Imagine looking into a mirror and seeing a version of yourself staring back with a different expression. What would you do? What would it do?
Jordan Peele’s “Us” is a horror film and dark comedy about a family who goes on vacation in Santa Cruz, California. At night, four strangers break into their vacation house, and the Wilson family finds that these strangers look exactly like them.
The ‘strangers’ are then discovered to be called “tethered.” They are part of a failed underground U.S. government experiment that was abandoned because they couldn’t be used to control the people above ground.
An element of the movie that stood out to me was the use of humor. At the Tyler family’s house, friends of the Wilson family, the mother tries to use their voice-activated assistant, “Ophelia” to call the police, but instead, it starts playing N.W.A’s “F**k tha Police.” Peele states he uses humor to release the tension created by horror.
Another element I saw throughout the movie was flashbacks to Adelaide’s past. When something happened in the present, we would get a flashback to something similar that had happened to her in the past.
In an interview, Jordan Peele stated that his films aim to spark conversations about important topics and that he finds it rewarding when viewers search for Easter eggs in his movies.
Jordan Peele has mentioned that his films aim to spark conversations about important issues and encourage viewers to reflect on societal structures that benefit some while oppressing others.
In real life, ‘Hands Across America’ was a charity event that raised money and awareness for hunger and homelessness in the US. Peele uses it in the movie as a symbol of class division and how society often bypasses the needs of marginalized groups. Most people of higher classes avoid looking into the struggles of the lower classes, leaving them with an ignorant ideology of charities and who the money does and does not reach.
He states, “Hands Across America is a demonstration that holds the duality of America; it perfectly symbolizes for me this hope that we hold our hands, we’ll cure homelessness, we’ll cure hunger.”
During the process of creating the movie, he asked himself what he feared the most. He said that throughout his life, he acknowledged his privilege but also recognized our connection to others through their work, saying, “Someone made these shoes.” And that because of this society, the U.S. covers up what is ‘uncomfortable’ to us. Privilege and societal inequality are expressed through the “tethered” symbolizing the hidden and often ignored parts of society that exist in the shadows of privilege.
Overall, the movie is great; there is a lot of suspense, and it gets you thinking about what may happen next. I would rate this a 9.5/10 because it is a staple movie in my family and as are many other horror movies. I would definitely recommend this movie to those who enjoy horror, and to those who do not but are interested, I believe this movie would be a great place to start.
