Dissecting Jordan Peele's 'Us'

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Oh okay, but why are the thethers actions forced by humans though?



Just stepping out of the movie. I loved it. Being a non-American I didn't get all the symbolism, so thanks @ScarletLion for the explanation.

I got the twist fairly early, but it didn't spoil the movie for me. It was the commercials and the scene at the psychiatrist that gave it away. However, I do agree with @TheUsualSuspect that the end missed a shock factor.

For me, the only question remains is that how was Jason swapped. We know it happened a year before, but how.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
@Yoda or @Loner my review of US, the snippet of the review previewed in the REVIEWS section is from a spoiler tag and gives away the movie. I know these are auto picked from the paragraphs, but any chance to fix this?

@ironpony the THEORY is that the government believed they shared a soul. The entire purpose of the experiment was to be able to control people above from the people below.
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@Yoda or @Loner my review of US, the snippet of the review previewed in the REVIEWS section is from a spoiler tag and gives away the movie. I know these are auto picked from the paragraphs, but any chance to fix this?
Oof, that's tricky. Don't want to look at it, either.

I can add a quick flag that hides the excerpt, but that would still allow this to happen *sometimes* and would only be a fix after each person points it out.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
Oof, that's tricky. Don't want to look at it, either.

I can add a quick flag that hides the excerpt, but that would still allow this to happen *sometimes* and would only be a fix after each person points it out.
I think it only worked on one page.

For example:

If I click on reviews and then go to Show All Movie Reviews, the excerpt is not a spoiler.

But

if I go to my profile, then reviews, the excerpt IS a spoiler. When I go to the US movie homepage, it IS a spoiler too.



I didn't add the flag yet. They're different because I just missed one when switching to the new version a month or two ago (which is better 95% of the time).



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Okay thanks, it's just that the movie I felt had some big inconsistencies and coincidences in the plot and I felt that the plot only held together when it was convenient to do so for the surprises to happen, but then when you break it down later, there is a lot of questions I think that are not answered, and the answers themselves that were provided, do not hold together for me, and just lead to more questions I think.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
I didn't add the flag yet. They're different because I just missed one when switching to the new version a month or two ago (which is better 95% of the time).
Okay, thanks.



Honestly, I kind of like the new trend of horror movies leaving questions unanswered. Provides room to speculate and debate. The expositional trend of so many horror movies kills the mystery and some of the creepiness of those movies.
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I don't mind movies that leave questions unanswered as long as I felt there was a point to the story, like Planet of the Apes for example. But I felt that with Us I did not see what the point of it was, unless I missed it so that had me scratching my head a lot more than usual. I feel that the background motivations still had to make more sense, even if the questions were unanswered as well.



I don't mind movies that leave questions unanswered as long as I felt there was a point to the story, like Planet of the Apes for example. But I felt that with Us I did not see what the point of it was, unless I missed it so that had me scratching my head a lot more than usual. I feel that the background motivations still had to make more sense, even if the questions were unanswered as well.
The point........ is that the government and society have broken down to the point where dormant, slumbering personality traits in people are now wakening to the detriment of America.

The movie is an entire allegory for the current socio-political climate of the USa.



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Okay thanks, I can see that. It's not the allegory that that takes me out of the story, it's just some of the plot points. I think the plot might be the problem and not the theme.



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I saw the twist coming in the beginning, cause the parents of the girl who was switched said that she was acting strange. Sure, she could have been acting strange cause she saw herself but when she sees herself, it then cuts to further in time, and now she is acting strange, so I considered it a possibility.

Actually this raises a question for me. When Red switched with Adelaide, why didn't Adelaide just go back home as a kid, after being switched? It didn't seem like it was that hard to find her way out of that underground place since there is an escalator that takes you to the surface, so why didn't she just go back home after?



I just saw this movie, and I was very disappointed.


After reading the OP, I guess I can see an allegory at play where the "Red underground" people represent Red-state American Trump supporters who were kept underground until Trump brought them out, and I could see the hand-holding thing as symbolic of "the wall" somehow, although that's a stretch. And I guess Lupita Nyongo would be Trump because we all thought he was a liberal but it turns out he switched and became leader of the Red underground, who gave them a voice they never had and is leading them to make their presence known to the mainstream world that has ignored them for decades.
BUT, my problem is that it was really hard to make any of these connections just purely from watching the movie (and not reading internet threads like this or Jordan Peele interviews). There really were no mentions or hints in the movie of politics or Trump. The only thing I could think of was when underground Lupita said "We are Americans, too", but that 1 line is too small a piece of data to then extrapolate all of the supposedly intended political symbolism.

I didn't like the tone of the film. I wasn't scared at any point in the movie, and the film couldn't seem to make up its mind on whether what we were watching was meant to be taken seriously or not. The family would be scared but then randomly start cracking jokes, so it really didn't make sense how they were feeling and how we as the audience, by extension, should be feeling. It left me feeling like "who cares?" about the stakes of the film.

There were plot inconsistencies that just didn't make sense. Like when ***SPOILER*** the son kills his tether by walking backwards into the fire. Since when is the tether mirroring the son's every move? That had not consistently been the case, so it didn't make sense. ***SPOILER***

I'll admit I didn't see the ending coming, so I thought that was set up well. Lupita Nyongo's acting was very good with the script she was working with.

