Us (2019)
Us (2019) is a horror mystery movie directed, produced, and written by Jordan Peele. It is his second film he has personally created, following Get Out (2017).
Plot Synopsis
Mother of two, Adelaide Wilson, returns to her family’s lakehouse with her children, Zora and Jason, and her husband, Gabe. It is shown as a child she seemingly encounters a doppelganger of herself in a mirrored funhouse and is extremely traumatised, leaving her unable to speak and with a diagnosis of PTSD. She is anxious about the return, but encouraged by her husband to put that aside as he wants to meet his rich friends, Josh and Kitty Tyler, and impress them.
After meeting the Tylers at the beach, Jason wanders away and encounters a lone man dripping with blood. Upon his safe return, the family return to the house.
Later in the night, a group of four apparent family members break into the home and attack the Wilsons, it being revealed that they are doppelgangers of the Wilsons. The doppelgangers are unable to speak outside of crude vocalisations, except for Adelaide’s twin, Red.
Red tells the Wilsons about a young girl who lives happily and securely while her “shadow” lives underground, forced to eat raw meats and growing a hatred towards her aboveground twin. She reveals that the underground twins refer to themselves as the Tethered, and that they share a soul with their twin, whom they are seeking to untether themselves from tonight.
The Tethered each force their twin to separate and attack them – Red and Adelaide, Umbrae and Zora, Abraham and Gabe, and Pluto and Jason.
To various degrees of success and injury, they each escape their Tethered twin, and they regroup on their boat to escape.
Meanwhile, the Tylers’ teenage daughters are revealed to be stabbed by their own Tethered, Io and Nix, as is Josh by Tex, and Kitty by Dahlia. They attempt to call the police on their smart speaker, but instead it plays a song with the lyrics “Fuck the police”.
When the Wilsons arrive and realise what has happened, Gabe lures Tex onto the boat while the other three enter the house. Tex is beaten to death by a flare gun – the ammo of which failed to kill him – wielded by Gabe, while Zora and Jason attack and seemingly kill Nix and Io.
Adelaide, having been dragged into the house rather than of her own free will, wakes handcuffed to a bed while Dahlia applies makeup. Zora and Jason enter, killing Dahlia and releasing their mother.
Upon reuniting the family once more, they turn on the news to see that millions of Tethered have risen up to untether themselves by killing their counterparts all across America. After untethering themselves, the Tethered join hands akin to forming a giant chain.
As the Wilsons attempt to drive away in the Tylers’ car, Nix is revealed to have survived her presumed fatal fall, and attacks Adelaide before being killed by her herself. Umbrae then also attacks them, but is killed. Driving through the night, they eventually reach the boardwalk as the sun begins to rise, but find the road blocked by their own car as a trap set by Pluto to light them on fire. Jason, remembering how he escaped Pluto, tricks him into setting himself on fire instead.
Red then appears and kidnaps Jason, disappearing while Adelaide gives chase. They wind up running into the funhouse of her childhood, and straight into the hall of mirrors. Within this Adelaide discovers a secret tunnel which leads to an underground facility. She then finds Red, who explains the Tethered are clones created by the US government to control their consitituents, but the experiment failed and the people were abandoned underground until Red organised them to rise up and attempt to take the lives of their counterparts.
Red and Adelaide proceed to fight, with Red being able to anticipate all of Adelaide’s attacks, but ulitmately succumbing. Adelaide briefly mocks the now dead Red, before hearing Jason nearby and stopping to go assure him he is now safe.
The family drive away in an ambulance that Zora and Gabe were hiding in. Adelaide recalls the night she met Red in the funhouse, where it is revealed that she was choked unconscious, and left in the underground while her doppelganger takes her place. It is then that we are shown that Adelaide is the original doppelganger, and Red was the real Adelaide.
As they Wilsons drive away, the camera pulls out to reveal the Tethered holding hands all across America.
