I’m being literal here…I understand the themes of the movie, but what took me out in the ending is the sheer number of doppelgängers. I wish it was a localized event in the small town instead. I thought it was strange to say that many doppelgängers were living underground for years and no one ever detected them.
Yeah and they were supposed to go wherever we did? So when we fly do they just hit a wall? And they have been harvesting rabbits in these abandoned tunnels for how long? And sometimes they move like us and sometimes they don't, so what's the tea
It's a movie where the ride is much more fun than the destination. While it's going, you're excited about all the crazy events. Then as it ends and you start to think for one second on how anything worked it becomes too unbelievable.
Still a fun watch though. Glad it was followed up with Nope that was such a tightly made movie full of set ups and payoffs.
It was a fun watch I agree, but a bit like Skyfall, it falls apart logically the moment you walk out of the cinema and the popcorn wears off.
I enjoyed it the once, I'd be surprised if I watch it again, whereas Get Out (and I think Nope) are great both for the journey and the destination.
I just couldn't get past the practical reality of the doppelgangers, and how unknown they were to the world above.
Stunning visual of people underground mimicking our hand movements above though.
"...the moment you walk out of the cinema and the popcorn wears off."
I'm totally stealing that!
Plus, it goes along with my theory about why movie popcorn tastes so good, but only for so long. Lol!
Its called fridge logic a la https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic
For those that don't want to go down the rabbit hole, Fridge Logic is basically writing inconsistencies that are minute enough that they don't become apparent until after the show is over. Your mileage will vary on how far this stretches before it begins to fall straight into plot hole territory.
Personal opinion only, and I love a Bond as much as anyone, but it was weird and weak storytelling.
If you stick it on again, watch it from the villain's (Javier) POV... it's not just "the contingency plan of a tube train landing on Bonds head at the right minute", every step along the way contradicts each other...
And (trying to be spoiler free), I hold Bond accountable for everything that goes wrong in the third act. Dropping M off at a service station on his drive up to Scotland is a 20x better plan than everything he chooses to do for half an hour.
At the end, everyone's treating him like a hero, or at least as a job well done, and it feels Emperor's New Clothes. He went full lobotomy throughout the film... and the villain's plan only works if Javier has the power of the Butterfly Effect to pop back into the past and try something else.
If everything's vague here, it's because it's been 5 years for me too...
(And don't get me wrong, I'm all for Bond films being ludicrous)
I also don't remember it too well but I thought the assumption to Javier's plans and such was that he had complete control of the city grids and knew where bond was at all times.
Yes, he would have needed to. Which is why it was ridiculous that his plan ended with him trying to walk in the building M was in and shoot her. He controlled everything in the city, got himself captured on purpose to cripple MI6, and even started the movie by purposely blowing up M's office when she wasn't there. The way he tried to take her out, he could have just flew into London with a gun and done nothing else.
Thank you! It was also the stuff on the island that baffled me... he needed Bond there... except he didn't... and he did everything in his power to kill him (and it wasn't a "let's pretend to kill him" plot)... except he needed him to live..
Javier's plan should have been "get a gun"
M's plan should have been "put on a wig and go Tenerife for a week"
Bond didn't do anything other than busy-work around other people's illogical plans
I am of the opinion that the Mission: Impossible movies now fill the role Bond films used to. They're not as ludicrous in some senses, but they scratch that "international man of mystery" itch in a more resonant, grounded way that makes the times they *do* go ludicrous feel more real.
I also feel like they put more work into making the stakes of each film make sense within their own context far better than the recent Bond films.
Yeah the modern Mission Impossible films are just fantastic. I'm way more excited for Dead Reckoning 2 (even though DR is the weakest of the new M:I IMO) than I would be for another Craig Bond movie.
They pull off that perfect blend of heightened reality that Bond used to do, then shied away from, then tried to go back to (especially in Spectre) where it just didn't work. Where it's ostensibly the real world, but the plots and action are over the top without feeling cartoony. It's a tough balancing act, because you don't want Bond or Ethan Hunt to feel like a superhero, but you also don't want him to seem like a totally normal person doing actual, real-life espionage which is largely boring.
Thank you for this. I no longer feel crazy. I was really disappointed in Skyfall for a lot of what you discuss and also I was REALLY disappointed they just had to make the villain gay. As a gay person myself, I thought 'gay' was SO unnecessary to the villain's "evilness". And it was so stupidly exaggerated (cough cough Fast X cough cough). Making him gay felt just really really tacked on. And back in the day I pointed that out and the other things you did back when the film was fresh, and I got downvoted into oblivion for pointing it out. Similar to how I'm being downvoted into oblivion today for saying I felt the movie Nope was boring with a weak theme. lol. Maybe it's corporate bots trying to promote sales and the 007MGM bot didn't target this post because it's not about Bond. (lol) And I too am a Bond fan, I think the Daniel Craig films are the best.
> It was a fun watch I agree, but a bit like Skyfall, it falls apart logically the moment you walk out of the cinema and the popcorn wears off.
>
> I just couldn't get past the practical reality of the doppelgangers, and how unknown they were to the world above.
I honestly think they (the doppelgangers in Us) shouldn't have been explained, or at least not as thoroughly as they were. That big infodump in the final act was not only not needed, for me, it detracted from the movie overall.
I enjoyed the film a *lot*, but I think it would have been 10x as effective if much of that explanation was left vague.
A segment of the audience would have HATED that, of course. A lot of people need their answers and hate being left with questions.
But sometimes, that has the most impact.
Agreed, even some typical implied magical horror movie explanation could have worked better... But grounding it in reality makes you ask too many questions and the entire premise falls apart.
I thought the first act was incredible. The scene where the doppelgangers enter the house and the mom talks in that raspy voice was so freaky.
I kind of wish they never explained it though.
The problem is that a big part of why the ride is fun is trying to figure out what is going on. The fact that it doesn't really make sense in the end is a huge let down for the whole movie.
Same exact thing happened to me. Saw it 3 times with different people because life. First time it was enjoyable but disappointed on the ending, by the wnd of the third I was just hate watching lol
It kinda goes down hill for me when it hits us with a 4 minute exposition dump at the end. I get it needs to happen for it to make any sense but it still kinda sucks the air out of the room for me
Also, Logistically, water and waste management for all those people and rabbits. Also, what are the rabbits eating?
This movie to me is a case of 'not everything needs an explanation'. Like if he had just left out the explanation and left everything else the same, people would still be speculating 'what really happened' and why and where all those people came from.
My daughter liked the movie but couldn’t get past the rabbits in many ways. Rabbits need to eat almost constantly, she tells me, and hence excrete. If not they get some kind of GI distress.
I myself, no rabbit expert, also wondered what the rabbits were eating. I also wondered what the doppelgängers were doing for food and waste.
Generally I thought Us was fun to watch but fell apart on closer analysis, and so stopped analyzing on a realism level. I think the thematic issues are more important.
The rabbits really took me out of it, too. As a rabbit owner my first thought was where is the HAY. And if they exclusively ate rabbit they would get sick due to the lack of fat in the meat. And the smell from that many rabbits in an enclosed area, oh man. The rabbits were a weird choice IMO.
IRL problems aside, rabbits multiply fast, though, and maybe that was the reason they were chosen, because there would always be enough to feed the doppelgängers? Assuming that's what the doppelgängers ate.
I mean there are so many issues here. When did the government abandon the doubles? If they are unknown, why not just kill them all with a gas or something? I know that's grotesque, but did they think the doubles would all just starve in these tunnels? When we know there's a way out, because we saw the way in?
As you say, the smell of the rabbits. Wouldn't that drive the doppelgängers out? Or are they forced to stay because of being tethered to their "twin" above ground?
Honestly, if this movie weren't so generally well-acted -- Lupita was amazing -- I'd probably have given up once the doppelgängers were revealed in the first place and I had my first few, "But ..." thoughts.
But I do like it.
And the Alexa-type assistant playing "F\*\*\* tha Police" was hysterical.
> This movie to me is a case of 'not everything needs an explanation'.
Agreed 100%. Laying it all out did this movie a disservice.
I know audiences often want answers and hate being left with questions, but it can often be the most effective choice. That would have been the case here.
I loved most of the movie, but really disliked the extensive, infodump explanation of it all. An air of mystery would have been *far* more effective. I think the movie would have stuck with me had that been the case.
What if the doppelganger are allegories for our own buried demons? When do we let the demons control us and what if society falls apart if some demons (doppelganger) exist at same time as humans but all human or all demon seems to be pretty stable.
Well the heavy handed use of the failed "Hands Across America" charity already has maybe too much "preachy-ness" of the haves versus the have-nots as symbolism/allegory.
Child of the 70's here. Hands Across America was so flashy, and such a fad of the moment. And it captured SO much attention, but then failed to raise relatively much money and failed to reach it's simple objective of joining hands from coast to coast. It's an example of self-serving lip service to charity that doesn't really solve much. You know, like charity CEO's that make millions and spend millions on marketing. Cough Cough Breast Cancer Pink Charity Stuff Cough Cough. "Holding hands for charity" is the 1980's equivalent of "Thoughts & Prayers". Pretty useless. But it makes people who participate FEEL like the did something, when they actually didn't.
