US (USA 2019: Dir Jordan Peele)

Jordan Peele may well have been frustrated by some critics who maintained, despite his protestations, that his debut movie Get Out was a kind of horror film, but they had a point; the movie hopped around genres, refusing to be classified, and its politics may have prevented it from being regarded as a straightforward fright flick.

For his latest, Us, he's gone and done it again, making a movie which splices up genres, fusing humour with frights and some acerbic political observations. But oh my is it a horror movie.

The film introduces us to the Wilson family, well to do, and very respectable; the kind of affluent family popularly espoused as model citizens. Comprising mum and dad, Adelaide ( Lupita Nyong'o) and Gabe (Winston Duke), and daughter and son Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex), they're on holiday in Santa Cruz, California, as are their similarly entitled friends Josh and Kitty Tyler (Tim Heidecker and Elisabeth Moss). But Adelaide is nervous; she had a disturbing childhood experience at a beachside funhouse in the same area, where she saw a doppelganger of her younger self, which was so shocking it rendered her briefly mute and left her deeply traumatised. She's not keen to return.

Feeling increasingly uncomfortable, Adelaide confesses her childhood experience to husband Gabe. But before they can pack and leave a family gather on the drive to their house and force entry. They are red garbed doppelgangers of the Wilson household, an inverse copy of each member of the family, and largely mute except for Adelaide's double, who goes by the name of Red. When asked who they are and why they're here, Red answers in a hoarse, croaky voice: "We are Americans."

And it is this setup - with the doubles of the Wilson family trapping and tormenting their entitled counterparts, that provides most of Us's action. It's not hard to see the political subtext here - the dopplers call themselves 'the tethered' (there's a nod to 1980s charity 'Hands Across America' here and a final shot payoff which ties straight back to this poverty awareness initiative) and their rise from the subterranean tunnels in which they have lain undiscovered is a neat shorthand for the downtrodden of Trump's America (yes, the title is meant to be read both ways).

Us was apparently directly influenced by 'Mirror Image,' an episode of the TV series The Twilight Zone - which tellingly Peele is currently reviving for the small (er) screen; the movie conjures memories of the 1956 post McCarthy sci fi movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers (and its even more socially uncomfortable 1978 Philip Kaufman remake). It also recalls the comic book world of Bizarro, from 1961, in which the opponents of Superman are revealed to live in a mirror image world where the values and mores of Superman's white America are inverted.

The stars of this film are both women: Lupita Nyong'o is very believable as Adelaide and in Red creates a character that is both horrific and sympathetic. Similarly 13 year old Shahadi Wright Joseph, playing Zora and her tethered double Umbrae, effectively creates separate identities - respectively innocent and menacing. Interestingly while both these characters' dopplers are sprightly and resourceful, Gabe's 'tether' Abraham is a grunting, feckless fool.

Peele's film seems both acres away from his more playful debut and yet at times rather similar (the payoff explanation of  'the tethered' is a kind of re-run of Get Out). Us is by far the more dystopian work; he has tapped into a very 1970s vibe, which uses the concept of a seemingly likeable threatened suburban family where the tables are turned, asking the audience who are the real villains of the piece? It has echoes of Romero's The Crazies in its focused small town violence. While its two hour length and a rather Cabin in the Woods final reel explanation blows the tension somewhat (and a twist that doesn't so much make you re-evaluate the movie as cry 'huh'?), Peele is clearly a very interesting filmmaker, and both his features would make many more experienced horror directors hang their heads in shame. Recommended.

The Seagull (USA 2018: Dir Michael Mayer)

When filmmakers opt to rework a classic text, whether novel or play - and indeed one which has been adapted before - it's usual to ask what they hope to bring that other directors have not achieved with previous adaptations; and whether a 21st century audience even cares about characters created over 120 years ago?

This is of course not a question asked when such revivals occur on stage, which probably says something about the nature of film as a less 'worthy' medium than theatre when handling works of heft.

The point about reviving The Seagull of course is that the source material is popularly seen as the first modernist play, and therefore the natural assumption is that the text can survive three centuries and still hold relevance for an audience. And Anton Chekhov's 1896 play hasn't really been adapted for screen that much; Sidney Lumet's 1968 production; a Russian version from 1972; and a direct theatrical adaptation in 1975.

Michael Mayer's version was filmed over 21 days on a very low budget using a country house in New York state as its location, standing in for Chekhov's Russian estate. It's a freewheeling adaptation that makes great use of a very mobile camera and some vibrant performances from a cast encouraged to bring out the essential comedy in the text.

The Seagull's story focuses on Sorin, a retired government employee and his sister Irina, a prissy narcissistic actress. Added to the group are the writer Boris, Irina's younger lover, and Irina's son Konstantin, an aspiring playwright who is in love with local girl Nina. And finally there is Masha, daughter of Sorin's estate manager, who is herself in love with Konstantin.

