One of the joys of streaming is that you always have a huge array of movies at your fingertips. While that large set of options can make choosing what you want to watch easier, having so many titles to wade through can also make it hard to actually narrow in on the movie that’s right for you.
Peacock is a streaming service that actually has a pretty robust library of interesting movies, but actually finding those movies can be harder than it should be. That’s why we’re recommending Us as the best movie on the streaming service to check out in October. This horror movie is perfect for the spookiest time of year, and tells the story of a family being terrorized by underground doppelgangers who no longer want to hide their lives. Here are three reasons it’s worth checking out.
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Lupita Nyong’o’s incredible dual performances
Lupita Nyong’o is one of the very best actors working in Hollywood today, and while she doesn’t always get the roles she deserves, Us is a perfect showcase for her talents. Here, Nyong’o is tasked with playing both a normal woman trying to vacation with her family and her “tethered,” a woman who can barely speak and who is leading an insurrection by those underground.
This dual performance gives us a full sense of the actress’s remarkable range, and is both sympathetic and unsettling in equal measure. The actress shines in the horror genre, and you can see another great performance of hers in 2024’s A Quiet Place: Day One.
The movie’s trenchant social commentary
Perhaps unsurprisingly, director Jordan Peele is not just telling a straightforward horror story in Us. Whereas the allegory in Get Out is pretty clean, things are much murkier and more fascinating in Us.
The central metaphor at work in the film — an entire society of have-nots that we simply choose to ignore — is a pretty obvious reflection of class, but that’s not the only thing on the movie’s mind. Us can be read in dozens of different ways, but however you choose to interpret it, you’ll likely be talking about it for weeks after you see it.
It’s genuinely terrifying in unusual ways
There was plenty of pressure on Peele to deliver something interesting and original with Us, which was his immediate follow-up to Get Out, and one of the miracles of Us is the way he managed to do that without just telling the same story twice.
Us‘ use of contorted body violence is much more prolonged and sustained than Get Out‘s, and the movie is unsettling in totally distinct ways. Us is a movie about the parts of the world we’d rather just ignore, and it’s terrifying not just because of what happens, but because of the implications of its story.
Us is streaming on Peacock.