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US ****
Dir: Jordan Peele (15, 120 mins)
The writer/director of the excellent Get Out follows up with more sociopolitical horror. After the existential psychological terrors of his debut, Jordan Peele has gone all out for scares in this high-concept frightener. The Wilson family, headed by Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) and Gabe (Winston Duke), head for a beach vacation in Santa Cruz with their two children, Zora (Shahadi Wright-Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex). They go to spend time with their friends, the Tyler family, played by the ever-excellent Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker (best known as one half of Tim & Eric. Adelaide is on edge, encountering strange coincidences that link somehow to a deeply hidden past trauma. Their son Jason wanders off on the beach, encountering a scarecrow-like creature and that night the family are visited in their holiday home by doppelgangers of themselves with murderous intentions. Taking the premise of our own worst enemy being ourselves to its limit, Peele’s film descends into scissor slashings, disturbing imagery and a supernatural concept called The Tethered. Peele places an endearing black American family at the heart of this Spielbergian horror, still a rarity in movies and then proceeds to relentlessly terrorise them. Nyong’o is excellent as the central maternal figure and the film delivers in its edge-of-the-seat scares. Opens Mar 22