“To my mind, Lupita Nyong’o plays four roles in Jordan Peele’s Us: there’s Adelaide, a fretful wife, mother, and former dancer whose summer getaway to her family’s lake house doesn’t go remotely as planned; there’s Red, the identical, maniacal “tethered” person who unleashes vengeful terror on Adelaide and her family; and then there are, finally, the women Adelaide and Red are each revealed to truly be in the movie’s closing moments. A less adept actor might have buckled under the demands of a precarious assignment like this. But Nyong’o is a prodigy who appears to thrive under pressure, and what she achieves in Us is a triumph of abiding and unbounded creativity. The actress constructs Adelaide and Red with her Yale-honed discipline and assiduous attention to detail, delineating the vocal, physical, and temperamental differences between these two entities who share far more in common than we initially assume. But Nyong’o takes her dual (quadruple?) characterizations a step further by embodying the film’s central mystery through thoughtful, layered choices that actively reward close spectatorship. Peele’s concluding twist is hiding in plain sight within the brilliant choices Nyong’o makes throughout the film. Adelaide’s body language is far too studied and her verbal inflections frequently odd, almost as if she were speaking an unnatural language; this is Nyong'o’s mastery at work, drawing our attention time and time again to what makes Adelaide distinct from her kin. Just as telling are the restless, hyperaware eyes that are always goggling and glancing over her shoulder, signaling that this everyday woman has good reason to be cautious. The actress’ work as Red is equally meaningful, her eerily eccentric showmanship equaled by an enhanced consciousness that exceptionalizes this character, too, from her kind. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the croaking, spine-tingling sound of Red’s rusted voice, which makes each word sound like a necessary struggle, as if her throat was caught in a perpetual chokehold. We could spend years watching and examining these performances and never run out of new touches and nuances to relish, which is, above all, a testament to Nyong’o, a star who deserves more parts that match the sheer prodigiousness of her rare and potent talent.” — Matthew Eng
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