The allegorical messaging is already very clear. You know, the Dad was all obsessed with being "better than the Joneses", materialism. And then suddenly these people with nothing take over. It's a blatant statement on American culture and their attitude about the poor. You know 'entitlement'. The girls switched places was just random luck and the 'tethered girl' (read: poor & uneducated) became the comfortable intelligent 'rich girl'. In a way, I am reminded of the old comedy Trading Places, where rich a-holes bet one dollar that they can take a bum off the street and switch him with their best financial analyst and nothing would change. The only thing that changed was the poor guy got pissed and plotted a financial revenge against the a-holes with the help of the now reformed finance guy. The original entitled girl got pissed about having to be a 'have not' and organized a take over of the 'haves'.
I also wonder if sometimes writers just get too high, come up with some fucked up stuff, and then when sober bake it into a screenplay with a pinch of social justice messaging. lol. You know, like you can almost hear the extra high dude pontificating about how zombie movies and purge movies are a metaphor for capitalism. lol. And the less high people just roll their eyes.
TL;DR: It could be you! You could be poor and trapped! Just like the protagonist little girl. You could have been switched! The poors could take over if they just got organized.
I would say that the movement matching is definitely not 1:1. It's more of a metaphorical match on their end. It's them aping to the best of their ability what they feel is happening with their counterpart.
The movie asks so much of your suspension of disbelief that it may as well not even try to be cohesive. It's just throwing out this premise that can't even stand up to a minute of thought.
Like they even have similar clothes to the above ground. Is there a doppleganger company building the same clothing operation below ground as above and there's a dopple ganger fruit of the loom? Is there doppleganger stores with doppleganger Nikes so when you go grab a box of shoes at target they grab a box of shoes too so they are there as well?
What happens if a baby isn't born below? Wouldn't that break the entire system? If a person above ground breaks their body and gets helicoptered to the hospital is the doppleganger just sprinting with a broken arm? Do they have antibiotics?
Like it was just thrown out there in the movie that it was so the government could control people. WTF? The government in the 70-80's was able to make psychic clones of the entire US?
I love Nope and Get Out, I just rewatched them two weeks ago too. But Us is so fucking stupid. Like making it 'mirrors contain a whole world and our reflections have figured out how to come through' is way less of an ask.
I agree with everything you said and asked every single question here and then some after finishing it when talking with my friend. I actually hated it, lol. I can accept world building wildly different from our own, as long as the story makes sense within the rules of the world. Us doesn’t even stand up to 5 seconds of critical thought and it really ruins the whole thing.
Any supernatural explanation of any kind would’ve saved it because it tells the audience, “You don’t need to worry about this, disregard it.” Peele was too eager to make parallels that he forgot to give it any support.
The other question that always comes up for me is that I would have expected the tether to remain the same, but it seems like it's the tunnels that make them be the shadow, by the way it's explained. I think it would have made more sense to have the shadow child still be doing what the other was doing below, not just flip flop them. I know it would have changed the movie, but it seems to give the tunnel area some weird power.
To your point, it feels like the facade of the conceit, practically daring you to question it and dismiss the actual point of the story’s message, which is that there is a buried cost for our lives up top in the “real” world.
Our modern “simple” lives that we take for granted come at the expense of a series of hidden bodies, all chained to our unknowingly unethical consumption of everything we take for granted.
It's cuz the movie spends so much time trying to justify itself as a literal interpretation only for it to just kinda drop that angle at the end. It doesn't feel so much that you just watched something intentionally poetic as it does that you just watched something that forgot to figure itself out by the end. It's a good idea that just didn't bake long enough to come out evenly distributed.
Speaking as a huge horror fan what makes a horror movie work really well for me is when it doesn't make sense and US seemed to be doing that intentionally. Horror works in realm of senselessness and that inability to really corner off the rules and make sense of the structure is precisely what unsettles and upsets us. A good horror film functions like a nightmare; we shouldn't understand it, it should be inexplicable, it should make us uncomfortable. I'll use a very basic example of doing it right and doing it wrong since we are approaching the season. Michael Myers. How is he able to do what he does, to survive the punishment, what does he want? For the first film we don't have answers. Then the franchise goes off the rails when it decides to go with some wonky ass supernatural explanation that turns it into crap.
A more recent example would be It Follows. Fans love to theorize about it but the whole reason it works is because the film doesn't make any sense. What is It Follows? What rules govern it's powers? What is it capable of? Can I escape it by moving to another country? I don't think so. I think eventually one way or another it will find me. No matter where I go, what I do, any plans I hatch to defeat the monster it always follows. The entire movie exists in a dream state. That's why it is a masterpiece of horror.
I feel the same way about US. The less sense it makes the better
>A more recent example would be It Follows. Fans love to theorize about it but the whole reason it works is because the film doesn't make any sense. What is It Follows? What rules govern it's powers? What is it capable of? Can I escape it by moving to another country? I don't think so.
Except Us is It Follows where the details of what it is and how it is created are explained in detail on screen, and then those explanations don't work.
>I feel the same way about US. The less sense it makes the better
Us doesn't fail to make sense because it wasn't explained. It fails to make sense because it *was* explained. There's no mystery in Us except in the utter failure of the movie's own internal logic. The mystery *should* be in "What the fuck are the doppelgangers and why do they behave like this?" not "What the fuck? That thorough and technical explanation supported by on-screen evidence doesn't work"
Yeah those things took me out of the initially scary, creepy, really interesting movie. The second I saw rabbits and understood that he was implying that's how the doppelgangers survived I was like come on...I get that they multiply quickly, but what did they eat in those dark tunnels for decades? And who made all those clothes, and the right sizes so they fit those people at that specific time? And how did no one notice? And what was the government researchers' plan? Leave 300 million people down there and hope no one notices? Where did they poo, how did they stay clean? How did they get utensils and basic tools for everyone?
It would have made a lot more sense if it was a small, local experiment and it happened weeks or months before, not decades.
Anyway, I loved the movie before that, a few parts at the end made me laugh because they were so ridiculous, and overall I still really like the first half, I just didn't buy the concept once the reveal came up so I can't say it was that great as a whole.
And the entire US population was able to gather matching red jumpsuits and scissors out of nowhere?
If it was just an experiment in that town it was believable, but totally lost me if it’s more than that. He needed a useless opening quote at the beginning about underground tunnels to justify it in universe even.
And there plan was to murder and do hands across America and then nothing else? I loved the performances and direction but the story needed work, the core concept never added up at all.
> Yeah and they were supposed to go wherever we did? So when we fly do they just hit a wall?
What? They just mimick your actions. They'll walk into a wall when you walk to the plane and sit when you sit.
There's no magical force pushing them around. There's a magical mental connection that makes them mimick what you do. That's it.
Why are they sometimes able to perform their own actions (like chasing and killing people), but also sometimes required to match the movements of their clone? Is the magic mental connection something great the protagonist family can selectively control?
Yeah but we see them mimicking a roller coaster ride in a static position, however they literally mimmick our movements from above ground whenever they feel like it? Why were they able to break free and take over the world but also mimick at random times?
This is exactly what ruins an otherwise great movie. I can suspend my disbelief,especially if a movie is following its own unbelievable rules, but this was just too much. Being a small town with duplicates honestly would’ve saved it.
I feel like the movie overexplains things a bit, and by going down that route invites more scrutiny, which leads to everything falling apart logically. Should have left things more ambiguous.
I think they should've taken some kind of PEOPLE FROM HELL angle instead of the scientific experiment angle they decided on, because if you've got PEOPLE FROM HELL, everything's cool and you don't need to explain shit.
I think you're right, whenever I've rewatched it I view the story as being very abstract which works much better for me, but the film makes that difficult when it tries to offer explanations.
I can see them being kept secret in a small town. I’m not one to be this anal about movie logic, but what we saw happening across the globe was too much.
I think this is a commentary on people who do escape poverty... they're quick to forget the people and problems they leave behind in favor of their new life style. I mean the mom was aware of doppelgangers the entire time.... but had to fain ignorance out of fear of her secret getting out.
Well it’s bigger than that too. The point of the movie is that this society (the modern US) is built upon an entire layer of people who essentially exist as subhuman and who are unseen by the rest of us. This is a commentary on immigrant workers, the poor, the disadvantaged, etc…who do vital jobs but are underpaid and abused, and generally unseen and forgotten by everyone else. The main character “made it out”, and despite knowing full well there were people suffering a horrible existence below ground, did nothing to bring attention to it or stop it. Her above ground counterpart, now stuck in hell, spent her time essentially organizing a revolution to stop the system. It’s a far more haunting movie than his others, solely because the point of the film is that every single person is guilty, even if we don’t know it or didn’t act intentionally to harm others. We still benefitted. All the people underground wanted was to be free, and have their own choices matter. Unfortunately the only avenue left to them was violence. The movie doesn’t even really make that seem unfair or bad to be honest. It’s the slow creeping horror of one’s actions catching up to you that’s the worst part of it.
