IT’S FINALLY HERE AND IT’S GREAT.

So by now, I’ve actually seen Us three times (one of which was with my good bro Jack, whom I told I would give a shoutout–so if you’re reading, hello! Aren’t you so glad we saw this movie LATE AT NIGHT??? Nah, he loves being my friend–I come with discount popcorn, after all). Jordan Peele’s highly anticipated follow-up to Get Out was well worth the hype, at least in my opinion.

Did it absolutely terrify me and fill me with regret since I was housesitting for a week alone after seeing it? You BETCHA.

To be fair, though, I thought by the third time it wouldn’t scare me as much. I know what’s gonna happen, right? I KNOW IT’S A MOVIE, RIGHT?

See, this is the fun thing about Jordan Peele movies: you discover something new every time you watch it.

I mean it’s fun until you’re alone in a big, dark house, just waiting to see a red jumpsuit-clad, scissor-wielding individual waiting for you upon glancing outside. That’s the worst.

But anyway, let’s get into specifics and splice apart the details of this film because there are a LOT of them.

THE PLOT

We begin with the ominous sound of waves crashing accompanied by text that describes the miles and miles of abandoned tunnels that snake underneath the entirety of the United States (if you’d been theorizing and obsessively combing the trailers for details like I had, your first reaction to this might be “NO ONE SAID ANYTHING ABOUT CREEPY ABANDONED TUNNELS” and I think it’s a brilliant way to start out the film–you don’t know how it relates to anything yet, especially any of the footage you’ve seen, so it’s constantly in the back of your mind as you watch). According to the text onscreen, many of these tunnels have “no known purpose at all.”

So that’s comforting.

We then cut to a young girl (Madison Curry) watching TV in 1986. We see the ending of a news clip, followed by a rather unsettling commercial for Hands Across America. The TV then cuts to an ad for the Santa Cruz boardwalk, and suddenly, we’re right there! The young girl, Adelaide, is there with her parents celebrating her birthday. It’s established that her parents have a somewhat strained relationship, and it all comes to a head when the mom (Anna Diop) asks the dad (Yahya Abdul Mateen II) to watch his daughter, please, while she goes to the bathroom. The dad agrees, but he’s a little preoccupied with Whack-a-Mole at the moment. Adelaide wanders off to the shore, where a storm is both literally and figuratively brewing. She turns and sees the “Shaman’s Vision Quest” (a mirror maze, essentially) with the tagline “Find Yourself.”

Drawn inside just as the rain begins, she and her reflections wander around until suddenly, the power cuts out (because of COURSE IT DOES). Frightened, she hunts for the exit and begins whistling “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” to calm her nerves. It’s all well and good until she hears someone else whistling, too. It’s not quite the same tune, and it doesn’t sound as sharp as her own whistling. She then bumps into what appears to be another reflection of herself, except it doesn’t turn around at the same time she does…

Flash forward to present day, where an older Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) is heading on vacation with her husband Gabe (Duke Wilson) and their two kids, Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex). They seem to be your typical goofy family, on vacation at their summer home. Gabe wants to go meet their family friends at the beach, but Adelaide is reluctant because, well, it’s the Santa Cruz boardwalk. She gives in after Gabe adorably guilt-trips her about it, and on the way, they pass by an ambulance loading someone inside who looks…a little worse for wear, to say the least.

Later at the beach, Jason wanders off, passing by the mirror maze from Adelaide’s childhood, now rebranded as the “Merlin’s Forest” with the same tagline as before. He bypasses it, however, noticing instead a strange figure standing on the beach–a man wearing a red jumpsuit, a tattered green coat, and some blood dripping from his fingers. Adelaide, noticing Jason’s absence and fearing the worst, goes into a panic calling for him.

Later that night back at the house, Adelaide opens up to Gabe about her childhood trauma involving the mirror maze, but Gabe doesn’t really know what to do with the story. Then, of course, the power goes out. Jason appears in the doorway, saying “there’s a family in our driveway” (THAT LINE IS ICONIC AND SO, SO FREAKY).

