Us.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Erik Dearborn, Journalism Student

Every great movie has the main detail that carries all the way through providing explanations for events. Movies that aren’t so great don’t have those explanations, they lack consistency in detail. The movie Us was just this. Details throughout did not make sense, and carry over to similar instances. For example, at one point in the movie Jason, the little boy, controls his tethered person, Pluto, and causes him to walk into a burning car eliminating him as a protagonist. The movie makes a point in that each person is matched in the same way to their underground counterpart, yet nobody else can or does control their opposite. This can also be seen in the reference to humans creating them, yet the reference to God playing a role multiple times and maybe even government involvement. In a typical movie, there is an obvious and explained the cause for the situation at hand. This is not the case, but Jordan Peele made it clear that he wanted the movie to have this effect, and to leave watchers minds to be able to imagine and wonder. 
If we put these details aside and focus on the overall movie and some of the more apparent scenes as a whole, it was a well-rounded movie. Jordan Peele was on the right track, had this movie not been the follow up to Get Out, but the storyline had many holes. PHS student Hallie Baier stated that the movie, “…was confusing, and it took a while to get to the good parts”, she also found many parts humorous. Given it’s categorized as a horror movie you can decide if that is a good thing or not. Another student, J Bennington, said that his favorite part was “when the two families meet each other and it’s an eerie situation”. If you’re looking for a movie that you will be satisfied with at the end, this isn’t it for you. So many questions go unanswered like who was in the helicopters, a tethered or survivor, and what was the significance of the human chain and hands across America? How could there be tunnels under every single person in the United States for the tethered to follow? Many questions will never be answered, and they could have been avoided with more detail and story development. Rotten tomatoes gives, Us, a rating of 94% with an audience score of 70%, It is very accurate and reflects how most people will view the movie.
This movie also consisted of lots of double meanings and theories of what these meanings were. In the movie, there was a bible verse, Jeremiah 11:11 which reads, “Therefore this is what the LORD says: ‘I will bring on them a disaster they cannot escape.” But, this verse has the numbers 11:11 in it which is supposed to symbolize having a counterpart or doppelganger because the numbers 11:11 are identical. In the movie, their opposites carried scissors and these scissors handles were identical in size and shape on both shear which is supposed to again, symbolize that one is identical to their counterpart or opposite. Also the title of the movie, Us, also has a double meaning. It has been thought that it represents the U.S., The United States. But it is also supposed to symbolize that in America there is us and them and Us represents the people living a luxury or even just a decent middle-class life, and them is the people who are living in poverty or even foreigners to this country who we are trying to keep out.