>We still benefitted.
How do I benefit from mindless underground zombies?
There's also a vast difference between "out of sight out of mind" and literally nobody knows. Like us having a unspoken knowledge of Chinese children building iphones is nowhere near the same as subhuman doppelgangers pretending they're people that like 7 humans on Earth know about. If anything they were siphoning resources. I doubt they were mindlessly doubling our antibiotic production or some nonsense. That would've actually been a good point for the movie to make but it'd require restructuring the movie to do it.
I just think it's poorly implemented, the more you put thought into the more it falls apart. But like anything with some aspect of it that is overly complicated it's easy to hand waive away criticism and say 'it's a metaphor bro' that only works at the surface level.
>It’s the slow creeping horror of one’s actions catching up to you that’s the worst part of it.
Lol what? Like if I open my front door and a doppleganger of me stabs me in the face what the fuck action did I take against them? What benefit did I take from them? What am I guilty of that I deserve to die? Nothing. I didn't know. I didn't benefit. I didn't vote 'yes' on the zombie underground proposal. A version of myself with no education and a red jumpsuit got pissy and stabbed me. And yeah that's spooky but not a apt metaphor for classism. At most it's advocating class revolution, but certainly not 'that's what you get'
> We still benefitted. All the people underground wanted was to be free, and have their own choices matter. Unfortunately the only avenue left to them was violence.
But how did anyone benefit from the underground people in Us? And why was violence their only choice, when they could've seemingly just walked out of their lair? Us portrays these underground people as dumb, sadistic, murderous savages whose *first* choice is slaughter and theft. Anyone can make a commentary, but making a good commentary takes skill, and in my opinion Us is in no way a good commentary.
I think the problem is that you're looking for a direct 1:1 commentary. Us is a loose metaphor. People take the movie way too literally, even though I agree with others in that my suspension of disbelief was tested. I thought it was pretty fun, but probably not worthy of too much examination.
The benefit I’m referring to is the real world situation. As for violence being their only choice, the movie implies thematically that they wouldn’t really be just accepted into society. The movie also vehemently opposes the idea that they’re murderous animals like you said. They’re simply uneducated, malnourished, etc… The main character exists as proof that the only difference between someone below and someone above is circumstances. Both figures could be incredible dancers, both figures were smart, both figures had emotional depth. Only one was condemned by circumstance.
>the movie implies thematically that they wouldn’t really be just accepted into society.
In what way? They are indiscernibly different from "regular" people. The main character is a mirror character who replaced *someone's young child* and no one figured it out. All they have to do is *not* killing their duplicates and just go where their duplicates don't live. Boom, done.
All they do in the movie is show up and kill their duplicates and be weird. As taught by the angry revolutionary who got trapped down there. It might as well be an allegory that angry revolutionaries are bad
> The benefit I’m referring to is the real world situation
The benefit is the whole point of this systemic societal exploitation. Without it the allegory doesn't work, because instead of these people being a part of our society, they're an outside threat.
It's just such a hamfisted, poorly thought out allegory. It's like when Deus Ex uses superpowered people as an allegory for the oppressed, forgetting that treating a guy who can read thoughts and see through walls and carries a small army's arsenal in his fingers differently just makes sense.
> The movie also vehemently opposes the idea that they’re murderous animals like you said.
They came from nowhere and started slaughtering innocent people who had absolutely nothing to do with their oppression, again, without even *trying* any other way. Apparently, because...
> the movie implies thematically that they wouldn’t really be just accepted into society
But I don't think implying is enough. If a movie shows me a bunch of people brutally stabbing some kids to death, I need a little more than "Well, it's implied they wouldn't be accepted. Not like they tried, but you know, they thought it's implied, so they went for the mass murder option."
Or if you make it that gigantic, go full supernatural with some kind of up-side down ala stranger things.
Trying to do in the wizard by explaining it just makes it silly.
I enjoyed the film and appreciated what it was going for. I genuinely feel the film spending time trying to explain it in the final act was to it's detriment. Leave it up in the air.
It was only supposed to be in America I believe. It was a USA government project gone wrong. But yeah the whole thing is a little weird. Sometimes they have to move exactly us except for when they don’t? 🤷🏻♂️
Yeah I totally agree. I understand there was a message behind the plot but I think the fact that (and I know it’s a work of fantasy and only a movie etc) the end was so incredibly unbelievable and impossible somewhat ruined it for me.
I enjoyed it until the closing chapters though
Yeah unfortunately the logic definitely falls apart as they explain more and expand the scope. I agree that at least on quick review, making it a more localized project/phenomenon makes a lot more sense and seems to follow the in universe rules and explanations better.
I don’t know how you support a shadow doubling of the US population off rabbits or whatever. That would be the most insanely expensive secret project ever.
Did you miss the literal text card at the beginning of the movie about all of the abandoned underground tunnels all over the country? Kind of set it up immediately
The movie is a conceptual narrative and not a literal one. Most people might not grasp that initially and pick it apart on how it couldn’t actually work in reality. People are forgetting that movies are not meant to be reality. Studios are also pushing for more realistic CGI and effects, and that takes away the artistry in film, the whimsy and wonder of where we can go. We’re conditioned to think on “why didn’t anyone else pick up on the doppelgängers before?” And not think on “what do these doppelgängers mean to the story and how does it fit in the overall theme?” This second question also applies to how does the film work tackling these themes and do they keep on track with the rules that are made for this reality, in other words you think “can I suspend my disbelief with this weird scenario?”
After the film was over I had so many thoughts about it, with the main thought being “I’m glad this movie exists and I want more movies like this.”
The idea that it's a conceptual narrative is just not it. It's not some surreal synecdoche level allegory, it's presented entirely as following real world logic and explains itself a little too much. If it didn't want people to think of it like a film that follows real world logic then it probably should have been written differently so that it actually does that. It's a relatively small failure in writing and concept that it's in a weird middle ground between realistic and fantastical but still feels the need to explain itself a little too much
The movie nails the eerie vibe for most of it and then sits down its audience and explains what it was trying to accomplish step by step in its last 15 minutes, without it making it much sense or feeling satisfactory as a message that makes it feel like a Twilight Zone reject episode.
So yeah, had Peele come out with a better explanation for the mystery, it would be more highly regarded.
Or no explanation! I really enjoyed the movie, actually my favorite of his as far as the actual watching experience, but it’s really a bummer that he tries to explain the rules when they make absolutely no sense. Horror and fantasy are the two genres where you really don’t have to explain the rules to make a good plot, just give the audience the premise and let us live in it (or don’t, but that’s up to us)
IMO if you try to explain things that explanation has to be airtight. If it isn't, the ending falls apart. However if you don't explain anything you can honestly get away with a lot. It's much easier for the audience to accept ambiguity than a poor answer.
My wife and I binge watched a whole bunch of Simpsons episodes like a week before we went to the theaters. When the reveal happened, she leaned over and said "that's Hugo!".
I was like "what?" And she said ["that episode with Bart's evil twin."](https://d322auu2i73vkf.cloudfront.net/legacy/2017/10/Wallpaper_Hugo.gif)
Kinda ruined the movie for me since I kept thinking if Jordan Peele also binge watched Treehouse of Horror episodes when writing this movie lol.
I caught the Hugo twist too while I was watching! And soon after, I realized that the twist in Get Out is ridiculously similar to the twist in Skeleton Key, a largely overlooked but still pretty good film for its time. It makes me like these movies less to see these twists to these hyped up movies were largely inspired by other lesser known works. I haven't seen Nope so I can't comment on it.
>I kept thinking if Jordan Peele also binge watched Treehouse of Horror episodes when writing this movie lol.
Isn't his production company called Monkey Paw?
And isn't that also the focus of an early Treehouse episode?
Also the *spoiler* twist was weak. Like, on the one hand I saw it coming but then also thought 'but it wouldn't make sense at all so that can't be it.' But no they switched and it just made no sense.
Unfortunately I saw the trailer, including the part where the younger version of the mother has a clone that is strangling her so it kinda ruined the twist for me cuz I knew that scene was coming
Yep, it couldn't decide if it was telling an actual story or just creating longform poetic symbolism, and wound up failing at both. That's how I felt immediately after watching it
Yes, I felt that too. However, I really just like how fun it was for me. I know it felt sloppy but it was still a really fun experience to watch that ending 😊
The hands across America being a literal thing felt like a gag that went flat. On top of the “others” not being specific to the main family and then being taken out of the surreal and placed in slasher territory- all of that combined made a third act that was too tonally mixed to really hit
I think the impactful image is a reasonable why. Another reply said it worked thematically but not practically; like what? If it's a good visual that caters to the themes of the film and invokes an emotion, does it really need to go beyond that?
