By: Elena Donatone
As a great fan of the social thriller Get Out (2017) and Jordan Peele’s directing skills, I was excited to watch one of his latest movies: Us (2019).
If you haven’t watched the movie I advise you to stop reading as the review contains major spoilers!
If you have watched it, then read on and enjoy!
Us is another social thriller that tells the story of Adelaide, played by Madison Curry, who experiences a traumatic event while on holiday in California with her parents. After wandering off on her own, she ends up in a funhouse on the beach. While walking inside, she sees herself in a mirror, but it is not a reflection… As the girl stares into the mirror, the other creepily smiles back! Adelaide runs away from the funhouse after the scare and gets reunited with her parents.
After that shocking event, the girl does not speak for some time! But luckily thanks to activities like drawing and ballet, she finds her voice again.
"There was another girl in there. She looked like me. Exactly like me."
Years later, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) is married to Gabe (Winston Duke) and she has two kids: Zora ( Shahadi Wirght Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex).
While on holiday in the same spot where Adelaide saw “her other self”, the family goes from having a great time to experiencing the worst nightmare of their life!
One night, they spot a family of four wearing identical red suits and holding hands at the end of their driveway. Although Gabe tries to scare them away, the family gets closer and manages to get into their home!
What’s even scarier is that the four people look exactly like them! It’s an exact copy of their family… only creepier and stronger.
As we later find out in the movie, Adelaide and her family, just like every American citizen, each have an exact clone of themselves called "Tethered", created for a secret experiment, that lives underground. The two individuals are connected and the one living in our world is the lucky one, who gets to enjoy riches and relationships, while the one underground lives almost as a robot, copying mindlessly what the other does above.
Tired of living in those conditions, the Tethered decided to unite and reach earth to fight back and take their rightful place, by killing all their other halves.
"Once upon a time there was a girl, and the girl had a shadow. The two were connected, Tethered together."
The movie is quite interesting and addictive. At no point I felt bored or uninterested in the story. The plot is very promising and the idea of clones living underground is very original.
The moment the family meets their clones, I was creeped out and shocked by how different they were, although they looked exactly the same. And that is fully thanks to the actors, that delivered an amazing performance as their characters and their Tethered versions.
Lupita Nyong’o in particular is amazing in both her roles and can shine both as an introverted and loving Adelaide as well as her upsetting and creepy clone "Red".
I got chills down my spine when she spoke as a clone… her voice is very raspy and I felt completely uncomfortable every time she talked. Lupita Nyong’o’s performance is surely the best part of Us!
I also enjoyed the plot twist at the end, although it wasn’t shocking, as it can be easily caught throughout the movie, thanks to hints and clear sings.
The twist is that Red took Adelaide’s place when she was in the funhouse as a kid and the clone lived her life while the human was left in the underground world with the Tethered.
The only thing that left me confused and doubtful about that storyline is that Adelaide lives all those years underground without getting back up to the real world and her parents! Considering the door to the underground is through the funhouse, one would think the kid would go back immediately to look for her family. But the girl decides to stay with the Tethered all those years, plotting a revenge plan to go back up and kill everyone. That was weird and unreasonable to me.
And Red, on the other end, spends all those years learning how to speak in the real world and forming a family, completely forgetting that she is a clone! Why was her memory erased and why did she go on to have a normal life while Adelaide remembered who she was before? That was quite confusing to me and Us did not explain what led to her memory loss.
"I didn’t just need to kill you. I needed to make a statement that the whole world would see."
Another aspect that I found confusing was the explanation of who the Tethered were and how their underworld worked.
Although the idea had a lot of potential, I think it was wasted as many things were left unexplained.
As an example, we know that the Tethered are connected to their human version and they copy what they do, but how do they have the exact same clothes at all times in the tunnels, do they just appear out of nowhere?
And does every person in the U.S. have a clone, including immigrants that move to the country? Do other countries have Tethered people as well?
Considering the clones were created in the past as an experiment to be used to try and control the people in the U.S. and then left behind when the project failed, they are not supernatural. They are just stronger and smarter, and that does not explain how many things can happen underground just as they happen above!
Us is surely a great watch and I could see myself revisiting the movie in the future. I loved the acting and the initial plot. It is surely a great social thriller that explores themes like class, poverty and duality.
And the family survives in the end, after killing their Tethered, so there is a sort of happy ending if you will... Although Adelaide keeps on living with them, after killing Red, even if she remembers once again that she is in fact the clone...
But unfortunately Us does not answer the many questions it poses and more often than not, it leaves you confused and wondering what the movie is really about.
Unlike Get Out, which had a clear moral and an amazing and simple plot, Us gets lost on the way. It could have been a masterpiece, but unfortunately for me it was a hit and miss!
"They think like us. They know where we are. They won’t stop until they kill us, or we kill them."
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