Jordan Peele, director, writer and producer of the Oscar-winning movie “Get Out,” makes us eagerly anticipate his new movie “Us,” which again displays powerful symbolic imagery and social satire, but this time the plot carries a lot of gore and multiple logical inconsistencies beneath the twists.
The movie “Us” starts off with a younger version of Adelaide (played by Madison Curry) enjoying the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk with her parents in 1986.
She wanders off from her parents and suffers from a traumatizing experience in the fun house which has a slogan reading “see yourself” on the building.
Years pass, now older Adelaide (played by Lupita Nyong’o) and her husband in the film Gabe (played by Winston Duke), take their children Zora (played by Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (played by Evan Alex) on a returning trip to Santa Cruz, but the trip turns into their worst nightmare when their dangerous doppelgängers show up in the driveway.
The next big scene is when the dopplegängers invade the family’s home. This scene plays on some fears of invasion such as the 2013 film “The Purge.”
Although the movie had a lot of plot twists and turns that changed tone, the movie seems like there is an important message or idea that is missing.
By the time we get to the ballerina showdown with Adelaide and her “twin,” Peele should have added more clues to flesh out the story logic.
While his last masterpiece “Get Out” made viewers think and left everyone wondering, the more recent film “Us” leaves audiences scratching their heads in confusion.
Even though this movie left me deeply confused at the conclusion, there are still many symbolic staples such as rabbits, golden scissors, the speed boat named “Craw Daddy,” toy ambulances and the numbers 11:11, including the time on the digital clocks, and a Bible verse that keeps popping up throughout the movie, Jeremiah 11:11.
The verse reads “I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape. Although they cry out to me, I will not listen to them,” included in the new international version of the Bible.
The movie flashes back to Adelaide’s childhood in an opening image of a TV set showing a 1986 “Hands Across America” commercial, where millions of Americans linked hands from the Atlantic to the Pacific, according to CBS news.
The commercial references the analogy for President Donald Trump’s border wall and when the shadow family is asked who they are they respond, “We are Americans.”
This movie is definitely no “Get Out,” but it is still worth watching if you like to think and read between the lines.
Expect a nightmarish, suspenseful ride when going to see this movie.