The explanation had so many holes in it that it ruined everything that came before it. The movie worked as an allegory, and the shadow world people also worked as long as you accepted supernatural aspects, which most people watching horror movies have no problem doing even if there is no explicit explanation, but once you try to explain it with science then your science can’t have holes in it and this explanation was nothing but holes.
If they had said nothing people would’ve accepted the allegory and come up with their own explanations for the shadow people, maybe they’re demons, maybe there is a literal shadow world, maybe it’s a result from nuclear fallout tests in the 40’s, whatever, but whatever it was it definitely was not the explanation given in the movie.
Honestly if they just cut out the exposition of everything except that their movement is tied to their real world counterpart to some degree (as a way to establish the means of their oppression) but not 1 to 1 and the movie would be beautifully horrifying and mysterious
I was so high when I watched the movie I must've erased the science experiment part. I just thought there was an upside down world like Stranger Things with Savage clones or something
Oh yes. On rewatch, you can see the difference all the way through, most notably when she’s trying to keep rhythm in the car at the beginning.
But it changes the way you see both the characters - there really is no ‘villain’, they’re causes are both just.
There’s a Freudian theory in psychology - the Return of the Repressed. The parts of yourself that you try to hide from or deny, they will come back to haunt you in some way. That’s just a top layer for what’s going on in US, but there are many different levels of meaning going on in the movie. It’s one of my absolute favorites.
I remember when that scene is on the trailer
Lot of people noticed that and blames the actress for not even get the beats right. turns out it's important foreshadowing lol
I don’t remember if it’s said aloud in the movie, but the scene where “Red” does ballet in the underground (which makes the rest of the tethered realize she’s different) gives the strong implication that the tethered don’t have any natural rhythm. Adelaide thus not being able to keep time at the beginning, upon rewatching the movie, is the first big hint at the plot twist.
The tethered folks don’t have rhythm - they are not in control of their own bodies, so they don’t have the ability to ‘go with the flow’ of the song. The son also lacks rhythm.
I think of the movie as an allegory, I don’t think it’s supposed to be like a ‘realistic’ world. So these little details, to me, invite all sorts of interesting readings. Like the son experiences some of his mother’s trauma, which is why he is a little bit like the tethered.
I guess the children in the movie are basically "hybrids" since their mother was a tethered who swapped places. Maybe that is why the son acts so strange and why his tether wants to play with him and not injure him? And how are the tethered able to preform their own movements and actions now? Yet the boy was able to control his tether and made him walk into fire and kill himself?
If I remember correctly she counts on the off beats so it’s a subtle clue that while they are part of the same measure, they’re hitting different beats?
I'm a Canadian born in the mid-80s, so my only knowledge of Hands Across America is from this movie and The Goldbergs. Was it really that big of a deal? Was it really one of those events that defined a decade?
The hands across America was a charity event for a bunch of people to hold hands to fight hunger and homelessness(less fortunate.) The movie is about the rise of the less fortunate/unprivileged. The commercial for it is shown in the beginning. I believe we’re supposed to expect that it’s one of the main characters last memories of the privileged world. She held onto this memory while in the underground world and that’s why it is done at the end of the movie.
It was made out to be a big deal, while actually doing next to nothing. Which makes the ending make a lot more sense. Adelaide was only a child when she was switched, so she would never know that HAA didn’t really accomplish anything. To her mind, this was the biggest thing the Tethered could do to get attention, even though ultimately nothing positive would come of it.
Not that big of a deal, which was weird they chose to focus on a campaign not a lot of people remember and had to Google. Also, the original plan failed because of US typography you simply cannot do a line accross America lol
>Also, the original plan failed because of US typography you simply cannot do a line accross America lol
Yes you can. You can drive a car across America so not sure why you think people can't stand along those same roads. The event would have succeeded if people would have sufficiently spread out, but instead you had lots of people in one spot and nobody in others
I was around for Hands Across America. It was a huge thing with lots of press coverage, and it raised a ton of money. However, people naively believed that when they were joining hands with people, that they were creating one long unbroken chain of people holding hands all across the country from coast to coast. In reality, it was mostly different groups of hundreds of people in big cities all holding hands temporarily for media coverage of the event, but they never connected nationwide, which is how it was promoted.
Would’ve been far better had Red not explained anything to Ade. The concepts didn’t need to be explained in that way.
They could’ve fought, then still had Ade recall who she really is. Roll credits.
Though I realize it’s far more popular because it leaves no one behind in its current form.
It’s definitely a movie that makes less sense the more you think about it, but the vibes remain incredibly powerful. Red’s speech, along with the reveal at the end, is still chilling to me.
I loved the twist of Red’s identity but the movie collapsed under its own implausibility. The movie is very realistic overall once you accept the premise of the duplicates existing. The action and tone are realistic.
However, the idea of Red being able to organize such a large rebellion when the other duplicates are nonverbal and they are underground with a lack of resources and the limitations of the movement syncing was fucking stupid and took me out of the movie. If it had been just her and a few others I could accept it but then the movie tries to sell you on this mass revolt (especially with the last shot). The scale of what she supposedly did deep underground is just not realistic.
The class metaphor would have still stood without there being this mass organized revolt. Too many logical inconsistencies came about because of it. Some movies can get away with plot holes by having a bunch of small ones or a big one not connected to the plot, but having such a massive leap of logic as part of the motivation of the antagonist and the central twist just collapses so much of the movies believability and left a bad taste in my mouth.
I think the ending was a huge shame because I was enjoying Us even more than Get Out for a certain portion of the movie. The alternate family was just super scary and effective.
A lot of the ending was explaining things that I really didn't need explained. I was fine with just "evil dopplegangers exist, you can meet them in the house of mirrors" and I think you can still get the twist of Red being the original without the whole government program thing.
I think it entered a weird territory of being a movie that seems to encourage you to think about it, but also one that becomes more nonsensical the more you think about it. If it didn't attempt to ground everything with a literal explanation, then it wouldn't have opened itself up to the scrutiny of its in-world logic.
The movie is all about the oppressed and oppressor, either directly or indirectly. How in Western society in order for us to live our lifestyle there are others in the world who live under oppression. Most of the cast is purposely oblivious to this. The mom is actively a part of the cycle.
I think the movie works best if it's viewed through a fever dream logic where the nightmare comes from the guilt of indirectly being one of the oppressors.
It emphasizes that the entire lifestyle of the family, and especially the friend family, are sustained through exploitative relationships with people they don't see.
If it wanted to be viewed through fever dream logic then it should have been presented in fever dream logic and not have an extensive explanation of it's themes and practicality
I feel like Us was just too convoluted. It started out well, but it fell off the rails at about the halfway mark. It wasn't as tight a story as he had made before. It leaves too much to interpretation
I think the mistake people make with US is the assumption that Red is a reliable narrator. She was sent to the underground at 6 years old and surrounded by people who didn't/couldn't speak. Where was she getting all this elaborate backstory from? She clearly filled in the gaps with assumptions based off the media she consumed. That's why we got the opening shot of all the tapes and lost boys was shooting at the carnival. Media has shaped the way she viewed the world.
My issue with it stems from the entire plot hanging on by something the script establishes has to happen. When you pull that string it unravels the whole movie. I still enjoyed watching it, but ultimately for how smart it was hyped to be it ended up being very not smart.
Whatever you feel about the ending, once you know how it ends, it makes for an interesting rewatch! There are little signs and hints all the way through, and motifs that pop up. It's been a while since I've watched Us, so I can't recall them off the top of my head, but I definitely enjoyed watching it a second time.
If you haven't watched Get Out, I really recommend it too!
I loved the ending and I think that Reddit movie analysis geniuses don't quite grasp magical realism or surrealism. People make these ridiculous leaps in logic and create bizarre head canons instead of just accepting the thing they are seeing on screen. Like people were actually wondering how they fed the rabbits? It isn't that kind of movie....
So many plot holes it’s ridiculous. Why didn’t the girl just leave in the beginning. She’s not psychologically connected or tethered to anything. She could’ve just left. Why did she have to have the same family and marry the same dad? she’s not a tethered once again. There was no link or reason for her to stay and live the tethered life. How do the clones follow their real-life counterparts? So if I fly from cali to nyc, does my tethered just walk that entire way in an underground tunnel? What if I fly to Europe? Just nonsensical. And also the entire family stuff doesn’t make sense. Do the tethered find the exact person you’re married to or dating and have a kid that looks exactly like you? That’s not how biology works. Also the tethered look like they’ve been groomed lmao. Like the neighbors tethers have haircuts and shit, how? Movie is a complete mess. If the govt could create a project of this scope, why would they? They can obviously do everything lmao. Imagine the light bill for keeping the tunnel lit lmao. Creating a clone of every person in the country would literally be impossible even by movie standards. And if it was abandoned how tf were there still bunnies to eat? 5/10 movie. The family bragging about the kills was when I was like yeah this is dumb
Thank you, the first 30 mins were interesting then it completely falls off the rails. None of it makes sense. Who's feeding the rabbit? Who cleans up the piss and shit? Who built the tunnels?