Turns out, there is a family in the driveway, standing altogether in red jumpsuits and holding hands. Gabe attempts to talk with them and ask them to leave, but Adelaide’s immediate response is to call the cops (who are 14 minutes away, because OF COURSE THEY ARE). Soon though, the other family invades the home and are in control of Adelaide’s family in no time.

They are, as Jason points out, “us.” But what do they want, and why are they here?

The rest of the movie is an impressive game of cat-and-mouse as the Wilson family defend themselves from their malicious doppelgängers, try to figure out what is going on, and why it’s all happening to begin with.

Oh also? There’s a devious plot twist at the end.

Because of COURSE THERE IS.

THE REVIEW

Listen. LISTEN.

Us is a phenomenal feat of storytelling. It just is.

It’s baffling to me that all the people I saw it with, ALL THREE TIMES, didn’t seem to feel the same way.

I get where everyone’s coming from, of course. Get Out is an amazing, must-see film. It’s impressive in every sense of the word, and in some ways, its success hurt Jordan Peele for any follow-up films he creates. Because Get Out was such a strong debut, every film he makes from here on in is going to be compared to it, and that’s just the way it is.

I think that’s why so many people’s support for Us fizzled out once they saw it. What can you do but expect another Get Out, and Us just…isn’t that at all.

I’ve been thinking it, but Matpat’s Film Theory channel on YouTube said it: Us is a great film, and while it’s just as symbolic and noteworthy as Get Out, it’s different–and that’s hard to swallow on a first viewing. When you see Get Out for the first time, you truly do not know what to expect. When you see Us the first time, you can’t help thinking about and expecting another Get Out.

But Us is very much its own thing, and in a really good way.

I get it’s not everyone’s thing. I’m not a horror aficionado in any way (despite my being drawn to the stories of the genre because of my Enneagram four-ness) and I sacrificed my sanity for this film THREE TIMES because I loved and appreciated all the thought and heart that went into Get Out, and I hoped that Us would be the same in that respect. AND IT IS.

I think the other thing that makes me love it so strongly is that it’s original, dammit. It’s not a sequel, it’s not a remake, it’s not a live-action version of something that used to be animated, it’s not based on a true story (…that we know of), and it’s not inspired by a book or some other source material of the like. It’s new, it’s fresh, it’s scary because it’s not based off of any lore that we can think of, you don’t know what’s going to happen going into it because it’s something we haven’t seen before. I imagine this is how people felt going into Friday the 13th the first time, or The Blair Witch Project. I think it’s why Crypt TV is so popular (and HORRIFYING, GOOD LORD). It seems like everything coming out of Hollywood is “based on,” or “inspired by,” or a “part two” (or three…or FOUR (looking at you, Pixar)).

Us is all its own, and it’s so, so nice. It was exhilarating when the lights finally dimmed and the logos began–all those months of waiting and theorizing finally coming to a head.

It does feel a little like the movie drops you off a cliff in the middle of nowhere with the twist, and I get that. It feels unfair, to some degree, because the movie doesn’t hold your hand and give a cut and dry explanation for everything like Get Out did. It’s disorienting. It’s frustrating.

And it means you have to see it again. Everything is different the second time around. Hell, it’s different the third time around (for my own sake and my sanity, I refuse Round 4 until it’s out to buy and I can convince other people to see it in a well-lit room during the day). It has you replaying every little moment, every bit of dialogue, every visual detail, searching for the clues you didn’t think to watch for the first time around.

I live for movies like this. It’s not just a good time out, a quick escape from real life, and then that’s it, back to the grind. You don’t get to turn your brain off for a couple hours because you need it to figure out what on EARTH is going on. Then you get to be full of regret afterwards when your brain betrays you at home and goes “hey what if your Tethered is right outside right now that would be crazy right hahahahaha”

But let’s get into specifics because, again, there is a LOT to go through and I’m sure I’ll miss only about a million things.

