Minor Spoilers abound!
I'll start this by saying I haven't seen Get Out or Us, so this was my first Jordan Peele experience. Movie wise at least. And while I didn't leave the theater overly impressed with the film itself, I did come to respect Peele's vision and filmmaking. The first half of this movie is good, filled with suspense and tension. The acting is solid, Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya shine in their roles and do exactly what Peele needed them to do. With that being said, the movie's pace is just...slow. The tension mounts and mounts, but a lot of time is spent on characters and scenes that really don't add anything to the crazy reveal. And I know, I'm sure there is some deep commentary on filmmaking or Hollywood that I'm missing in all those side scenes, but it still made the movie drag on and on. This is a movie that could have been an hour shorter, which I don't say a lot. Except for the Jack Black King Kong that movie could have been like three hours shorter. Here are some out of context spoilers for the movie.
Anyway, here is a quick list of what I liked about the movie. As I mentioned above, Peele really does a great way of making every scene ooze with tension. He also excels at foreshadowing or hinting at what the reveal is going to be. Even when Steven Yeun (who I love and it was great to see him on screen) delivers what seems like a quick plotless line, it hints at a much bigger twist. Kaluuya asks if he can buy his horses back eventually, Yeun gives a quick "Uhhhh sure". Which at the moment you're like "Oh he just doesn't think this guy can afford the horses back." Then 30 minutes later you're like "OH MY LORD THATS WHAT HE MEANT". I'm also pretty sure this film was going to be called "Don't Look Up" and then they had it stolen like a horse on a ranch. There were plenty of small moments like this that Peele slid in, so when you get to the reveal everything makes a LOT more sense. The cinematography was great, two scenes (vroom vrooms and neigh neighs) really looked breathtaking. The acting was also great from both leads, with a decent job from the supporting characters. Kaluuya and Palmer has undeniably chemistry as a brother sister duo. The best thing about this movie, like the Falcons in most Superbowls, is the first half. It's strong, and probably should have ended there. Here comes the negatives, after another spoiler out of context image.
So here is what I didn't love. Honestly as much as the first half builds tension, the overall movie is just....boring. A lot of nothing happening. The first half keeps your attention by having you try to figure out what's going on and how. And as cool as the actual plot twist is, once it's revealed the rest of the movie is really just gawking at it. The suspense is gone, now it's just a game of "Ok how do they survive this?". The quest to film and identify the thing in the clouds seemed a lot more interesting than the quest to film and also try to survive the thing in the clouds. And the thing itself just looked....weird. Like sure it's intimidating (giving us a pretty gruesome scene when the reveal happens, which was hilarious but mostly disturbing), but it looks so bad. And when it Peacocks at the end? Somehow even worse. Seeing glimpses of it was more horrifying than the real thing. The real thing looked more like a reject from the Macy's Parade. And hey I love that we got some original content in a movie, and I think Peele does an awesome job building a story with creative twists. But once that twist was done, I felt like the movie was done. It definitely makes me want to go see Get Out and Us, as I'm told those are better, but I definitely left the theater feeling like this movie was fine. A movie that easily could have been an hour and forty minutes long and still told a great story. Justice for Gordy.
Score: 5.5/10