Written by Luke Barnes
Summary
A family of horse trainers come under threat from a massive otherworldly entity.
This could potentially be Jordan Peele’s best film. Now that might be a controversial claim but stay with me, I think by being far more obvious and straightforward in its plotting rather than abstract and heavily reliant on subtext this becomes the director’s most accessible and dare I say enjoyable film. It is nice to be able to just watch this film and enjoy the character’s journeys and to understand the film once it ends rather than having to wade through a lake of fairly on the nose racial subtext to be able to draw some sort of a conclusion.
All of the performers here are on good form, Kiki Palmer, Steven Yeun, Daniel Kaluuya all give strong performances and Brandon Perea becomes a standout as soon as he arrives, definitely a scene stealer. I would have preferred for Yeun’s character to have a bit more development, as he feels a bit thin outside of his one defining childhood trauma incident.
My main complaint of this film is that the pacing is quite noticeably off. When you reach the final ten minutes of the film you find yourself questioning how much longer it can go on for, as the two previous spots in which you thought an ending was near turned out to be very wrong.
Overall, possibly Peele’s best, however, the pace could use some work.
Pros.
The narrative
Subverting traditional alien abduction narratives
The performances
It is quite funny in parts
Cons.
The pacing
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Another Millennial Reviewer 