MAJOR spoiler warning from here on in!!! Trust me, you don’t want to have this spoiled for you before you get a chance to see this movie. Seriously. I actually promise it’s not as scary as the trailers made it seem. I mean it’s scary, but not horrifying. I haven’t seen Pet Sematary, but I’m assuming it’s not that. Or The Curse of La Llorona. You know what I mean–it doesn’t throw a million jump scares at you all at once. There are some, but it’s not the whole film.

ANYWAY. SPOILERS. YOU GET IT.

THE MUSIC

So I already discussed the soundtrack at length before the movie was out, and you can check that out here. It’s kind of funny looking back at that after having seen the movie, because I was only MOSTLY wrong about things!

The music is incredible. It’s so unsettling and nerve-wracking and always serves the film in a positive light. Again, I’ve discussed my favorite tracks already, but both “Run” and “Pas de deux” are still amazing to me and it was so fun when they started playing during the movie because I got to be like “HEY!!! HEYYYYY!! I KNOW THIS! :D”

There is one scene I absolutely have to cover when it comes to the music: the final fight between Adelaide and her Tethered, Red. The whole sequence is this crazy back and forth between Adelaide and Red battling it out in the present with flashes of the two of them performing ballet when they were teenagers, and the whole thing is underscored by, you guessed it, “Pas de deux.” It’s truly a cinematic feat, and it’s amazing to experience every time you watch the film.

By that scene, we’ve heard the iconic “I Got 5 On It” a couple times, so when the violins strike up the theme, it’s already familiar even if you didn’t know the song prior to watching the movie. However, it’s distorted–something familiar changed into something almost unrecognizable, not unlike the Tethered counterparts of the characters we met through the story.

Again. I could go on and on about the music forever, basically. We know this. It’s great. I love it. THERE’S MORE TO COVER.

THE CHARACTERS

As much as I love cinematic music, the thing that often really makes or breaks a film for me is the characters. If I don’t relate to them or even like them in any way, I’m just not going to get invested in the film at all *cough*ALITABATTLEANGEL*cough*.

So again, yet another reason I love Jordan Peele’s work is because he creates such dynamic, lovable characters. You love and support the Wilson family and are cheering for them the whole time, HOPING one of them doesn’t die. And this is a horror movie! Isn’t that normally the goal, ticking off how many deaths there are?? I mean it’s scary when Gabe gets dragged out of the house and off-screen by Abraham for a number of reasons, partly because it’s just hard to watch, but also because we can no longer see him. We don’t know what’s happening to him, and that’s absolutely horrifying because he’s such a great character!

I think it’s why the ending twist felt like such a betrayal for people–you cheer for Adelaide and love her and want her to win this whole time…only to find out that SHE’S BEEN THE TETHERED VERSION THIS WHOLE TIME?? We just watched her kill the REAL ADELAIDE??? It’s uncomfortable because we genuinely don’t know how to handle this information.

I’ll go into how this ties into one of the possible messages of the film later…but I think it’s one of my favorite things about the film (one of…well, many).

Adelaide and Gabe clearly have a good relationship, and that’s refreshing to see. They tease each other, they laugh with each other, they can talk to each other, they just give off the appearance of such a good team (even when things start going off the rails a bit). They love their kids, and so do we. Zora could easily have been the typical “teenage girl who complains about everything like Wi-Fi and is only ever on her phone” but at her core, she’s more than that. She isn’t afraid to take charge and when Jason gets his magic trick right, she fist bumps him even though she poked fun of home for it earlier on. Jason himself is a little odd, everyone can see that, but it’s nice that when the twin girls complain about him to Zora, she just says that he has a hard time. Every family member supports all the others, and it’s why they’re such good characters to be with the whole film.