Analysis
“The crisis […] does require, however, our best effort and our
willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our
capacity to perform great deeds, to believe that together with
God's help we can and will resolve the problems which now
confront us. And after all, why shouldn't we believe that? We
are Americans.” – Ronald Reagan, 1981 Inaugural Address
“What are we? We’re Americans.” – Red, Us (2019)
On its face, Us (2019) is a home invasion movie. Not just of the Wilsons’ home, but also of the entire USA (note the title being US) and, to an extent, the souls of the American people. This is being done, literally, by the Tethered, but the people behind these actions are the US government itself. It created the soul-splitting between the aboveground people and the Tethered, and it refused to care for the Tethered, thus leading to their uprising into the homes of the abovegrounders.
This could be seen as obliquely unamerican, as it directly flies in the face of the third amendment – “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” Whether or not the Tethered count as soldiers, they were specifically created to act as a domestic weapon of control and consent was not only not sought, but specifically unobtainable by nature of it being a secret operation. The division between the classes of the Tethered and the abovegrounders is explicitly intentional in this regard. This intentionality can be seen in the uniform – almost militaristic – of the Tethered being a red jumpsuit, leather glove, and armed with scissors.
An alternate theory of the aforementioned uniform is less of it being a military uniform, and more akin to a retail one. They can be seen in the underground acting out the same activities, including jobs, as the abovegrounders for no pay and no benefits. They continue to eat the same raw rabbit and live in the same squalor as every other Tethered regardless of their efforts. The untethering can then also be seen as a labour rights movement.
The blue collar vs white collar working men are fighting oneanother whilst the true upper class (represented by the Tylers) live a seemingly easier life. This pales, however, even by the upper class standards, when seen against the ruling class. They are so ubiquitous that they are not even able to be shown in the movie beyond being mentioned as the government. They cannot be fought literally like the middle and upper classes, and must simply be scared into submission by acts of protest – which is something the Tethered, led by Red, have realised with their Hands Across America tribute.
The division is shown literally as well through the use of scissors and cracks to separate the classes and as tools of violence against oneanother. The abovegrounders have never, with the exception of the ruling powers, taken any direct action against the Tethered before the uprising. In contrast, the first (and only) pre-uprising interaction we are shown is of a Tethered (young Addy) violently attacking and taking the place of an abovegrounder, which is the inciting incident for all the following events. Without this initial act of mobility, everyone would simply have continued in their initial place in the world nonethewiser of a better future.
Jeremiah 11:11, and the angel number itself, are shown multiple times. Outside of being symmetrical itself, the bible text reads “Therefore thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will surely bring calamity on them which they will not be able to escape; and though they cry out to Me, I will not listen to them.’”. This is meant, within the larger context of Jeremiah, to be God turning His back on those who do not treat their fellow men with kindness. With the inciting incident in mind, you could view this as a punishment for Addy for attacking Red as a child, and indicating that she deserves what happens to her.
Another interpretation, however, is that willfull ignorance of the suffering of others to maintain your own status is an unkindness in itself, and rather than Adelaide being uniquely punished, all of those who participate in the suffering of the Tethered by staying silent and not investigating are due divine punishment.
The fact that it is an angel number picked is also of note, as it indicates that the Tethered are perhaps not from “below” but rather “above” (as in, enforcers from Heaven), sent to enact His will. This is disputable, given their man-made nature, but it is interesting nonetheless.
The flashback year of 1986 is also prominent, given it was deemed the International Year of Peace by the UN, and, of course, hosted the Hands Across America charity event intended to fundraise for hunger in America. It was typically seen as a carefree and innocent time.
Contrasting this, we also see this as the year of the Iran-Contra scandal, where it was revealed the Reagan government had been secretly trafficking arms to Iran using non-appropriated funds. We also see this within the movie as the year of Adelaide/Red’s trauma, and furthermore the introduction to the film shows up a deeply troubled relationship between her parents, with heavy drinking and constant fighting even when they needed to unite for her sake. This corresponds to the silent and ongoing trauma of the Tethered.