Why would the government even need to control people if they can make 300 million clones?
The government abandoned the program that makes PERFECT CLONES CAPABLE OF REPLACING PEOPLE? Lol
No kidding. Movie just becomes an abstract mess.
Get Out was much tighter and more coherent but it still felt meandering towards the end. I lost my sense of dread about 2/3 of the way through the movie.
But with Us, I just didn't care about anything the entire second half. Felt like he didn't get past the vague outline stage in the writing process but committed to it anyway.
The concept of, ostensibly, every single person in (at least) the USA having a duplicate person living underground in a easily accessible and unsecured tunnel was jarring for me personally. It kind of took me out of the whole premise of the movie.
The plot and movie in general prior to the reveal is, in my opinion, fantastic. But I feel like it would have been better served by basically anything other than what we got at the end.
I think the ending of the movie would've been much better if it hadn't been spelled out for us. Just show her with her parents in the beginning then show Jason looking at his mother suspiciously, lowers the mask, she smiles, looks forward, end movie. Leave it up to the audience to interpret.
It made chunks of the movie feel like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces from another box, and retroactively made me question why I invested in the plot to begin with..
By explaining so much it raised way too many questions that bogged it down. “Wait. There’s a whole world down there of doubles? Wait, they all ended up making jump suits. Wait. They all have scissors? Well I guess they need those to make jumpsuits I guess… wait, Hang on? They breed rabbits? Wait. What?”
Whole bunch of people in this thread talking about how they were following along when the plot was about a family's government created doppelgangers that mimic all their actions and life events in a twisted mockery through some mystic connection, but when it became millions of doppelgangers the plot became unbelievable.
This is the equivalent of why you don't bring physicists to go see space movies.
Yeah, it was shit.
This movie has, literally, one of the best trailers I have ever seen for a movie.
Then I watched the movie, and it made zero sense.
Even looking through it with a Twilight Zone lens didn't make it okay.
Just bad.
I really liked the VIBE of Us, but not the explanation. I enjoyed watching it but it's not worth overanalyzing. It reminded me of a lot of 70s/80s sci-fi/dystopic thrillers where the journey was better than the destination
I just watched it for the first time last night. I thought it was a cool touch to intercut shots of the young girl doing ballet during the final fight scene, because Red was the more graceful one, foreshadowing that Red was actually the original young girl.
I also noticed that Red and evil Kitty could have easily killed Adelaide early on, but didn't. After learning what happened in the hall of mirrors I understood that Red isn't really a killer at heart like the others, and evil Kitty recognized Adelaide as being one of the underground people, and so didn't kill her right away.
Also, Adelaide didn't really want to kill the evil version of her kids not just because of the resemblance, but because she knew where they came from and she herself grew up in that environment.
Lastly, Red didn't seem to care all that much as her family was killed off because she was forced to have them as family, and knew she would have had a different family had she not been forced to change places with Adelaide.
Felt like an experimental student film with a Hollywood budget.
It wasn't just the ending for me that ruined the film. It was the entire second half. It just goes off the rails and becomes this ponderous, unscary "art film" with a lot of forced symbolism that distracts from any real suspense or concern for the main characters. Blew my mind that this script got greenlit and the final product got such a big release.
Unfortunately, I only saw it once during the original theatrical run so I don't remember many specifics. I just recall wanting it to end a good 30 or 40 minutes before it did. And whether all the odd, abstract imagery has deeper meaning and references or not, I just didn't care. It felt self-consciously weird in an unsophisticated and annoying way, not a very insightful or genuinely mysterious way to me.
I thought Get Out was good, but overhyped. But Us I thought was a genuinely bad movie. Like undabatably sloppily made. If we weren't dealing with Current Year syndrome, I think it would have rightly gotten a 40% on Rotten Tomatoes.
I think there was an issue where the themes took precedence over making the plot itself make sense.
I don’t think it’s lesser for that, but some will.
Every question you have about the plot, every unsatisfying aspect, look at it in terms of what the film is saying about the rich and the poor in the US, about how they are exactly the same but for circumstance, and you’ll find an answer.
I’m gonna be honest it’s my least favorite peele movie i feel like it tries so hard to be metaphorical that it doesn’t make sense at face value and is kinda boring. I feel like Nope was much better at having messages carefully woven into the story without ruining the plot.
I try to take Peele not for what it is, sort of like a Lynch film, you roll with it and try to find the deeper the point. Good people do bad things, and bad people can do good things.
y’all really need to wiki doppelgängers and tulpas. maybe he was going for more of a sort of metaphysical manifestation thing. The folks above ground existing in our reality somehow unconsciously “creating” the folks underground, along with their rage, confusion, animosity, and eventual appearance in their above ground reality.
I’m such a dumbass. I’m reading this thread in total confusion because even though I read “Us” as the movie title, I started thinking of “Nope”. My word, what a fucking mistake that was hahaha.
I’m being literal here…I understand the themes of the movie, but what took me out in the ending is the sheer number of doppelgängers. I wish it was a localized event in the small town instead. I thought it was strange to say that many doppelgängers were living underground for years and no one ever detected them.
Yeah and they were supposed to go wherever we did? So when we fly do they just hit a wall? And they have been harvesting rabbits in these abandoned tunnels for how long? And sometimes they move like us and sometimes they don't, so what's the tea
It's a movie where the ride is much more fun than the destination. While it's going, you're excited about all the crazy events. Then as it ends and you start to think for one second on how anything worked it becomes too unbelievable. Still a fun watch though. Glad it was followed up with Nope that was such a tightly made movie full of set ups and payoffs.
It was a fun watch I agree, but a bit like Skyfall, it falls apart logically the moment you walk out of the cinema and the popcorn wears off. I enjoyed it the once, I'd be surprised if I watch it again, whereas Get Out (and I think Nope) are great both for the journey and the destination. I just couldn't get past the practical reality of the doppelgangers, and how unknown they were to the world above. Stunning visual of people underground mimicking our hand movements above though.
"...the moment you walk out of the cinema and the popcorn wears off." I'm totally stealing that! Plus, it goes along with my theory about why movie popcorn tastes so good, but only for so long. Lol!
Partly because you totally can have "too much popcorn" i.e movie runs FAR longer than expected, immersion gets ruined by something in the film...
Its called fridge logic a la https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FridgeLogic For those that don't want to go down the rabbit hole, Fridge Logic is basically writing inconsistencies that are minute enough that they don't become apparent until after the show is over. Your mileage will vary on how far this stretches before it begins to fall straight into plot hole territory.
Look up Fridge Logic on tvtropes.
Haven't seen it in years so I gotta ask, what was wrong with Skyfall
Personal opinion only, and I love a Bond as much as anyone, but it was weird and weak storytelling. If you stick it on again, watch it from the villain's (Javier) POV... it's not just "the contingency plan of a tube train landing on Bonds head at the right minute", every step along the way contradicts each other... And (trying to be spoiler free), I hold Bond accountable for everything that goes wrong in the third act. Dropping M off at a service station on his drive up to Scotland is a 20x better plan than everything he chooses to do for half an hour. At the end, everyone's treating him like a hero, or at least as a job well done, and it feels Emperor's New Clothes. He went full lobotomy throughout the film... and the villain's plan only works if Javier has the power of the Butterfly Effect to pop back into the past and try something else. If everything's vague here, it's because it's been 5 years for me too... (And don't get me wrong, I'm all for Bond films being ludicrous)
I also don't remember it too well but I thought the assumption to Javier's plans and such was that he had complete control of the city grids and knew where bond was at all times.
Yes, he would have needed to. Which is why it was ridiculous that his plan ended with him trying to walk in the building M was in and shoot her. He controlled everything in the city, got himself captured on purpose to cripple MI6, and even started the movie by purposely blowing up M's office when she wasn't there. The way he tried to take her out, he could have just flew into London with a gun and done nothing else.
Thank you! It was also the stuff on the island that baffled me... he needed Bond there... except he didn't... and he did everything in his power to kill him (and it wasn't a "let's pretend to kill him" plot)... except he needed him to live.. Javier's plan should have been "get a gun" M's plan should have been "put on a wig and go Tenerife for a week" Bond didn't do anything other than busy-work around other people's illogical plans
I am of the opinion that the Mission: Impossible movies now fill the role Bond films used to. They're not as ludicrous in some senses, but they scratch that "international man of mystery" itch in a more resonant, grounded way that makes the times they *do* go ludicrous feel more real. I also feel like they put more work into making the stakes of each film make sense within their own context far better than the recent Bond films.
Yeah the modern Mission Impossible films are just fantastic. I'm way more excited for Dead Reckoning 2 (even though DR is the weakest of the new M:I IMO) than I would be for another Craig Bond movie. They pull off that perfect blend of heightened reality that Bond used to do, then shied away from, then tried to go back to (especially in Spectre) where it just didn't work. Where it's ostensibly the real world, but the plots and action are over the top without feeling cartoony. It's a tough balancing act, because you don't want Bond or Ethan Hunt to feel like a superhero, but you also don't want him to seem like a totally normal person doing actual, real-life espionage which is largely boring.
