The movie leaves you with the twist: Adelaide was Red, and Red was Adelaide, and they switched places as young girls. The movie never makes clear whether this is long-buried trauma that Adelaide is resurfacing as she and her family ride off into the new, post-apocalyptic landscape of a world where seemingly millions have been murdered by their doubles and a chain of those doubles stands athwart the continent, or whether it’s something she’s pointedly avoided referencing throughout the film. An ad for Hands Across America is one of the last things little Adelaide sees before she goes to the Santa Cruz boardwalk with her parents - which is where she meets Red and (the final scene reveals) is forced to take Red’s place in the Tether world while Red comes up to ours. The presence of this massive chain of Tethers should hopefully clue in viewers to the film’s final twist. She finds Jason and exits the tunnels.īut aboveground, the many Tethers have joined hands together in a mirror of Hands Across America, the 1986 event meant to raise money and awareness of hunger, which stretched a 6.5 million-person chain (almost all the way) across the Lower 48. (Peele intercuts this with footage of the teenage Adelaide - a great ballerina - dancing beautifully as Red replicates her actions in a weirdly grotesque mirror belowground.) Finally, Adelaide overcomes Red and kills her. The status quo held until Red and Adelaide met as young girls, and the two begin a fight that’s almost a dance but still recognizably a fight. This was also true of the long expository monologue in Get Out!) (The long expository monologue where Red basically explains all of this is the movie’s weakest section and kills its momentum. Claudette Barius/Universal Picturesīut the experiment was abandoned for unexplained reasons, leaving the Tethers belowground, mimicking our every movement up here, and living lives where they have no free will, lives entirely dictated by our choices. The Tethers were created by a nebulous “them” to control their other selves. (The bunnies are the only food the Tethers get.) This vague military feel tracks with something Red tells Adelaide when the two finally face off in what seems to be a classroom. The tunnels have the feel of an abandoned military facility more than anything else, and they’re filled with rabbits, which have been set free from cages. The only Tether left is Red, who absconds with Adelaide’s son, Jason ( Evan Alex), and races with him down into a gigantic complex of tunnels that exists beneath the Santa Cruz, California, boardwalk and - it’s implied - the entire country. (Pay close attention, for instance, to whom the Tethers kill and whom they just maim.) And still other stuff is probably just me reading my own opinions into the movie.Īnyway, the third act begins when the family finally makes it to daylight, having killed two of their doubles, with a third double falling right at the top of Act 3. Some of this exposition is stated outright, as when Adelaide’s double, Red, explains exactly who she is and who her compatriots are. And all along the way, Peele is seeding in exposition, like when we learn that Adelaide and her family aren’t the only ones being menaced by their doubles (who are called “Tethers” in the film, because they’re tethered to their mirror images), and the film cuts away to the vicious murder of two of their friends ( Tim Heidecker and Elisabeth Moss) by the friends’ doubles. The second act - roughly the middle hour of the 116-minute film - is pretty much perfect, the kind of expertly pitched horror comedy we see far too rarely. The second act follows Adelaide’s and her family’s actions after being menaced by horrifying double versions of themselves - played by the same actors - over the course of one long, gory night. The first act is all unsettling setup - first with a flashback to our protagonist, Adelaide ( Lupita Nyong’o), as a young girl, meeting an eerie mirror version of herself, then to the first few days of a family vacation that she takes with her husband ( Winston Duke) and kids as an adult. Us breaks evenly into a classic three-act structure. So let’s talk first about what happens in that ending and how we could read that ending, and then try to find a way to synthesize all of these ideas. The audience leaving my screening the other night seemed sharply divided on the film - and its last-minute twist - but I plunged deeper and deeper into it because of that messy, glorious ending. Us is Jordan Peele’s thrilling, blood-curdling allegory about a self-destructing Americaīut I found that approach incredibly engaging.
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