Author's judgement:
Monsters are our double, in other words, all possible evil is already inside our own soul. This is the theme of this week's fantasy-thriller-horror film: We, written, directed and screenplay by Jordan Peele. The story tells of an apparently serene and peaceful family who is about to spend a beach holiday on the California coast. One evening, disturbing and menacing figures appear in the garden of their home, which soon turn out to be exactly their copy. Flash back: twenty years earlier the young protagonist gets lost in a maze of an amusement park which reappears many years later in the same place.
The arrival of the "replicants", but it would be better to define them as doubles, unleashes an infinite sequence of violent and, at times, grotesque and surreal scenes. The tension grows and the climate of terror spreads first in a family of friends and then in the whole territory. Obviously we will not reveal anything about how the story ends.
It is a mixed and jagged film, perhaps too much, where the characteristic features of genres that are perhaps too different from each other to be easily superimposed are mixed too easily and coarsely: science fiction although the monstrous beings could belong to another world, the 'horror with all possible references to the blood that flows at will, the thriller for how the drama unfolds and, finally, a pinch of contemporary sociopolitics. The real monsters live inside us, our fears are fueled by the same society in which we live, especially according to the director, that of the United States. The same title, We, in English Us, plays on the dualism of the reference to our double and to the name of the country where the story takes place, the United States. The country that has been experiencing moments of strong identity split for some time and where monsters fueled by their own nature, history and culture are sometimes generated: see the recurring massacres by criminals who buy weapons at the supermarket as if they were tomatoes.
Peele comes from a previous success achieved with Get Out (Oscar for best screenplay in 2018) and undoubtedly knows the craft of cinema and, even more, is capable of drawing liberally from all the illustrious precedents of the genres it tackles. Important titles immediately come to mind such as, for example, Night of the Living Dead by George Romero, as well Shining by Stanley Kubrick. The relative novelty consists in the introduction, in this film, of direct and explicit elements of humor or social satire otherwise absent in films of this genre. For example, the child wonders “who kidnapped me? Terrorists or perverts”.
However, it doesn't seem enough to mix, agitate many elements, and dish out two hours of film to make a good film of this kind. Keeping the viewer glued requires something more and different than that We was unable to do. In the United States, where it is enjoying significant success, it could have a narrative sense that perhaps escapes us, perhaps because it is too tied to political and social tensions that do not belong to us. However, for those who love this type of film, in this period, there is no better.
