This "We", indeed, is one of the best horror films in the past two years, and Jordan Peele shows a more mature side than "Escape from Desperate Town" in this work, although some of its connotations are still metaphorically under the surface, but even if you look at the twists and turns of the story, it is wonderful enough.
Of course, although this film is called a horror film, in fact, there are not many jump scares, in addition to the big setting, there is no supernatural event of the cow ghost snake god, and in the later stage, it has become a suspense film, but it can still make people nervous.
1. I ended up living as your shadow
A conspiracy experiment by the government has created tens of thousands or even millions of replicants in an attempt to manipulate the actions of real people on the ground with replicants, making all sentient beings puppets in the hands of the government.
However, contrary to their wishes, although the replicants shared a soul with their real bodies, they had to become their shadows, which is the background of the whole story.
Above the ground, there is the beautiful paradise of the United States, with amusement parks, beaches, happy families and harmonious lives.
Beneath the ground, the replicants, hidden in the unattended tunnel, like marionettes, could only imitate the behavior of the people of the upper realm in a clumsy and rigid manner, but only a meaningless repetition.
The people of heaven play games, talk about love between men and women, laugh and laugh, and feast, and in a corner of hell, they eat rabbit meat alive, they shake their bodies like convulsions, they are exaggerated and sad reproductions.
It's like you're holding a console controller and touching the front, back, back, and right, abxy, but there's no screen in front of you, only snow-white walls, and you don't know why he's so happy, but you have no other choice, because you're his shadow.
2. Descending elevator
However, people on earth and on earth also have a day to meet. This underground she and the ground she unexpectedly met, underground she was oppressed for too long and too long, she did not hesitate to knock the one on the ground unconscious, take to the underground, instead of the original position, and she, finally, can go to the legendary paradise to live.
Although she had lived underground and could not speak on the ground, she slowly learned to speak after pretending to be frightened, and even had a happy and happy family. Although, the entrance to the underground on that beach was her eternal knot. She was afraid that her real body would come to her.
Pandora's box was finally opened, and the underground replicants, dressed in red, took scissors to the streets and began to take revenge on their real bodies, the real bodies were not wrong, the wrong thing was that they were born unconsciously to become part of the ruling class, and the underground replicants, how eager for that noble and unknowing identity.
She saw the real body that had been replaced by her own unconsciousness, and the replicants who were similar to her family, and these replicants would probably have been her real relatives. When a replicant daughter is knocked to death, she leans over to see if she can learn everything in the language of nether communication, but the class change makes her never recognizable again.
Of course, she must have liked the identity and life of this class, at least she had longed for it. After all, in the face of that downward elevator, you must have enough courage to go up against the current.
3. Dance of the Sleepy Beasts
Originally, she became a prisoner on the ground, a person underground, a tortured person who could not escape from hell.
We can imagine everything she faces below, the unfamiliar environment, the boredom of life, the reproduction of the various behaviors of the upper realm that are far from the same, and naturally the language that cannot communicate with each other.
She was determined to one day break through the shackles of the class between the upper and lower realms, and lead the people underground to the heavens to kill their true bodies, like gods.
Had she forgotten that she had been part of the people who were going to be killed? No, but once the class is changed, the so-called forgiveness, tolerance, and pity are just rhetoric about why not eat meat, the desire for freedom and identity, which is more than anything in the world.
When the replicant of the upper realm who usurped her identity danced on the big stage in the spotlight, she could only spin in the narrow and congested tunnel, but the magic miracle of her dance generally allowed all the people underground to follow her ideas. Finally, she forced her replicant into a corner.
Now, the replicant had once again become a trapped beast, and she used her accumulated training to easily dodge her attack, but who was finally trapped underground could never come back, and no one knew the answer until the last second.
4. The line through the United States
It seems that so far, many people will feel that it does not matter whether this film is starring black or not, after all, the white family also has its replicants, and the whole film does not point out the discrimination of society against black people like "Escape from Desperate Town" and "Green Book". Indeed, this is what I mentioned at the beginning, the director's maturity in this regard, so that this very eye-catching expression becomes a metaphor in the film.
This is the line that crosses the United States, hand in hand.
That line, which was originally the last advertisement she saw on the ground before she was usurped, was actually very boring, and this kind of fundraising seemed to be a kind of sympathy for the poor, in fact, the participants were more full of food and supported to find a fun before going to the event.
However, this line became the spiritual pillar of the underground people, and after they assassinated their real bodies, they held hands, crossed the mountains and mountains, and connected the east and west coasts of the United States through rock reclamation. Maybe it's funny, but I think that this line must mean something.
You can imagine that this line connects the east and west coasts of the United States, or you can think that this line divides the United States into north and south halves. When you open the map of the Civil War, you will find that in fact, one south and one north are exactly the two sides of this line, and a major reason for the Civil War is the contradiction between the legality of black slaves. Although the United States was unified after the Civil War, we also saw in the "Green Book" that even in the last century, the United States South still had a very serious prejudice against blacks, so the north and south ends represented by this line probably have special historical significance for many black people.