In contrast, the Tethered counterparts are eerie. They look like this family we’ve grown to know and love, but they don’t act like them at all. It’s hard to tell if Red feels anything for her so-called family besides indifference. She clearly resents them as much as she resents Adelaide; she describes being forced to marry Abraham though she didn’t love him, how Umbrae is a monster compared to the beautiful Zora, and how she had to cut Pluto out of her stomach herself while Adelaide had a c-section with Jason. As much as the Tethered are bound together by shared experience, they don’t feel the same familial connections that their counterparts do.

All of that builds up to another fascinating character trait of Adelaide’s: her mothering. She is an incredible mother to Jason and Zora, and it shows through the film. But she also mothers Umbrae and Pluto. When she comes across Umbrae’s twisted form in the woods after Zora knocks her off the road, it’s clear she isn’t going to survive. Despite that, Umbrae keeps reaching out for Adelaide like she might still try to hurt her, all while making these uncomfortable noises as she dies. Adelaide, watching this, stays with her and gently says “shh, shh…” Likewise, she tries to talk Pluto down from his goal of setting the new family car on fire since her family was still inside it and all. When Jason gets Pluto to walk back into his own flames, Adelaide cries for him. It’s interesting to watch, and it does mean, of course, that Red takes Adelaide’s son while she’s busy mourning for Red’s.

The Tyler family make up the other characters we spend time with, and they’re…well…they’re set up as being even more well-off than the Wilson’s, and boy do they show it. They have a better boat, a better car, a better house with a backup generator, Kitty got plastic surgery done to try and stay young, their obnoxious daughters do cartwheels everywhere (most realistic part of the movie right there)…

They’re great foils for the Wilson’s, and it’s so interesting to compare the two home invasion scenes. Gabe may not believe or understand Adelaide’s paranoia at first, but when he notices that something definitely IS off, he is on-board with calling the cops and locking things down, no question. In contrast, Josh doesn’t believe Kitty when she says something is outside, and he makes fun of her for it. They get offed incredibly quickly because they’re so accustomed to their cozy lifestyle where everything is fine…plus, let’s be real, as a well-off white family, they don’t have to be on edge about anything, really.

We don’t get much development for the Jeremiah 11:11 homeless guy (more on him later), but one moment I think is fascinating is at the end when he’s a part of the human chain that Adelaide sees, the camera captures him staring up at the sun and smiling.

The Tethered aren’t monsters, they just genuinely don’t know any better.

THE ART

*deep inhale*

It’s GREAT.

Okay but like really, though. My third time around, I spent a lot more time taking the movie in visually, focusing on the costumes and the like (the second time I was busy focusing on Adelaide’s dialogue because it’s entirely different once you know, and the first time I was busy screaming).

The film in general has a very red color palette (which makes sense, representing both the Tethered’s outfits of choice and all the…blood). The first scene on the boardwalk with young Adelaide has a lot of warm, bold colors, which makes the contrasting cool blues in the mirror maze once the power shuts off kind of startling. Then, all the scenes at the beach house and at the beach before the Tethered’s entrance are very creamy and gold-colored. That all changes, of course, once the Tethered arrive. Red is everywhere, both the color and the character!

People have already touched on the fact that Adelaide wears all white in the beginning, and then her outfit gets more and more red as the film goes on because of, well, blood. Initially, I thought that was supposed to be all symbolic of her becoming more and more of a monster like her Tethered, but that was before I knew about ~the twist~.

But Adelaide wearing all white at the start that gradually becomes more red is actually a fascinating detail for a number of reasons. When I took Costume Design in college, we learned all about color theory, or the idea that certain colors have a specific effect on the human brain and, therefore, human emotions. It’s why heroes are often clad in blue and villains in red–not only are they contrasting colors, but they also represent entirely different things emotionally. Blue has a calming effect on the brain, which is why doctor’s offices will often have blue walls or posters of the sky with clouds or something. Blue is trustworthy, like heroes should be. Red, on the other hand, is angry–we can’t help but think of blood when we see red, and since blood should generally remain inside our bodies, when we see it outside, it’s a little jarring and we just don’t like it. That’s just scratching the surface, of course, and each color can represent a myriad of things. Red can also represent passion and general heightened emotion, just as blue can also represent sadness and heartache. The effect a certain color has on the brain all depends on what other effects are taken in in combination with it.