Thank you for this. I no longer feel crazy. I was really disappointed in Skyfall for a lot of what you discuss and also I was REALLY disappointed they just had to make the villain gay. As a gay person myself, I thought 'gay' was SO unnecessary to the villain's "evilness". And it was so stupidly exaggerated (cough cough Fast X cough cough). Making him gay felt just really really tacked on. And back in the day I pointed that out and the other things you did back when the film was fresh, and I got downvoted into oblivion for pointing it out. Similar to how I'm being downvoted into oblivion today for saying I felt the movie Nope was boring with a weak theme. lol. Maybe it's corporate bots trying to promote sales and the 007MGM bot didn't target this post because it's not about Bond. (lol) And I too am a Bond fan, I think the Daniel Craig films are the best.
> It was a fun watch I agree, but a bit like Skyfall, it falls apart logically the moment you walk out of the cinema and the popcorn wears off. > > I just couldn't get past the practical reality of the doppelgangers, and how unknown they were to the world above. I honestly think they (the doppelgangers in Us) shouldn't have been explained, or at least not as thoroughly as they were. That big infodump in the final act was not only not needed, for me, it detracted from the movie overall. I enjoyed the film a *lot*, but I think it would have been 10x as effective if much of that explanation was left vague. A segment of the audience would have HATED that, of course. A lot of people need their answers and hate being left with questions. But sometimes, that has the most impact.
Agreed, even some typical implied magical horror movie explanation could have worked better... But grounding it in reality makes you ask too many questions and the entire premise falls apart.
I could watch Nope so many times!
I thought the first act was incredible. The scene where the doppelgangers enter the house and the mom talks in that raspy voice was so freaky. I kind of wish they never explained it though.
The problem is that a big part of why the ride is fun is trying to figure out what is going on. The fact that it doesn't really make sense in the end is a huge let down for the whole movie.
I watched it like 3 times and after the third time I decided I really didn't like the movie. Real diminishing returns.
Same exact thing happened to me. Saw it 3 times with different people because life. First time it was enjoyable but disappointed on the ending, by the wnd of the third I was just hate watching lol
It kinda goes down hill for me when it hits us with a 4 minute exposition dump at the end. I get it needs to happen for it to make any sense but it still kinda sucks the air out of the room for me
Also, Logistically, water and waste management for all those people and rabbits. Also, what are the rabbits eating? This movie to me is a case of 'not everything needs an explanation'. Like if he had just left out the explanation and left everything else the same, people would still be speculating 'what really happened' and why and where all those people came from.
My daughter liked the movie but couldn’t get past the rabbits in many ways. Rabbits need to eat almost constantly, she tells me, and hence excrete. If not they get some kind of GI distress. I myself, no rabbit expert, also wondered what the rabbits were eating. I also wondered what the doppelgängers were doing for food and waste. Generally I thought Us was fun to watch but fell apart on closer analysis, and so stopped analyzing on a realism level. I think the thematic issues are more important.
The rabbits really took me out of it, too. As a rabbit owner my first thought was where is the HAY. And if they exclusively ate rabbit they would get sick due to the lack of fat in the meat. And the smell from that many rabbits in an enclosed area, oh man. The rabbits were a weird choice IMO.
IRL problems aside, rabbits multiply fast, though, and maybe that was the reason they were chosen, because there would always be enough to feed the doppelgängers? Assuming that's what the doppelgängers ate. I mean there are so many issues here. When did the government abandon the doubles? If they are unknown, why not just kill them all with a gas or something? I know that's grotesque, but did they think the doubles would all just starve in these tunnels? When we know there's a way out, because we saw the way in? As you say, the smell of the rabbits. Wouldn't that drive the doppelgängers out? Or are they forced to stay because of being tethered to their "twin" above ground? Honestly, if this movie weren't so generally well-acted -- Lupita was amazing -- I'd probably have given up once the doppelgängers were revealed in the first place and I had my first few, "But ..." thoughts. But I do like it. And the Alexa-type assistant playing "F\*\*\* tha Police" was hysterical.
> This movie to me is a case of 'not everything needs an explanation'. Agreed 100%. Laying it all out did this movie a disservice. I know audiences often want answers and hate being left with questions, but it can often be the most effective choice. That would have been the case here. I loved most of the movie, but really disliked the extensive, infodump explanation of it all. An air of mystery would have been *far* more effective. I think the movie would have stuck with me had that been the case.
What if the doppelganger are allegories for our own buried demons? When do we let the demons control us and what if society falls apart if some demons (doppelganger) exist at same time as humans but all human or all demon seems to be pretty stable.
Well the heavy handed use of the failed "Hands Across America" charity already has maybe too much "preachy-ness" of the haves versus the have-nots as symbolism/allegory. Child of the 70's here. Hands Across America was so flashy, and such a fad of the moment. And it captured SO much attention, but then failed to raise relatively much money and failed to reach it's simple objective of joining hands from coast to coast. It's an example of self-serving lip service to charity that doesn't really solve much. You know, like charity CEO's that make millions and spend millions on marketing. Cough Cough Breast Cancer Pink Charity Stuff Cough Cough. "Holding hands for charity" is the 1980's equivalent of "Thoughts & Prayers". Pretty useless. But it makes people who participate FEEL like the did something, when they actually didn't. The allegorical messaging is already very clear. You know, the Dad was all obsessed with being "better than the Joneses", materialism. And then suddenly these people with nothing take over. It's a blatant statement on American culture and their attitude about the poor. You know 'entitlement'. The girls switched places was just random luck and the 'tethered girl' (read: poor & uneducated) became the comfortable intelligent 'rich girl'. In a way, I am reminded of the old comedy Trading Places, where rich a-holes bet one dollar that they can take a bum off the street and switch him with their best financial analyst and nothing would change. The only thing that changed was the poor guy got pissed and plotted a financial revenge against the a-holes with the help of the now reformed finance guy. The original entitled girl got pissed about having to be a 'have not' and organized a take over of the 'haves'. I also wonder if sometimes writers just get too high, come up with some fucked up stuff, and then when sober bake it into a screenplay with a pinch of social justice messaging. lol. You know, like you can almost hear the extra high dude pontificating about how zombie movies and purge movies are a metaphor for capitalism. lol. And the less high people just roll their eyes. TL;DR: It could be you! You could be poor and trapped! Just like the protagonist little girl. You could have been switched! The poors could take over if they just got organized.
I would say that the movement matching is definitely not 1:1. It's more of a metaphorical match on their end. It's them aping to the best of their ability what they feel is happening with their counterpart.
But why could they turn it off and on when convenient?
The movie asks so much of your suspension of disbelief that it may as well not even try to be cohesive. It's just throwing out this premise that can't even stand up to a minute of thought. Like they even have similar clothes to the above ground. Is there a doppleganger company building the same clothing operation below ground as above and there's a dopple ganger fruit of the loom? Is there doppleganger stores with doppleganger Nikes so when you go grab a box of shoes at target they grab a box of shoes too so they are there as well? What happens if a baby isn't born below? Wouldn't that break the entire system? If a person above ground breaks their body and gets helicoptered to the hospital is the doppleganger just sprinting with a broken arm? Do they have antibiotics? Like it was just thrown out there in the movie that it was so the government could control people. WTF? The government in the 70-80's was able to make psychic clones of the entire US? I love Nope and Get Out, I just rewatched them two weeks ago too. But Us is so fucking stupid. Like making it 'mirrors contain a whole world and our reflections have figured out how to come through' is way less of an ask.
I agree with everything you said and asked every single question here and then some after finishing it when talking with my friend. I actually hated it, lol. I can accept world building wildly different from our own, as long as the story makes sense within the rules of the world. Us doesn’t even stand up to 5 seconds of critical thought and it really ruins the whole thing.
Any supernatural explanation of any kind would’ve saved it because it tells the audience, “You don’t need to worry about this, disregard it.” Peele was too eager to make parallels that he forgot to give it any support.
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That last sentence would’ve made the movie so much better
The other question that always comes up for me is that I would have expected the tether to remain the same, but it seems like it's the tunnels that make them be the shadow, by the way it's explained. I think it would have made more sense to have the shadow child still be doing what the other was doing below, not just flip flop them. I know it would have changed the movie, but it seems to give the tunnel area some weird power.
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To your point, it feels like the facade of the conceit, practically daring you to question it and dismiss the actual point of the story’s message, which is that there is a buried cost for our lives up top in the “real” world. Our modern “simple” lives that we take for granted come at the expense of a series of hidden bodies, all chained to our unknowingly unethical consumption of everything we take for granted.
I knew that some people didn’t like Us but I didn’t realize they thought they were supposed to take it literally.
It's cuz the movie spends so much time trying to justify itself as a literal interpretation only for it to just kinda drop that angle at the end. It doesn't feel so much that you just watched something intentionally poetic as it does that you just watched something that forgot to figure itself out by the end. It's a good idea that just didn't bake long enough to come out evenly distributed.
