Genre Research: Then there was "Us"

The movie "Us"is another prime example of a great mystery movie. This movie includes most of the conventions that we found as we researched the mystery genre. The movie Us has the usual camera shots represented in a mystery movie called a wide shot. It shows the back ground of the scene. This happens when the family is at the beach. The shot shows the sand, beach towels, and beach umbrellas showing that the family is at the beach in the beginning of the movie. The movie also follows the conventions with the camera angles. In the movie there are multiple close up angles showing the faces of the tethered. This was in order to create intensity in the film. When the tethered first showed up the camera angle went into a close up to show one of the main mysteries of the film. They also used the close ups in order to instill a little bit of fear and interest in the audience in order to keep them engaged with the mystery of the film.
Another camera angle that the film used to go along with the conventions was the Ariel shot. The Ariel shot was used when showing the house the family was running to when being chased by the tethered. This established a sense of location as to where the family was headed. Us continued to meet conventions by using tracking shots in their film as well. The tracking shots showed all of the characters in the film running away from the tethered. This shot was used the most because of the amount of running in the film. Not only did the film meet conventions by camera angles and movements, but they also met it by the costumes. The film had the tethered in prison uniforms which matches the genre precisely because in most mystery movies the mystery that they are trying to solve is murder and some of them take place in a mystery. Not only was the prison costumes a good match to the conventions, but the casual clothes as well. This is because the costume convention ranges from casual clothes to detective uniforms.
The lighting was another convention that the Us film captured. They used natural lighting for the film. This made some of the scenes dark and some of the scenes light because of the time of day. This is done in most mystery films in order to enhance certain parts of the film and in order to show that time is flowing in the film. The props in the film also match the conventions because they used knifes, scissors, masks and other killing tools. They used these in many scenes trying to kill the family and killing different people. The settings in the film match the conventions as well by some of the scenes taking place in the woods, dark places and everyday places as well. The film also used jump cuts between the tethered chasing the family members to show what happened in each of the scenes affected the other. The film also meets the conventions with the sound used in the film. The film uses a low scary sound in order to put the audience inside the movie and keep them on their toes for whats to happen next.
I love mystery movies like this. They keep me engaged with the movie and have me thinking I am in the movie as well. After watching it another time I was really able to analyze what was happening in the movie and the different shots, movements, camera angles, lighting and effects they were using to enhance the movie. I love how the movie had such a unique plot, because this plot was different from other plots I have seen before in this genre. However, I dislike how much information this movie left out at the end. It left me on so many cliff hangers to the point where I was kind of confused, saying what the point of all the twists were. For our project we will be sure to keep the plot good, but not too complicated to the point where we get our audience confused.