The color white, generally, represents purity. We all know that Adelaide’s outfit through most of the film is white, but my third time watching it, I noticed that all of her outfits are white. She wears a white dress, she wears a white hat…”but isn’t her swimsuit yellow?” I hear you say.

Remember how I said the color palette in the beginning was all creamy and gold?

Adelaide fits into her surroundings visually, and not only that, all her outfits are white and flowy. She looks almost angelic in the beginning, so subconsciously, we trust her. Dressing her in white gives her the appearance of being pure, so not only do we subconsciously trust her, we also want to protect her. We want her to win and survive.

It’s kind of a cruel joke on the part of the costume design–the creators know that Adelaide isn’t actually Adelaide, but the audience doesn’t. By getting us to subconsciously trust her because of how she’s dressed, we fall all the harder when the twist is revealed.

Her outfit gradually becoming more and more red throughout the film serves as both proof of the final twist, and as a metaphor for what she did. When she took Adelaide/Red’s place in the beginning of the film and chained her to the bed in the tunnels, she unknowingly started the Tethered revolution that would come back to haunt her years later. It’s her own fault the red of the Tethered gradually takes over her pure, perfect world above ground. She started this.

Also, yeah, it serves as a visual reminder the second time you watch the movie that Adelaide isn’t who we believe her to be.

Also-did you catch how the first rabbit we see in the opening credits and the rabbit Jason is holding at the end are both white with red eyes?

THE VILLAIN

So who IS the villain in Us?

It’s…us.

Or is it them?

I DON’T KNOW ANYMORE.

Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of people felt betrayed by the final twist in Us because it was essentially revealed that the whole time when we thought we were cheering for the hero, WE WERE ACTUALLY CHEERING FOR THE VILLAIN.

Or were we?

This is one of the most fascinating dilemmas of the movie, and another thing that separates it so vehemently from Get Out. Whereas Get Out had a very, very clear set of villains, Us doesn’t have that. It tries to draw you in to this whole “us vs. them” dynamic, and the first time watching the film, you probably buy it. The Tethered are the villains. They are twisted, almost inhuman versions of our protagonists, therefore they’re easy to hate. They don’t talk or interact with each other the way our heroes do; Red is the only one who can speak, but her voice is so raspy and choked that it’s unsettling. There’s a scene where Abraham and Gabe are on the boat, and Abraham calls out to another Tethered on the shore. They have a quick back and forth that is all done with shouting and yelling, and no specific words are used. It’s almost animalistic the way they communicate with each other, and it makes it that much easier for us to cheer for Gabe’s victory. After all, we like and relate to Gabe! He makes terrible dad jokes!!

Then, out of nowhere (at least for ME, apparently everyone else I saw the movie with guessed the twist early, which WHATEVER), we’re told that the person we’ve been cheering for is one of them, and the person she left down in the tunnels is actually the real Adelaide-one of us (“one of us, ONE OF US”). It just doesn’t feel fair!! The villains won after all!

Did they though?

I mean, yes, we see a shot of the Tethered’s human chain at the end and it’s absolutely terrifying (and apparently much more successful than the real Hands Across America campaign, but more on that later!), and it does seem that “fake Adelaide” is driving her “family” off into oblivion. Oh also? Jason knows the truth, now, so who knows where that’s gonna go.

But here’s the thing: “fake” Adelaide is still really great. We can’t ignore the fact that she’s an incredible wife and mother, as well as a dedicated fighter. She became so human during her time above ground that she had everyone, including the audience, fooled. Maybe she was born into the world of the Tethered, but she learned how to develop relationships and care for others and herself once she left that world behind. By claiming that we were actually cheering for the villain the whole time, we’re completely defining Adelaide by where she comes from, and that is something we seriously need to stop doing as human beings.

