Review of Us, directed by Jordan Peele

I always tell people that if you’re into movies, you always remember the first time you watched a great movie or filmmaker. Jordan Peele is one of those filmmakers I reflect upon sometimes, as his work is just so fresh onto the scene.

It’s worth checking out always what he’s up to next because he has the vision to that’s innovative. I remember when Nope came out that I was so interested in how he captured the themes and ideas, but my first movie of his, like so many other people, was Get Out.

My next blog post will be about that film.

Anyways, I was so pleased one day to log onto my Netflix account and discover that they had added some Jordan Peele movies, and a Spike Lee movie that I had blogged about previously. And because I had nothing else to do that day, I ended up watching two movies.

Us was one of them, and while I had read about the movie before, I was definitely unprepared when it came to what to expect with this one.

Here’s my review!

In this horror, a Black family has to deal with their murderous doppelgängers.

This movie begins in 1986, when our main character, Adelaide, is a young girl.

Before I get more into the summary elements, I was absolutely thrilled to see that quick Yahya Abdul Mateen II appearance—I’ve been absolutely in love with him and Corey Hawkins after I saw them live on Broadway in Topdog/Underdog.

Back to the plot: Adelaide, as kids tend to do, wanders away from her parents and into a funhouse. As she looks into the house of mirrors, she sees a doppelgänger of herself in one of the mirrors. When she comes of the funhouse later, she has a completely different personality and no longer speaks.

Decades pass. Adelaide is now an adult and married with kids, and they decide to go on a vacation despite her reluctance. They head to a beach house with their family friends, who have twin daughters, and plan to spend their days on boats and at the beach.

But while they’re driving to the beach one day, they see a bloodied dead man holding a sign like the one Adelaide saw her counterpart with int he beginning of the movie. Their younger son, Jason, sees a man who looks like the dead one by the water.

Night falls, and Adelaide recalls the story of the funhouse to her husband Gabe when the power cuts out. Jason notices four shadows at the end of the driveway, like a family, and they look exactly like their family.

They try to hide when the other family attempts to into the home, and when they get in, they realize the differences between them and the dopplegangers. The other version of Jason is a pyromanic, the daughter Zora has a sadistic counterpart, and the husband is animalistic.

Adelaide’s counterpart, Red, is the one who can somewhat speak, and she calls them the Tethered. Apparently they share a soul with the family, and today is the day where they come to remove them from the equation so they can be free.

Each member of the family is separated by their respective counterpart, who tries to kill them. Gabe ends up luring his counterpart onto a boat and kills him after a fight in the water, and the family gets away from the rest by the boat.

At the same time, their family friends are murdered by their own counterparts. The family shows up to their house to discover the counterparts in the bloody mess, and they take down the other counterparts and turn on the news.

The Tethered are murdering the counterparts all over the country, and are forming a human chain to prevent people from entering or exiting cities. They make the executive decision to flee to Mexico, but they encounter Zora’s counterpart and kill her.

So they take the car to the boardwalk, where they find many dead people and a burning car where Jason’s counterpart is.

As Jason tricks Pluto, his counterpart, into dying, he’s kidnapped by Red. Adelaide chases after Red, who then conveniently explains the origins of the Tethered (they’re genetic government clones meant to control the population despite their brutal methods, but they fled underground after the experiment did not end well), and we learn after their final showdown that Red is the original Adelaide.

She taught them to organize and kill, and she wanted revenge.

The film then ends with the Tethered in their human chain.

Overall Thoughts

As mentioned before, I love Jordan Peele’s movies because of how they unique they are, and Us is such a gem of a horror movie.

It’s subtle in some ways and loaded with imagery and a lot to analyze in the long run, so if you’re looking for a more complex horror, this definitely should be right up your alley. I think that I might not rewatch this one though—although I think it’s extremely well done as a movie, it lacks rewatchability for me because I wasn’t in love with it.

And that’s totally fine—I’m sure someone else definitely thinks differently.

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