But overall it seemed like Peele was saying "just focus on the allegory of this movie and don't worry about the surface-level plot having any importance or consistency at all". But the problem is that it wasn't clear that we were supposed to make political inferences about the allegorical nature of the plot. Furthermore, this allegory is going to be so specific to this current Trump era that the movie lacks any timeless value. If people watch this 20 years from now, it's going to go way over their heads and not have any significance whatsoever.
I feel like Peele got cocky with Get Out and subsequently got sloppy with Us. He tried to be too clever and smart with this movie, and it ended up just feeling like a movie that tried way too hard to be deep but was just not that good. It's like Peele wanted his audiences to walk out of the theatre talking about the movie for ages, but in reality it felt like a film student trying to be timely and clever with a weak Trump allegory.

Just my 2 cents.



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The thing is that I never got the impression it was totally meant to be a Trump/red America metaphor so much as a more generalised one about the homeless/underprivileged mounting an insurrection against the ignorant above-ground citizens, which is what will really hold up in 20 years' time as a commentary on class warfare that goes beyond the specifics of the era (and doesn't directly contradict the "red America" interpretation because of how so much of that group could also be said to belong to an exploitable/ignored underclass). Hell, there's even a point where Red and the Tethered start to become somewhat sympathetic, which is what really made it hard for me to think of them as a straight metaphor for Trump and his base. If you don't think that the film gives you enough reason to favour one interpretation, you can always try figuring out another one. After all, Get Out wasn't just about racism in general so much as a very specific type of "friendly" racism so it makes sense that Us would have a similarly precise topic in mind.

I think the tonal shifts between horror and comedy are a deliberate attempt to balance out the tension involved so that the film doesn't become monotonous - it is, after all, a satire like Get Out so it makes sense that it does get humourous at times (such as Elisabeth Moss trying to use Alexa to call the police and instead it starts playing "F*ck the Police" over the rest of the scene). I can also see a family trying to crack jokes to lighten up during a traumatic situation.

As has been noted already, the son and his tether had consistently been mimicking one another (first established when they are stuck in the closet together and the tether is watching the son try to use his lighter ring and lights his own matches in response) so it pays off when he tricks the tether into walking into the fire.
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It felt that way for me too, is that if Peele really wants to have a complex plot with these twists and turns, than that's good, but he needs time to develop that more I think, where as most of the movie concentrates on chases and slasher scenarios more.



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I just saw this movie, and I was very disappointed.


After reading the OP, I guess I can see an allegory at play where the "Red underground" people represent Red-state American Trump supporters who were kept underground until Trump brought them out, and I could see the hand-holding thing as symbolic of "the wall" somehow, although that's a stretch. And I guess Lupita Nyongo would be Trump because we all thought he was a liberal but it turns out he switched and became leader of the Red underground, who gave them a voice they never had and is leading them to make their presence known to the mainstream world that has ignored them for decades.
BUT, my problem is that it was really hard to make any of these connections just purely from watching the movie (and not reading internet threads like this or Jordan Peele interviews). There really were no mentions or hints in the movie of politics or Trump. The only thing I could think of was when underground Lupita said "We are Americans, too", but that 1 line is too small a piece of data to then extrapolate all of the supposedly intended political symbolism.

I didn't like the tone of the film. I wasn't scared at any point in the movie, and the film couldn't seem to make up its mind on whether what we were watching was meant to be taken seriously or not. The family would be scared but then randomly start cracking jokes, so it really didn't make sense how they were feeling and how we as the audience, by extension, should be feeling. It left me feeling like "who cares?" about the stakes of the film.

There were plot inconsistencies that just didn't make sense. Like when ***SPOILER*** the son kills his tether by walking backwards into the fire. Since when is the tether mirroring the son's every move? That had not consistently been the case, so it didn't make sense. ***SPOILER***

I'll admit I didn't see the ending coming, so I thought that was set up well. Lupita Nyongo's acting was very good with the script she was working with.

But overall it seemed like Peele was saying "just focus on the allegory of this movie and don't worry about the surface-level plot having any importance or consistency at all". But the problem is that it wasn't clear that we were supposed to make political inferences about the allegorical nature of the plot. Furthermore, this allegory is going to be so specific to this current Trump era that the movie lacks any timeless value. If people watch this 20 years from now, it's going to go way over their heads and not have any significance whatsoever.
I feel like Peele got cocky with Get Out and subsequently got sloppy with Us. He tried to be too clever and smart with this movie, and it ended up just feeling like a movie that tried way too hard to be deep but was just not that good. It's like Peele wanted his audiences to walk out of the theatre talking about the movie for ages, but in reality it felt like a film student trying to be timely and clever with a weak Trump allegory.

Just my 2 cents.
It felt that way for me too, is that if Peele really wants to have a complex plot with these twists and turns, than that's good, but he needs time to develop that more I think, where as most of the movie concentrates on chases and slasher scenarios more.\

I know a movie doesn't have to answer all it's questions, but I think that it has to answer at least some questions, and there is nothing wrong with answering questions, but maybe that's just me...



As has been noted already, the son and his tether had consistently been mimicking one another (first established when they are stuck in the closet together and the tether is watching the son try to use his lighter ring and lights his own matches in response) so it pays off when he tricks the tether into walking into the fire.
They weren't "consistently" mimicking each other, though. It was literally just for those 2 minutes in the closet. What about the entire rest of the movie? Are we supposed to just ignore the vast bulk of the movie where the sons are not mirroring each other just so we can accept Jordan Peele's lazy deus ex machina later in the film?