But okay, if Adelaide isn’t the villain, Red and the other Tethered are clearly the villains right?

Ehhhhhhhhhhhh…

When you think about it, Red’s whole story is actually incredibly tragic. She was born into a life of privilege above ground, but because she wandered off one night, she’s trapped below surrounded by people she doesn’t know who can’t even talk and have to eat raw rabbit to sustain themselves. She’s still connected to Adelaide, so when Adelaide takes up ballet, so too does she. I think it’s this combination of her dancing and the fact that she can talk (sort of, the speculation is that her voice sounds the way it does because when Adelaide choked her in the mirror maze, she crushed her vocal chords, and they never recovered) that shows the Tethered that she’s different. Maybe she can save them. They didn’t even know that there might be something better out there, but Red’s clearly smart, seeing as how she organized the whole revolution thing. She’d be able to figure out everything about the cloning experiment from what was left behind, and since all she knew of Hands Across America was her shirt and that ad she saw, she’d use that to make her statement for her new people. She wants them to take the place of their counterparts because that’s what happened to her. She wants them to make a statement because she never got to. She wants them to have their time in the sun because she can just barely remember what it was like, and she misses it. She’s so close to being successful, but Adelaide is smart, too. When she’s dying in Adelaide’s arms, she starts to whistle “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” again, because that was what first connected them to begin with.

And Adelaide chokes her again, this time for good.

She was the leader of a rather successful revolution that she never fully got to enjoy because she was so caught up in taking personal revenge, and shouldn’t she have been? Her entire life was stolen from her, and she had to grow up with these people who looked like her parents but were just so off somehow, and she’d never hear them say that they loved her ever again.

The Tethered kill a lot of people in the film, that’s true.

But they don’t know any better. Like Red explains, the entire cloning project was scrapped because they were “able to duplicate the human body, but not the soul.” They’re like children wandering around in the tunnels, uneducated, and no one was around to teach them because they just got left down there. So when Red shows up and tells these stories of the world above and their evil counterparts who take everything for granted, they believe it. They’re angry. They want revenge.

It’s all they were taught to know.

The human soul detail is interesting, because that means, theoretically, that Adelaide shouldn’t have a soul, and Red should. But what makes a soul, exactly? Red’s actions throughout the film seem soulless, after all. Her family are her tools that she uses to dispose of Adelaide’s family without a second thought. She kidnaps Jason without sparing a moment for her own son, burning alive just a few feet away…Adelaide, meanwhile, should be without a soul, but she’s extremely protective and caring.

I would posit that there are no villains in Us, not really, but it depends how you define it. Is someone a villain for wanting revenge on someone who stole their entire life? Is someone a villain for stealing someone else’s life, but then creating and caring for a family and always putting there safety first? Is someone a villain for wanting to have a life in the sun and to eat anything besides raw rabbit?

While Us tries to sell an “us vs. them” dynamic that pulls you in and convinces you the first time you see the movie, it’s just disorienting every time after that because you know. She’s not really an “us,” because she’s a “them.” She behaves like “us,” but that doesn’t mean anything because she’s still one of “them,” right?

*shrug emoji*

THE MESSAGE

So what does this all mean, exactly?

Again, Get Out had a very clear message: white people SUCK. Uh, I mean, racism is BAD and also still VERY MUCH A THING AND THAT IS NOT GOOD. Also, white people SUCK.

(No really, we’re the worst)

Us doesn’t do that, and it’s frustrating! JUST TELL US WHAT IT MEANS, PEELE!!

But what’s cool about all the ambiguity is that it allows people to make their own theory about the movie that connects with them personally. It’s like a choose-your-own-adventure as a movie!

So is Us a commentary on the death of the American dream? Sure!

Is it about the dangers of cloning and science going too far (case in point: the in-home security device playing “Fuck Tha Police” instead of calling the police)? Absolutely!

