Jordan Peele's sophomore film after 2017's groundbreaking Get Out is one of those movies you're either never going to see (because you're scurred...or racist) or you saw on opening weekend.
SO, with that said, I will not hold back on revealing plot points and spoilers in this review. If you are planning to see the film and don't want to be spoiled, please do so and then read the review afterward.
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The basic plot of Us is revealed in the movie trailer: a family of four, Adelaide and Gabe Wilson (Lupita Nyong'o and Winston Duke), and their children, Zora and Jason (Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex) travel to a beach vacation where they encounter a family outside their home. When the family breaks in, they realize that the family looks exactly like them. "It's us" Jason says, in awe. The rest of the trailer doesn't reveal any details other than to suggest bloody carnage, but it's clear that doubles/doppelgangers are a huge part of the plot.
The film actually opens in 1986. Young Adelaide wanders away from her parents at the Santa Cruz boardwalk and enters a fun house with mirrors where she sees a girl who looks exactly like her, yet...isn't. The camera cuts away as young Adelaide's eyes widen in terror, leaving the audience to guess what happened during the encounter.
In present day, adult Adelaide is extremely anxious when Gabe suggests meeting up their friends, the Tylers (Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker in plum roles as a hard-drinking, bitchy white couple with mean twin daughters), at the beach in Santa Cruz. Adelaide has noticed weird coincidences adding up since the vacation started that remind her of her haunting experience in 1986 and also make her feel that the other girl is somehow getting closer. Turns out, she's completely right.
That evening, when the other family breaks in, Adelaide's double, also played by Nyong'o and going by the name "Red", tells the family a sad fairy tale about a girl who lives in comfort with plenty to eat and soft toys to play with while another little girl is hungry all the time and only has cold, sharp toys to play with. The story explains that Red and Adelaide are "tethered", but where Adelaide has a wonderful life of love and comfort, Red's life is marked with sorrow and want. Red introduces her husband and children who don't speak and seem to be controlled on some level by Red. After handcuffing Adelaide, Red bids her nonverbal husband, Abraham, to kill Gabe; her sinister daughter, Umbrae, to chase after Zora; and her crawling and masked son, Pluto, to go play with Jason.
Each Wilson family member gets a showdown with their doppelganger and all of them manage to escape relatively unscathed (Gabe's showdown with Abraham on a boat is both terrifying and funny in turn). Meanwhile, the Tylers are being massacred by their own doubles across town. This is the part where I as a viewer was like "oooh, there's a whole other level to this shit". The trailer held back on revealing that it wasn't just the Wilson family that have doubles and when the Tethered Tylers show up, you start to wonder what's *really* going on.
After the Wilsons show up at the Tylers and have to kill their doubles (something something people of color being burdened with white people's troubles in addition to their own? Yep.) they turn on the TV to find out that this is happening all over the United States: people in red jumpsuits with golden scissors are coming out of sewers and stabbing people and then joining hands to form a human chain.Adelaide seems to be the most in tune with what is happening--she points out that they can't hide from their Tethered because the whole point of being, um, tethered is that their doubles know how to find them. Her idea is to drive down the coast to Mexico, which makes sense given that this invasion seems to be an American phenomenon (more on this later).
The film climaxes with Red kidnapping Jason and going back to the old fun house, leading Adelaide to follow her and discover an underground network of tunnels and bunkers where all these Tethereds have been living. Red, during her final showdown with Adelaide explains that the Tethered are clones, but in body only. Scientists were able to clone a body, but not a soul, meaning that everyone above ground was inadvertently puppeting a Tethered below ground. The scientists abandoned the project, leaving the clones to bumble around below the surface of the United States, until one of them--Red, naturally--became the leader of the others and planned her spectacular revenge. She is the only Tethered who can talk and who seems able to think for herself. Gathering inspiration from the failed Hands Across America campaign from 1986, she leads the Tethered to stage an uprising--the "Untethering"--against the humans living above ground. She explains all this before Adelaide jabs a fire poker into her chest and kills her. Adelaide then finds Jason and assures him the nightmare is finally over...
...ok, but wait a second. How would Red know about Hands Across America? And why is she the *only* Tethered who can talk? In the final moments of the movie, we see Adelaide's entire flashback to the 1986 incident in the fun house--turns out the woman we thought was the "real" Adelaide throughout the whole movie was, in fact, a Tethered and Red is the "real" Adelaide. Of course, this makes us go back and replay every moment of the movie looking for clues and makes us rethink Red as the villain.
But the bigger question beyond Red/Adelaide is who the real "monsters" are--the Tethered or their above ground counterparts? Or neither? Or both? Peele has said multiple times that, unlike Get Out, Us is not about race. While some articles have argued that Us is about the "double consciousness" that people of color in the United States experience, as described by W.E.B. Dubois, I also think the film is about privilege--specifically how privilege plays out in the United States.
For one thing, the sad fairy tale Red tells about the two little girls is a tale of privilege: in order for one girl to have delicious food, soft toys, and a loving family, another little girl has to go without. Every time above ground Adelaide experienced something wonderful, underground Red experienced pain and suffering. And while privilege and access to resources and love is not a zero-sum game, the message that in order for there to be "haves" there have to be "have nots" is clear.
Also, take into account the lives of the Tethered: they live underground and don't get to see the sun; they can't talk or read and have no one to teach them; they live off of raw rabbit meat since it is the most convenient food source. They shuffle around like mental patients in a Victorian asylum, literal shadows of their above ground counterparts who are having fun and enjoying life.
Finally, consider that when the Wilson family asks the Tethered family who they are, Red answers "We're Americans." Her obsession with Hands Across America, one of the last ties to her life before she was forcibly swapped and her real Tethered took over her life above ground, is interesting because it was a patriotic campaign to raise money for homelessness and hunger in the United States that memorably didn't do very well--the goal was to raise $50 million and only $15 million was raised. It's an example of a token, feel-good effort to help vulnerable people that ultimately didn't pan out since our systemic institutions of inequality are too deeply entrenched to be fixed with people joining hands.
Even the title of the film, Us, is an abbreviation for "United States".
So, clearly Peele is sending a message about the hypocrisy of Americans and our willingness to live our lives on the backs of less fortunate people. He says the film is not about race specifically, but of course race and privilege are intimately entwined. We are a country, after all, built on the back-breaking labor of slaves and, once slavery was abolished, on the back-breaking labor of the less privileged so that a precious few many secure their place at the top of the totem poll. And if you want to blow the picture up to a larger scale, we as a country--even the poorest among us--enjoy pleasures and conveniences in life only made possible through the near-slave labor of many people in other countries where the wealth gap is ever more extreme.
Us is about separation and division, as symbolized by those golden scissors: we are separated unto ourselves; we are separated unto our fellow countrymen; we are separated as a country unto our fellow humans. In any given situation, we might be our "real" selves--above ground, privileged, the "haves", or we might be the Tethered, suffering so that others may have a little more.
Grade: A-
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