The film Us directed by Jordan Peele begins with a young girl, named Adelaide, who wanders away from her parents at a carnival. She goes into a hall of mirrors and sees a girl who looks just like her, but is not her reflection. The film then takes place in her adulthood. She is on vacation with her own family on the beach where this event happened when she was young. She increasingly becomes more on edge until a family dressed in red, that looks like mirror images of her own family, invades their house. They are seemily more barbaric, and terrifying. The mother instructs each family member to torment their counterparts. They are able to escape to their friend’s house only to find that the family’s red counterparts have already broken in and killed them. The ending reveals that when Adelaide saw her counter in the mirror, she was taken down to where the shadows live and was left there. Her counter took her place in the world above.
Jordan Peele utilizes the themes of identity, repression, and guilt in his film. When Adelaide switched the girls, she assumed the identity of the real Adelaide and assimilated to her new life. However, her guilt of taking this life away from the real Adelaide begins to surface as the red counterparts seek vengeance. Her shadow had grown in anger and resentment. She spent her time orchestrating this uprising. The verse Jeramiah 11:11 comes up frequently during the film. This verse states that as a result of sin, “I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them”. The sin that Adelaide repressed, of switching herself with the real girl, resulted in the anger and uproar of the shadows who were living barbarically below them.
This is the first horror movie I’ve ever seen and it was quite terrifying. I am not a fan of horror films because I have trouble taking my mind off of these kinds of images and events. While it was well done and a clever story, I just do not like this genre of film.
Intro to Film Studies 