Another point to mention the problem of handcuffs, the red heroine was chained to the bed by the replicant heroine, and when she returned to the ground, the first thing was to let the replicant heroine be chained again, on the one hand, this is a kind of revenge, and on the other hand, this shackle is the chain that the red heroine hopes that the replicant heroine can never break free, in the final battle, first the replicant heroine blocked the scissors of the red heroine with handcuffs, and after she killed the red heroine, she finally unshackled her own shackles, no doubt, forever killing the other self , in order to make her truly free.
5. Behind you
What is worth mentioning about this film is the excellent photography, and there are several shots that make a very impressive impression.
For example, when the replicant first enters the protagonist's home, the camera rotates in more than 360 panoramas, and even has some elements of showmanship in it.
The fixed position hidden in the cruise ship by the male protagonist also has some meaning.
There are many high-camera overhead shots throughout the film, and the top shot of the beach when one of the families went to the beach actually took a certain sense of weirdness on the flat beach, which was very interesting.
And the most noteworthy is the scene where the two heroines are bifocal one after the other, which reminds me of the bifocal picture of Brian de Palma in "The Fierce Line". The replica heroine in the rear is approaching step by step, and the heroine in red who is close to the camera cuts the twin paper people, and the shaping of this atmosphere becomes particularly subtle under the weight of this shot.
6.I got 5 on it
Another most impressive point of this film is this "I got 5 on it" soundtrack, this soundtrack appeared in the first trailer, I liked it when I listened, the whole music contains both witty and relaxed fragments, but also atmospheric and creepy melodies, this strange combination is undoubtedly very compatible with this film, especially at the climax of the film, the background music and dance and the combination of the real and false heroine's pursuit of the montage, very amazing.
In addition, the other soundtracks in the film are also more in line with the plot, and do not give people the feeling of clichéd mixing.
7. True and false Monkey King
The final reversal, only a few minutes before the answer was revealed, began to have a premonition, watching the whole film from the beginning, found that there were too many clues left, but the guidance of this film was so excellent that even if they saw many clues, they still could not solve the puzzle.
The most important thing is the loss of voice of the heroine after the change of true and false heroines for a period of time, including her own mention that she once had a difficulty in speaking, which is precisely because she has lived in the underground since she was a child, so she does not speak English.
On the other hand, the jerky words of the heroine in red, coupled with the fact that other people who are deliberately expressed later, cannot speak, in fact, it is because the heroine in red is originally a person on the ground.
The replicant heroine began to be so afraid of her son losing herself on the beach, but also because she was afraid that her son would once again enter the door to the underground and let the underground self see the light of day again, not purely out of maternal love.
At the same time, when she finally went down, she easily found the stairs to the underground, which was also because she was actually a replicant, so she had come up and knew where the entrance was.
There is also the white family was killed clean and neatly, but the heroine here is dragging and dragging, and was not killed after being caught by the white replicant, originally thought it was the protagonist aura, and now I think it must be the red heroine who wants to torture the replicant heroine, so it has long been said that no one else is allowed to kill her.
While giving us many clues, the film also carried out a certain inducement, that is, in the copy of the heroine (at this time we still think it was the real heroine) to take the car keys, she was witnessed by her son a moment of temperament change made me once feel that she had been transferred in that small period of time, including trying to communicate with the replicant daughter later, so attentive to the replicant son,All of which made me think that she was the heroine in red who changed her clothes after killing the normal heroine. But in fact, it is this heroine who has always been a replicant.
I think this method of giving you the truth and falsely inducing on the basis of the truth is very clever and interesting.
Speaking of false induction, I think of "Alita" that it began to try to induce us to think that the doctor was a bad person... Probably not many people will be fooled... That's a counterexample of false inducement.
Of course, some of the echoes in the film are also very complete, such as the man who stood on the beach in the first half, in fact, he killed the first person who formed a long line after his real body, but at the beginning we did not know, so he was extremely strange.
8.us good and evil
I don't use a single "villain" to address any of the characters throughout the text, because within the framework of such a plot, it seems that good and evil are not clear.
Those underground red-clad people who kill their real bodies, then they are evil? They have been manipulated by these people for too long, and it is more like an uprising, a revenge, and it seems that it is not evil.
Then those people on the earth who enslave others unconsciously do not seem to have evil deeds, after all, no one knows that they still have such a tragic shadow.
Then the replicant heroine who usurped the identity of the red heroine is probably just too yearning for the earth, and those who are on the ground take up arms to fight back, and they are also defending themselves for their position, class and identity.
The only evil thing is probably the country that made these replicants, but should it be blamed directly on the government, or on every individual? After all, the woman in red said, "We are americans."
So there is no distinction between good and evil in this film, what we see is only the attack of two groups of people, one side of the class has been solidified at the bottom of the people desperately trying to squeeze into the high class of society to obtain an unenslaved status, the other side is to spare no effort to combat these people to maintain their own class rule, or all day long worried that their hard-won position will be replaced again.
And you and I, this 'us', must also belong to one of these two groups of people. And all the people in the movie are just a small microcosm of the "united state".
Of course, this is an American story. Heaven and hell, the ruling class and the enslaved class are visualized in the film, and the line of discrimination against blacks that everyone once knew but was not broken was also drawn with human flesh.
These may be the real horrors of this film, the whole film tells a story of oppression and resistance in a relaxed and witty tone, and the listener himself is in heaven and earth, in the south and north, with a sharp blade hanging high above his head, and may not know it.