Director Jordan Peele had high expectations to follow after the Academy Award-winning movie in 2017 “Get Out.” Peele’s new movie, “Us” premiered on the big screen on March 22, and was the No. 1 movie in the box office for the weekend of March 22-24 with a weekend gross of $70.2 million. A tweet Peele posted stating “‘Us’ is a horror movie” left his followers in shambles, anxious and excited to view the movie.
The movie is imaginative, intellectual and definitely intense, which gives the audience the opportunity to think deep thoughts to end of the movie. “Get Out” showed us what a sunken place was, and the movie “Us” made audiences live through it yet again for two hours. “Us” had the crowd reacting to the movie with fear while the audience jumped, screamed and had occasional laughter.
“Us” bounces back and forth between the summer of 1986 in Santa Cruz to present day throughout the majority of the movie, featuring an all-American family with a nurturing mother, funny dad, a teenage daughter and an awkward son. After arriving at her childhood home in Santa Cruz, a number of coincidences start to occur that remind the mother of horrible memories of her summer in 1986. Once she realizes that it’s all too familiar it becomes too late for her and her family to get away. They have to fight against the deep and terrifying versions of themselves in order to survive.
The movie captured the transformative radical power of political consequences when the first scene showed a statement that educated the audience on the abandonment of subways throughout the United States. “Across the U.S., there are thousands of miles of underground tunnels that have been long forgotten.” The film states that they include abandoned subway tunnels and unused sewers, while many have no clear purpose at all. “Us” used multiple metaphors throughout the movie, such as the abandoned subways and the movement Hands Across America from 1986. Whatever the metaphors implied, it definitely left widespread confusion on those that watched the movie.
The overall theme throughout the film “Us” is opposition and duality, a close examination of objects and people that are extremely similar in appearance yet different at the same time. The movie makes you reexamine your actions and your mental outlook on life. “Us” plays as a jumpscare, thriller and horror movie along with a deeper, complicated drama that makes you question society as a whole with subliminal messages. The movie will leave you questioning your entire existence.