The duality of this innocence vs trauma is further solidified by suppression of the self shown by almost every character in the film. The Tethered are literally suppressed and held in captivity, unable to act on their own desires. The abovegrounders suppress their own needs for the sake of their social status (as seen with Addy being coerced into going to the beach despite her trauma surrounding it). This suppression is also confronted at many times, mainly via violence. Trauma, even non violent trauma, is always violent in its force. Overcoming it is a fight, and this is literally shown in the way the Tethered and abovegrounders fight each other, mirroring each other and needing to outwit their instincts and work through the fight rather than just brute forcing it.
When not literally violent, the trauma is also confronted through suppressed memories. Adelaide fights to combat her sense of self into submission by blocking out the memories of what she has done in the past to get to her current social status, and the violence she had enacted as a child on another.
The violence is, at all times, a fight for survival. Even when Adelaide attacks Red when they are children, she is fighting to survive in the only way she is able to work out how to get out of the traumatic situation she is in.
The Wilsons fight at all times for themselves and their loved ones at the expense of the Tethered – not just their doppelgangers, but all of the Tethered. They seek not only to kill those harming them, but to return to a sense of normality, which inherently means returning the Tethered to the underground, or death.
The Tethered also fight for themselves, and their presumably loved ones. They are, however, not fighting against people attacking them, but fighting against people oppressing them. They do not target those ultimately making the decision, but those enabling the decisions to be made through inaction and lack of care for the Tethered and other oppressed classes.
The sense of identity within the Tethered is very fractured. They have names, but no voice. They cannot enact their own free will, even as aboveground they follow the orders of Red. They have little personal expression, wearing a uniform and only occasionally donning additional garb. They have no soul, but this does not mean they are not people, that they are not Americans. They were born in the country, automatically becoming citizens as a result. They constitutionally have the same rights as the Wilsons and all other abovegrounders, but in practice they are denegrated as lesser and treated as sub-human. Even in the question “What are you?”, it is clear that they are not being viewed as even human beings, but more as things to be taken care of as a problem rather than reasoned with or treated with kindness.
The idea of social mobility is often spoken about as both being possible through hard work, but also as an innate thing you are born into. This is shown through the escalator only going down, and Adelaide only ever being shown as travelling downwards, despite signs pointing upwards. There is violence inherent in maintaining a social status, both towards others but also towards yourself. To attempt to go higher means debasing yourself and ignoring your own needs to the whims of those who might deign to pull you up.
There is a concept of redlining in politics. The systematic denial of services to specific groups of people, usually minorities. This is especially so for the Tethered, who are denied almost all human rights and certainly all luxuries. They seek to form a literal red line as a form of protest against this, and more metaphorically Red herself crosses a line frequently. She does this both by going from nonviolent to violent protest (and back again, many times), but also by initially Addy crossing the line from her original social status into the aboveground.
Naturally, one of the main redlined groups in America is Black people – and all people of colour. From 1986 to 2019, the language has changed but the content and actions have not. The Shaman‘s Vision Quest is now Merlin’s Forest, but inside is the same hall of mirrors, and the same designation to both “Get Lost” and also “Find Yourself”.
“Find yourself” is both a reference to finding out who you are inside, but also finding a copy of yourself. Similarly, “get lost” both means losing your way within the maze of either the hall of mirrors or the underground/morality, but can also be read as “get lost” as in “go away”. Leave, or forever change your fate.
Ultimately, Us seeks to challenge the idea that staying silent in the face of injustice is a moral choice. That violence begets violence is obvious, but that not all violence is bloodshed. Many forms of it come via class warfare and political choices, but it does not have an easy bow-tying string of an answer. The eventual working class uprising will target people who did not mean harm, and many of those who did will go untouched. The end message, however, is that there is hope for those who feel silenced. The powerless will prevail through their unity. The American people consists of all Americans, not just the wealthy and powerful, and God help any who stand in the way of that.