Playwright Stephen Karam, award winning author of the 2015 play 'The Humans,' adapted the text for Mayer, opting to switch the events of the play around, with Konstantin's play, normally taking place mid way through the production, opening the film; The playwright's disappointment at its reception by his mother provides a core narrative thread for the rest of the film.

The key performances are all female; Annette Bening as Irina, with her seemingly artless putdowns and general awfulness which masks a gritty passion; Elisabeth Moss as Masha, bringing a vital humour to the tragedy of her unrequited love, and Saoirse Ronan as Nina, who parades her fresh faced acting ambitions in front of Irina, whose success she hopes to emulate.

The Seagull is full of characters in love with people they shouldn't or couldn't be, and Matthew Lloyd's skittish photography dances between them, giving the film at times an almost ethereal quality laced with longing and sadness. The let's-put-on-a-play-right-here approach of the production reminded me of Joss Whedon's 2012 Shakespeare adaptation Much Ado About Nothing in its lightness of touch. Meyer's film is a worthy addition to the Chekhov filmed canon.

Mad to be Normal (UK 2018: Dir Robert Mullan)

While certain areas of the 1960s have been long plundered by filmmakers in pursuit of their own nostalgic vision, unearthing the UK counterculture of the time has largely been the province of writers - like Barry Miles - rather than movie directors.

Mad to be Normal details the attempts of one of the UK's leading countercultural lights - Scottish psychiatrist Ronald David (R.D.) Laing - to establish and (sort of) run Kingsley Hall, an east London free clinic where, between 1965 and 1970, patients with a variety of mental health conditions were (self) referred. Laing's groundbreaking work, based not on the prescription of pacifying drugs and the application of Electro Convulsive Therapy (in contrast to the medical establishments' practices of the time in treating mental 'disorders') but in breaking down the barriers between doctor and patient, and espousing a kind of 'do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law' approach to therapy. Laing is as happy boozing with patients as he is trying to understand their psychoses, and describes Kingsley Hall not as a "mental institution, but a small household of people in different states of mind in the absence on power relations."

Director Robert Mullan, whose documentary background serves him well in the depictions of the clinic at work, chronicled the last two years of Laing's life (he died in 1989) and a book of those times, which bears the same title as the film, demonstrates the closeness of director and subject. Perhaps a little too close, as any real opposition to Laing's approach in the film is provided by the medical powers that be, a bunch of stuffed shirts that the audience is positively not required, or even allowed, to sympathise with.

Mullan's film starts off a little awkwardly with some rather obvious 1960s musical shorthand - 'Season of the Witch,' 'Tired of Waiting' and 'You Really Got Me' - to give us a sense of time and place. To be fair, this and some rather jarring insertions of real 'swinging London' footage into the action are the only obvious attempts to 'sixtiesise' the piece so glaringly; most of the drama takes place inside Kingsley Hall. But the director's message is clear; if you go against the establishment, the entitled classes will always win. Laing's work is a cipher for the mood of the 1960s - out with the old, in with the new, the children hating the parents and all they stand for (a view with which Laing had considerable sympathy). Mullan is to

Gabriel Byrne, Michael Gambon and David Tennant
in Mad to be Normal

be praised for letting Laing's own sangfroid be his undoing as much as the work he does - a growing sense of failure and disappointment surrounds the clinic, but Laing avoids the modern advice to 'fail and fail fast' and introduces LSD to his patients in an attempt to get to the heart of their problems. Laing's behaviour at home is also exposed - his incessant need for truth doesn't extend to niceties like keeping silence regarding information told to him in confidence by his daughter.

As Laing, David Tennant has rescued himself from a recent spate of indifferent roles. The actor has clearly done his homework, nailing the psychiatrist's accent and mannerisms perfectly. Arguably more thuggish and less cerebral than his subject, he nonetheless convinces with a combination of intensity and passion. His relationship with the bottle is nicely summed up by being asked if he'd like something to drink at lunch? "Just some Chianti," he orders nonchalantly, adding "first of the day."

Oddly but perhaps understandably none of the other characters in the film are based on real people, yet are strong enough to suggest otherwise. Elisabeth Moss is Angie Wood, an American student who falls in love with Laing at first sight and steers him through the highs and lows of the Kingsley Hall years. Angie is introduced to Laing by Jim (Gabriel Byrne), a staff member who also spends a lot of time receiving help in the clinic rather than dispensing it; Byrne, an actor who has been rather wasted recently, is brilliant in this, a nuanced but on the edge performance, all jowls and haunted eyes. Michael Gambon also turns in a considerate and mournful performance as Sydney Kotok, despite a rather crass LSD flashback sequence.

It is indeed a stellar cast which elevates the material above the risk of being at times a slightly slow and repetitive film to something infinitely better. But itis Tennant's wired, committed performance that you'll remember.