Is it about the duality of man and the dangers of ignoring rather than embracing that? Yeah!

Is it just a good, original movie with some good scares, great characters, amazing acting, and an interesting story? Why, yes!

My personal favorite theories involve classism: how the Tethered represent the poorer classes, essentially invisible to the well-off but still an essential part of their lives, whether they know it or not; how society can’t function if we ignore the poorer classes because they’re important, too, and it’s dangerous in multiple ways for us to just brush that off; how it’s absolutely possible to take someone “uneducated” and teach them kindness, and how that’s really more important than anything else; how the “Merlin’s Forest” re-branding of the mirror maze still featured a totem pole outside and was probably just in response to growing complaints about the racist attraction and was a really poor attempt to fix that #America; how many of the weapons used to kill the Tethered in the film were typical symbols of the rich (a boat, a golf club, a fancy rock), and therefore is symbolic of how the rich constantly kill the poor with all their fancy “necessary” toys.

Did you notice how the first Tethered up was the guy who killed the homeless man in the beginning?

Did you notice how, though people were morbidly fascinated, we didn’t hear anything in the news about it and no one seemed overly concerned about the death of a homeless man?

The use of Hands Across America ties into this, as well. The more I read about it, the more connected to Us it appears to be. Hands Across America was nowhere near as successful as it claimed to be, giving to charities only $15 million when they promised $50 million. Get this–it was also specifically set up to raise money to fight homelessness.

It was also during the Reagan years, and he apparently talked about how the poor are poor because they choose to be, and they’re just not smart enough to get out of it.

Did the Tethered choose to be what they were?

Do the poor?

When Gabe asks the Tethered family who they are, Red says “we’re Americans.”

The poor are Americans. The rich and well-off are Americans. They shouldn’t be treated so differently.

The point is, while these theories really hit home with me personally, they’re not the only ones out there, and they’re not the only ones that make sense. This movie can mean a million things, and I love it for that.

FAVORITE MOMENT

I’ve talked at length about the “Pas de deux” scene, and I genuinely think it’s probably my favorite. Even reading about the creation of that scene was fascinating to me; every detail was considered, down to the incredible physical differences between not only adult Adelaide and Red, but the teenage dancers as well. While adult Adelaide is injured, she hobbles on and swings desperately to get a hit in because she’s fueled by emotion–teenage Adelaide is graceful and swathed in bright light as she twirls smoothly across the stage. Adult Red walks in angles, almost never bends at the waist, and moves sharply and upright in contrast to Adelaide’s limbs flying everywhere–teenage Red has to follow teenage Adelaide’s steps, but she’s down below in a hallway and doesn’t have enough room, so she gets slammed into the walls and floor a lot.

Honestly I think it’s worth the price of admission alone, because it’s such an assault on all your senses (in a good way).

But I also really love the final moment of Jason glaring at Adelaide because he knowwwwwwws.

Also, he has a pet rabbit at the end. He did say he wanted a dog, so I mean…

“OOF” MOMENT

Pretty much all of them involve Gabe. I mean, he dabs in the beginning. And when he tells Zora that the human chain is “some kinda fucked-up performance art” the LOOK she gives him. Absolutely savage.

It’s not really “oof” in a “oh that was awkward for a movie” way, it’s more “oof, what a DAD” kind of thing.

SHOULD YOU TAKE YOURSELF TO SEE THIS MOVIE?

Well, if you couldn’t have guessed already, YES.

PLEASE DO.

