An effective socio-political thriller looking at issues of class and privilege

Rating: 7/10 (1 April 2019)

There's a detail to be found in writer/director Jordan Peele's second feature, Us, which gives you a good idea of the amount of thought that has gone into the film. In the opening scene, set in 1986, a young girl walks into a hall of mirrors, with a sign outside proclaiming "Find yourself", and a picture of a Native American above the door, with the words "Shaman Vision Quest". Later in the film, now in the present day, the same hall of mirrors is seen, the same "Find yourself" is seen, but now the picture of the Native American has been replaced with a wizard, and "Shaman Vision Quest" with "Merlin's Enchanted Forest." This change, easily dismissed as representative of everything that's wrong with PC culture, is actually much more telling. It represents a meaningless and superficial attempt to tackle society's discomfort with its violent history. It's like putting a plaster on a severed limb; "sure, the white man slaughtered the Native Americans, but if we do things like change signs on amusement parks, everything should be forgiven, right?" This, in turn, speaks directly to one of the film's most salient themes - the US (or us) is a country built on violence, racism, and oppression, but as long as such things are swept under the carpet and no one talks about them, then there's no need to worry. Peele very much wants people to start talking about them.
I wasn't the biggest fan of Peele's previous film, Get Out (2017), although I certainly admired how he reformulated the tropes of the genre so as to suggest that just because the US gives the appearance of being a pseudo-post-racial society, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's true behind closed doors. With Us, he is working in a similarly metaphorical mode, using the tropes of the home invasion thriller to probe issues of class and, especially, privilege. The plot is an allegory for a nation divided into those above and those below, the haves and the have-nots, those with opportunity and those without. Essentially, Peele suggests that when social/economic/political inequality is so pronounced for so long, sooner or later, the only recourse available to the have-nots is to make a grand statement, a statement that will almost certainly not be peaceful.
The film opens on the Santa Cruz boardwalk in 1986 with young Adelaide Thomas (Madison Curry) seeing something in a hall of mirrors that deeply traumatises her, resulting in her not talking for several years. The film then cuts to the present day as the now adult Adelaide Wilson (an astounding Lupita Nyong'o) travels to Santa Cruz with her family - husband Gabe (Winston Duke), daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and son Jason (Evan Alex). The family is comfortably middle-class, although much to Gabe's irritation, they are nowhere near as wealthy as their neighbours, the Tylers - Kitty (Elisabeth Moss), Josh (Tim Heidecker), and twin daughters Becca and Lyndsey (Cali Sheldon and Noelle Sheldon). Uneasy at being so close to the scene of her childhood trauma, Adelaide becomes convinced that something terrible is going to happen, and that night, when the power cuts out, Jason reveals that there are four people standing ominously in the driveway.
It's not a spoiler, of course, to say that the people in the driveway are the Wilsons' doppelgängers. However, one of the problems with parsing the film is that so many of the socio-political themes are tied to who the doppelgängers are and what they want, that it's difficult to discuss them without spoilers. So, small spoiler ahead - the doppelgängers are called the Tethered; essentially, they are an underground-dwelling race of lookalikes, spiritually tied to those living above. Although partly inspired by the 1960 "Mirror Image (1960)" episode of The Twilight Zone, the main influences for the Tethers appear to be urban legends surrounding "mole people" and, more specifically, the conflict between the Morlocks and the Eloi in H.G. Wells's The Time Machine (1895).
Setting out to probe both economic and societal divisions in the contemporary US, Peele introduces the theme early on with Gabe's jealousy at the Tylers' nicer house, fancier car, and much bigger boat. Later, after the arrival of the Tethered, the theme becomes more explicit; through no fault of their own, they live in an underground realm, deprived of the opportunities those above the surface have access to. The allegorical dimension couldn't be clearer; the film is essentially a parable about class division. The Wilsons represent a middle-class all-American family; the Tethered represent the underclass, those without access to the privileges enjoyed by the wealthy, despite possessing the same capacity for happiness and success. This similarity is driven home when Adelaide asks Red (her Tethered) who they are, and Red seems confused by the question, answering (truthfully), "we're Americans."
In this sense, the film is very much about marginalisation. Adelaide is not smarter or more capable than Red; rather, the main difference between the two is just that of the difference between a poor person and a rich one; fate of birth. This speaks to perhaps the film's most important point - the marginalised, destitute, and discriminated against can succeed just as much as everyone else if only they're given the opportunity to do so. This is also alluded to in the powerful final shot, which reveals that the Tethered have accomplished something which the surface dwellers once attempted but failed.
The Tethered are the ignored, those swept under the rug of society, out of sight out of mind, just like the alteration to the picture above the hall of mirrors, with Peele allegorically examining what could happen when the marginalised and ignored can be marginalised and ignored no longer, whether they be the economically impoverished, the racially suppressed, vets suffering from PTSD, non-Americans xenophobically regarded as the Other, really any group of people that society at large has shunned. True, the deeper he explores the Tethered, the more insurmountable logistical problems that are thrown up, and the further he strains credibility. However, it's a testament to both his filmmaking acumen and the strength of his thematic concerns, that such straining is not as detrimental as it may sound.
Even more so than Get Out, Us is exceptionally accomplished from an aesthetic point of view. The opening scene, for example, features extraordinarily impressive photography by Mike Gioulakis, designed to place us as close to young Adelaide's consciousness as possible. As she wanders along behind her parents, the camera sticks primarily to her height, with everything towering above her, whilst the candied apple she holds is hypnotically red and shiny (one could say Edenic). Another fine scene features the rare use of a split diopter, a tool favoured by Brian De Palma that allows both foreground and background subjects to stay in focus simultaneously. Using it in a crucial scene towards the end of the film, it is the only time we see Adelaide and Red's faces in the same shot at the same time, with Red shot in BCU, facing away from Adelaide, who stands behind her.
In terms of acting, Nyong'o's nuanced work as Adelaide and Red is especially noteworthy as a study in contrasts. Apart from their appearance, nothing about the two is similar; their posture, their facial expressions, how they talk, how they walk, how they react to things around them, how they use their hands. Adelaide, a former ballet dancer, is graceful and elegant, whereas Red is automaton-like, her movements almost staccato and splintered into sudden bursts. It's a clinic on how to convey individualised psychology through body language, and at times, it's hard to believe it's the same actress playing both roles.
In terms of problems, there are a few. Aside from the insurmountable practical issues with the Tethered, my biggest issue was that every time the Tethered want to kill someone, they do so immediately, without ceremony or pause. However, they pass up multiple opportunities to kill the Wilsons. At first, this seems as if it's because they wish to keep them alive for some reason, but later in the film, we find out that really, they just want to kill them. Never once do they attempt to do so with the ruthless efficiency with which they kill others, which is an irritating inconsistency. Additionally, the final twist, of which I will say nothing, doesn't really work, feeling like something of a twist for twist's sake that was never fully integrated into the narrative.
These small problems notwithstanding, Us is an impressive film that improves on Get Out in almost every way, and which serves as a more complete artistic statement. The Tethers are monsters because they have been left with little choice other than to become monsters, imprisoned by a system they had no part in creating and in which they are not allowed to participate. Both visually accomplished and thematically complex, Us once again finds Peele examining the kind of social oppression that no one wants to acknowledge, but this time he widens his scope to move beyond issues of race. In Get Out, he took a story of bodily possession and moulded it into a story of black/white relations. In Us, he demonstrates that oppression can easily cross racial boundaries. And the real horror of this isn't to be found in monsters or jump scares. It's to be found in humanity's frequent inhumanity to one another.