What a letdown. I missed GET OUT so this was my first look at Peele, and if this is the new face of horror I'm not sure where I fell off the bus. The last thing I was expecting was a reboot of mid-00's slasher reboots, complete with overplayed pop songs (sometimes used *ironically*!), explicit references to older horror movies, too many scenes set inside an SUV, a twist designed entirely not to make sense (explaining why the final girl and the killer are bound by fate), and flatly irritating expendable meat (who make our heroes look psychotic, both by being friends with these people and being happy when they die (and this extends into the core family - if any characters but the mother and son had any sympathetic traits, please fill me in)).
There's so much character-burning comic relief that this ends up significantly north of most Adult Swim shorts in a comedy/horror mapping. That's an even bigger problem when you're already riding the line with black humor (is the line "we're Americans" meant to get a big laugh, like it did in my theater?) and have drawn a clear SAFETY line around the main characters. Comedy is a black hole that sucks in everything close enough to count, why beg for laughs like that? Most of the third act plays like an SNL sketch. It all makes so absurdly little sense that I can't believe it draws attention to itself that way (you don't see SUSPIRIA trying to explain what the fuck just happened).
What's most disappointing is that the concept is so terrific and a small handful of shots so perfect (opening credits, a roadside accident) that I hated watching it wasted on just another slasher (parody?). Replace the clones with Michaels Myers and the whole thing plays out the same. Maybe the subtext falls off, but I ain't giving out subtext points til you can pass on surface text (and anyway, I'm really not sure it does need clones to make sense). I'm not even going to start listing the missed opportunities, because a doppelganger movie without a single case of mistaken identity says it all. The clones being kind of stupid and extra hard to kill makes them more like zombies anyway, and if I start comparing this to Night of the Living Dead I'm going to need to lie down.
Just terrible. At times almost so-bad-it's-good.
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