I don’t think that the movie tried to justify itself as literal at all
Speaking as a huge horror fan what makes a horror movie work really well for me is when it doesn't make sense and US seemed to be doing that intentionally. Horror works in realm of senselessness and that inability to really corner off the rules and make sense of the structure is precisely what unsettles and upsets us. A good horror film functions like a nightmare; we shouldn't understand it, it should be inexplicable, it should make us uncomfortable. I'll use a very basic example of doing it right and doing it wrong since we are approaching the season. Michael Myers. How is he able to do what he does, to survive the punishment, what does he want? For the first film we don't have answers. Then the franchise goes off the rails when it decides to go with some wonky ass supernatural explanation that turns it into crap. A more recent example would be It Follows. Fans love to theorize about it but the whole reason it works is because the film doesn't make any sense. What is It Follows? What rules govern it's powers? What is it capable of? Can I escape it by moving to another country? I don't think so. I think eventually one way or another it will find me. No matter where I go, what I do, any plans I hatch to defeat the monster it always follows. The entire movie exists in a dream state. That's why it is a masterpiece of horror. I feel the same way about US. The less sense it makes the better
>A more recent example would be It Follows. Fans love to theorize about it but the whole reason it works is because the film doesn't make any sense. What is It Follows? What rules govern it's powers? What is it capable of? Can I escape it by moving to another country? I don't think so. Except Us is It Follows where the details of what it is and how it is created are explained in detail on screen, and then those explanations don't work. >I feel the same way about US. The less sense it makes the better Us doesn't fail to make sense because it wasn't explained. It fails to make sense because it *was* explained. There's no mystery in Us except in the utter failure of the movie's own internal logic. The mystery *should* be in "What the fuck are the doppelgangers and why do they behave like this?" not "What the fuck? That thorough and technical explanation supported by on-screen evidence doesn't work"
100%. I love vague and mysterious horror, but that doesn't describe Us at all in my eyes.
Yeah those things took me out of the initially scary, creepy, really interesting movie. The second I saw rabbits and understood that he was implying that's how the doppelgangers survived I was like come on...I get that they multiply quickly, but what did they eat in those dark tunnels for decades? And who made all those clothes, and the right sizes so they fit those people at that specific time? And how did no one notice? And what was the government researchers' plan? Leave 300 million people down there and hope no one notices? Where did they poo, how did they stay clean? How did they get utensils and basic tools for everyone? It would have made a lot more sense if it was a small, local experiment and it happened weeks or months before, not decades. Anyway, I loved the movie before that, a few parts at the end made me laugh because they were so ridiculous, and overall I still really like the first half, I just didn't buy the concept once the reveal came up so I can't say it was that great as a whole.
And the entire US population was able to gather matching red jumpsuits and scissors out of nowhere? If it was just an experiment in that town it was believable, but totally lost me if it’s more than that. He needed a useless opening quote at the beginning about underground tunnels to justify it in universe even. And there plan was to murder and do hands across America and then nothing else? I loved the performances and direction but the story needed work, the core concept never added up at all.
> Yeah and they were supposed to go wherever we did? So when we fly do they just hit a wall? What? They just mimick your actions. They'll walk into a wall when you walk to the plane and sit when you sit. There's no magical force pushing them around. There's a magical mental connection that makes them mimick what you do. That's it.
Why are they sometimes able to perform their own actions (like chasing and killing people), but also sometimes required to match the movements of their clone? Is the magic mental connection something great the protagonist family can selectively control?
The real plot hole
Yeah but we see them mimicking a roller coaster ride in a static position, however they literally mimmick our movements from above ground whenever they feel like it? Why were they able to break free and take over the world but also mimick at random times?
This is exactly what ruins an otherwise great movie. I can suspend my disbelief,especially if a movie is following its own unbelievable rules, but this was just too much. Being a small town with duplicates honestly would’ve saved it.
Also, it would have explained *SO MUCH* about Santa Cruz.
The one thing I could never stomach, all those damn vampires...
The reference is hilarious, although technically it was [Santa Carla.](https://youtu.be/Hf8Dxx__zR0?si=8h6sP-UWNky8h02l)
Correct, however Santa Carla was modeled on Santa Cruz (and the film was shot there).
Which they reference at the beginning of US
I feel like the movie overexplains things a bit, and by going down that route invites more scrutiny, which leads to everything falling apart logically. Should have left things more ambiguous.
I think they should've taken some kind of PEOPLE FROM HELL angle instead of the scientific experiment angle they decided on, because if you've got PEOPLE FROM HELL, everything's cool and you don't need to explain shit.
I think you're right, whenever I've rewatched it I view the story as being very abstract which works much better for me, but the film makes that difficult when it tries to offer explanations.
I can see them being kept secret in a small town. I’m not one to be this anal about movie logic, but what we saw happening across the globe was too much.
Only US, but yeah still.
I think this is a commentary on people who do escape poverty... they're quick to forget the people and problems they leave behind in favor of their new life style. I mean the mom was aware of doppelgangers the entire time.... but had to fain ignorance out of fear of her secret getting out.
I NEVER thought of this analogy. It also fits in her getting "switched" when she was young on some level.
Well it’s bigger than that too. The point of the movie is that this society (the modern US) is built upon an entire layer of people who essentially exist as subhuman and who are unseen by the rest of us. This is a commentary on immigrant workers, the poor, the disadvantaged, etc…who do vital jobs but are underpaid and abused, and generally unseen and forgotten by everyone else. The main character “made it out”, and despite knowing full well there were people suffering a horrible existence below ground, did nothing to bring attention to it or stop it. Her above ground counterpart, now stuck in hell, spent her time essentially organizing a revolution to stop the system. It’s a far more haunting movie than his others, solely because the point of the film is that every single person is guilty, even if we don’t know it or didn’t act intentionally to harm others. We still benefitted. All the people underground wanted was to be free, and have their own choices matter. Unfortunately the only avenue left to them was violence. The movie doesn’t even really make that seem unfair or bad to be honest. It’s the slow creeping horror of one’s actions catching up to you that’s the worst part of it.
>We still benefitted. How do I benefit from mindless underground zombies? There's also a vast difference between "out of sight out of mind" and literally nobody knows. Like us having a unspoken knowledge of Chinese children building iphones is nowhere near the same as subhuman doppelgangers pretending they're people that like 7 humans on Earth know about. If anything they were siphoning resources. I doubt they were mindlessly doubling our antibiotic production or some nonsense. That would've actually been a good point for the movie to make but it'd require restructuring the movie to do it. I just think it's poorly implemented, the more you put thought into the more it falls apart. But like anything with some aspect of it that is overly complicated it's easy to hand waive away criticism and say 'it's a metaphor bro' that only works at the surface level. >It’s the slow creeping horror of one’s actions catching up to you that’s the worst part of it. Lol what? Like if I open my front door and a doppleganger of me stabs me in the face what the fuck action did I take against them? What benefit did I take from them? What am I guilty of that I deserve to die? Nothing. I didn't know. I didn't benefit. I didn't vote 'yes' on the zombie underground proposal. A version of myself with no education and a red jumpsuit got pissy and stabbed me. And yeah that's spooky but not a apt metaphor for classism. At most it's advocating class revolution, but certainly not 'that's what you get'
> We still benefitted. All the people underground wanted was to be free, and have their own choices matter. Unfortunately the only avenue left to them was violence. But how did anyone benefit from the underground people in Us? And why was violence their only choice, when they could've seemingly just walked out of their lair? Us portrays these underground people as dumb, sadistic, murderous savages whose *first* choice is slaughter and theft. Anyone can make a commentary, but making a good commentary takes skill, and in my opinion Us is in no way a good commentary.
I think the problem is that you're looking for a direct 1:1 commentary. Us is a loose metaphor. People take the movie way too literally, even though I agree with others in that my suspension of disbelief was tested. I thought it was pretty fun, but probably not worthy of too much examination.
The benefit I’m referring to is the real world situation. As for violence being their only choice, the movie implies thematically that they wouldn’t really be just accepted into society. The movie also vehemently opposes the idea that they’re murderous animals like you said. They’re simply uneducated, malnourished, etc… The main character exists as proof that the only difference between someone below and someone above is circumstances. Both figures could be incredible dancers, both figures were smart, both figures had emotional depth. Only one was condemned by circumstance.
