense the more you think about them.

And now to be fair, the story is incredibly amenable to allegorical interpretations. If you want to write about how the movie is really about poverty and revolution; or about how the US does big War on Terror foreign policy when the real terrorists are domestic; or about racial tensions somehow; or… well, really, pick your interpretation and cram it on there, it can handle it. Me, though, I’m happy if a movie can (to use Gaiman’s formulation) be about more than it’s literally about, but I do want it to work on that literal level, and I don’t think this one particularly does.

Saying all that, though, boy, I can really imagine a world where the critical consensus on this one changes a lot. Right now, it seems like most critics agree with me that Get Out is the better movie (if nothing else, that’s the movie of Peele’s that’s on the S&S Great Movies list); but precisely because Get Out is so specifically about a certain moment whereas this one is a protean mess that can take on a zillion interpretations, it’s easy to see how in ten years or so, someone will “rediscover” it and there’ll be a flurry of essays about what it all means, and poof, instant top-tier classic. I mean, that’s exactly what happened with Vertigo, right? Mixed reviews on release, because it’s an unsatisfying mess, but then its openness to a rich set of interpretations led to it being wrongly considered Hitchcock’s best movie and an all-time great.

So I guess if you’re reading this from the future where this re-appraisal has happened, then probably I’ll strongly recommend this essential classic; but if you’re reading in the present, it’s a pretty good movie but not more than that, so it gets a light recommendation.