Is it scary? Yes, it definitely is. But what I keep telling people is that I genuinely don’t think it’s as scary as the trailers would have you believe–the trailers made it seem like it would be “ALL JUMPSCARES/ALL HORROR, ALL THE TIME” and it really…wasn’t. And not in a bad way at all! It was just an interesting marketing choice, because it got people like me who do NOT like horror movies but liked Get Out and want more going “DAMMIT JORDAN” and I’m assuming it got real horror movie buffs going “…wait what.” (Again, I’m assuming. I have no horror aficionado friends, as evidenced by how long it took to convince people TO GO SEE THIS WITH ME)

If you read my Us soundtrack post (here!), you know I also went into Lupita Nyong’o’s “Horror Movie Homework” in preparation for working on Us. One of the movies I thought was an interesting choice was Funny Games, and while we may never know for sure why Jordan Peele had Nyong’o watch certain films and not others, it is interesting to note that the creator of Funny Games said specifically that the movie is a commentary on how violence is portrayed and glorified in the media. Could that be why Us was marketed as a typical horror film without a deeper meaning? Is there a commentary there?

Who knows. I don’t.

ANYWAY, the point is, Us is so much more than a horror movie, if that’s what you’re worried about. I genuinely think there is so much to enjoy about it, and so, so much to talk about afterwards. If you like stuff like that, you should see it!!

(I didn’t even get INTO all the rabbits, the symbolism of the underground classrooms, the symbolism of the names, the many appearances of the numbers 11:11, or the fact that the homeless man’s Tethered is named JEREMIAH AND THAT’S THE BOOK OF THE BIBLE THE VERSE ON HIS SIGN IS FROM. “JEREMIAH 11:11” I’M SO MAD ABOUT THIS THAT IS SUCH A COOL DETAIL AND I HAD TO DIG FOR IT)

All in all, I give Us…

5/5 OMINOUS GOLDEN PAIRS OF SCISSORS!!

Ooh…yeah that last pair definitely did something to someone…oh no…

TRAILERS TO WATCH OUT FOR

I have such mixed feelings about Pet Sematary, guys. On the one hand, I think it’s interesting, I know it’s classic, and I’m drawn to it because I’m SUCH A FOUR. But on the other hand, just because I loved Us, doesn’t mean I can suddenly handle horror movies. I am a Weak Being. But…like…UGHHHHH so anyway. I MIGHT see it. I don’t know.

Listen I got dragged to the second John Wick movie with the guy I was seeing at the time, and I regretted it almost as much as when I got dragged to Kong: Skull Island. Actually…I might regret John Wick more…anyway, John Wick Chapter 3 is a thing. I probably won’t be seeing it. Someone could pay me, though. I can definitely be bought.

Little is another one of those movies that COULD be surprisingly good, or just really…really bad and cringey. I’ll probably wait till I read some reviews or something.

Ma looks ABSOLUTELY horrifying and it somehow made Octavia Spencer legitimately terrifying and I do NOT trust any movie that does that. It’s interesting in that it looks like it’s completely original, which as we’ve discussed, I really appreciate, but…oh it looks horrifying. Oh no.

Booksmart looks like it could be good, but it’s also kind of in the category of Little where it could also just be really bad. I mean it’s certainly going to be raunchy, as we can attest from the trailer. But who knows what it’s actually about?

I’m genuinely nervous and excited for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood because like…I freely admit I love both Leonardo DiCaprio AND Brad Pitt and they’re working together on this?? Iconic. Amazing. But also like…Margot Robbie is gonna be playing Sharon Tate, y’all. YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS.

And that does it for this review! If you think you’d be up for Us, I really think it’s incredible and you should definitely see it. I get that the ambiguity isn’t for everyone (although apparently some people are upset that the final twist was made clear, they would have preferred that to be ambiguous. Which like…okay so you complain that it’s too ambiguous right now, and if the final twist HADN’T been confirmed? MORE AMBIGUITY IS WHAT YOU WANT?? Whatever) and that the horror factor is not a favorite, believe me, I know, but it’s so much more than all that.

Plus I can’t even begin to describe how fun it is to see the film in a crowded theater. Some of my favorite reactions include “aw HELL NAW” in response to Jason’s “there’s a family in our driveway” line, and a whole chorus of “NO, NO NO NO NO NO” in response to the Tethered family breaking into the house on cue.

If you’re up for it, take yourself to the movies and see Us.

Just, ya know…watch yourself.