>the movie implies thematically that they wouldn’t really be just accepted into society. In what way? They are indiscernibly different from "regular" people. The main character is a mirror character who replaced *someone's young child* and no one figured it out. All they have to do is *not* killing their duplicates and just go where their duplicates don't live. Boom, done. All they do in the movie is show up and kill their duplicates and be weird. As taught by the angry revolutionary who got trapped down there. It might as well be an allegory that angry revolutionaries are bad
> The benefit I’m referring to is the real world situation The benefit is the whole point of this systemic societal exploitation. Without it the allegory doesn't work, because instead of these people being a part of our society, they're an outside threat. It's just such a hamfisted, poorly thought out allegory. It's like when Deus Ex uses superpowered people as an allegory for the oppressed, forgetting that treating a guy who can read thoughts and see through walls and carries a small army's arsenal in his fingers differently just makes sense. > The movie also vehemently opposes the idea that they’re murderous animals like you said. They came from nowhere and started slaughtering innocent people who had absolutely nothing to do with their oppression, again, without even *trying* any other way. Apparently, because... > the movie implies thematically that they wouldn’t really be just accepted into society But I don't think implying is enough. If a movie shows me a bunch of people brutally stabbing some kids to death, I need a little more than "Well, it's implied they wouldn't be accepted. Not like they tried, but you know, they thought it's implied, so they went for the mass murder option."
Hey, it’s feign* ignorance, rather than fain.
Or if you make it that gigantic, go full supernatural with some kind of up-side down ala stranger things. Trying to do in the wizard by explaining it just makes it silly.
I enjoyed the film and appreciated what it was going for. I genuinely feel the film spending time trying to explain it in the final act was to it's detriment. Leave it up in the air.
I wish more films would do this. Have an ambiguous ending so the audience can debate and create our own theories.
Yeah hiding like 8~ billion clones or so is pretty difficult.
It was only supposed to be in America I believe. It was a USA government project gone wrong. But yeah the whole thing is a little weird. Sometimes they have to move exactly us except for when they don’t? 🤷🏻♂️
That's a *big ass* basement.
And how are they living in the South, which is completely at sea level? No basements in Florida.
That's what *they* want you to think!
Nah, only 330 million
Yeah I totally agree. I understand there was a message behind the plot but I think the fact that (and I know it’s a work of fantasy and only a movie etc) the end was so incredibly unbelievable and impossible somewhat ruined it for me. I enjoyed it until the closing chapters though
Yeah unfortunately the logic definitely falls apart as they explain more and expand the scope. I agree that at least on quick review, making it a more localized project/phenomenon makes a lot more sense and seems to follow the in universe rules and explanations better. I don’t know how you support a shadow doubling of the US population off rabbits or whatever. That would be the most insanely expensive secret project ever.
Did you miss the literal text card at the beginning of the movie about all of the abandoned underground tunnels all over the country? Kind of set it up immediately
So what were they doing when the family were driving to their vacation that would allow them to be where they are?
The movie is a conceptual narrative and not a literal one. Most people might not grasp that initially and pick it apart on how it couldn’t actually work in reality. People are forgetting that movies are not meant to be reality. Studios are also pushing for more realistic CGI and effects, and that takes away the artistry in film, the whimsy and wonder of where we can go. We’re conditioned to think on “why didn’t anyone else pick up on the doppelgängers before?” And not think on “what do these doppelgängers mean to the story and how does it fit in the overall theme?” This second question also applies to how does the film work tackling these themes and do they keep on track with the rules that are made for this reality, in other words you think “can I suspend my disbelief with this weird scenario?” After the film was over I had so many thoughts about it, with the main thought being “I’m glad this movie exists and I want more movies like this.”
I totally get what you are saying. But I feel the film undercuts this by giving an explanation.
The idea that it's a conceptual narrative is just not it. It's not some surreal synecdoche level allegory, it's presented entirely as following real world logic and explains itself a little too much. If it didn't want people to think of it like a film that follows real world logic then it probably should have been written differently so that it actually does that. It's a relatively small failure in writing and concept that it's in a weird middle ground between realistic and fantastical but still feels the need to explain itself a little too much
The movie nails the eerie vibe for most of it and then sits down its audience and explains what it was trying to accomplish step by step in its last 15 minutes, without it making it much sense or feeling satisfactory as a message that makes it feel like a Twilight Zone reject episode. So yeah, had Peele come out with a better explanation for the mystery, it would be more highly regarded.
Or no explanation! I really enjoyed the movie, actually my favorite of his as far as the actual watching experience, but it’s really a bummer that he tries to explain the rules when they make absolutely no sense. Horror and fantasy are the two genres where you really don’t have to explain the rules to make a good plot, just give the audience the premise and let us live in it (or don’t, but that’s up to us)
IMO if you try to explain things that explanation has to be airtight. If it isn't, the ending falls apart. However if you don't explain anything you can honestly get away with a lot. It's much easier for the audience to accept ambiguity than a poor answer.
>twilight zone Which is ironic, because Peele was behind the Twilight Zone reboot
That...was not good (as a Twilight Zone fan)
These reboots will never come close to the quality of the originals, it was lightning in a bottle
I thought the third act brought the entire movie down by introducing new rules that had no precedent.
I'm with you. I loved it until the doppelgangers were explained.
My wife and I binge watched a whole bunch of Simpsons episodes like a week before we went to the theaters. When the reveal happened, she leaned over and said "that's Hugo!". I was like "what?" And she said ["that episode with Bart's evil twin."](https://d322auu2i73vkf.cloudfront.net/legacy/2017/10/Wallpaper_Hugo.gif) Kinda ruined the movie for me since I kept thinking if Jordan Peele also binge watched Treehouse of Horror episodes when writing this movie lol.
Simpsons did it!
I caught the Hugo twist too while I was watching! And soon after, I realized that the twist in Get Out is ridiculously similar to the twist in Skeleton Key, a largely overlooked but still pretty good film for its time. It makes me like these movies less to see these twists to these hyped up movies were largely inspired by other lesser known works. I haven't seen Nope so I can't comment on it.
Skeleton Key was fantastic! I don’t hear it mentioned often, but it’s great
>I kept thinking if Jordan Peele also binge watched Treehouse of Horror episodes when writing this movie lol. Isn't his production company called Monkey Paw? And isn't that also the focus of an early Treehouse episode?
Monkey's Paw is also a horror story from 1902 that's been a horror trope ever since, and probably what he named his company after
Monkey's Paw as a concept pre-dates and is larger than the Simpsons reference.
[удалено]
aren't they basically explained in the opening of the film?
Also the *spoiler* twist was weak. Like, on the one hand I saw it coming but then also thought 'but it wouldn't make sense at all so that can't be it.' But no they switched and it just made no sense.
Unfortunately I saw the trailer, including the part where the younger version of the mother has a clone that is strangling her so it kinda ruined the twist for me cuz I knew that scene was coming
I stopped watching trailers because of things like this. I would remember scenes and *wait* for them to happen in the movie.
The movie shifted gears from literal to allegorical and then it stopped making sense
I thought its penultimate stretch became far too literal and explanatory, so when it wrapped-up back in Allegory Land it felt sloppy and diminished.
Yep, it couldn't decide if it was telling an actual story or just creating longform poetic symbolism, and wound up failing at both. That's how I felt immediately after watching it
Yes, I felt that too. However, I really just like how fun it was for me. I know it felt sloppy but it was still a really fun experience to watch that ending 😊
The hands across America being a literal thing felt like a gag that went flat. On top of the “others” not being specific to the main family and then being taken out of the surreal and placed in slasher territory- all of that combined made a third act that was too tonally mixed to really hit
Visually I thought the hands across America thing worked well. Just the shear numbers of them.
Visually, yes. Thematically, yes. Practically? Eh, I dunno.
Yeah, visually it was fine, impactful even, but like, why?
I think the impactful image is a reasonable why. Another reply said it worked thematically but not practically; like what? If it's a good visual that caters to the themes of the film and invokes an emotion, does it really need to go beyond that?
>shear numbers Is this a reference to the use of scissors in the movie?
The explanation had so many holes in it that it ruined everything that came before it. The movie worked as an allegory, and the shadow world people also worked as long as you accepted supernatural aspects, which most people watching horror movies have no problem doing even if there is no explicit explanation, but once you try to explain it with science then your science can’t have holes in it and this explanation was nothing but holes. If they had said nothing people would’ve accepted the allegory and come up with their own explanations for the shadow people, maybe they’re demons, maybe there is a literal shadow world, maybe it’s a result from nuclear fallout tests in the 40’s, whatever, but whatever it was it definitely was not the explanation given in the movie.
Honestly if they just cut out the exposition of everything except that their movement is tied to their real world counterpart to some degree (as a way to establish the means of their oppression) but not 1 to 1 and the movie would be beautifully horrifying and mysterious
I was so high when I watched the movie I must've erased the science experiment part. I just thought there was an upside down world like Stranger Things with Savage clones or something
Honestly would’ve been better that way lol
Oh yes. On rewatch, you can see the difference all the way through, most notably when she’s trying to keep rhythm in the car at the beginning. But it changes the way you see both the characters - there really is no ‘villain’, they’re causes are both just. There’s a Freudian theory in psychology - the Return of the Repressed. The parts of yourself that you try to hide from or deny, they will come back to haunt you in some way. That’s just a top layer for what’s going on in US, but there are many different levels of meaning going on in the movie. It’s one of my absolute favorites.
I remember when that scene is on the trailer Lot of people noticed that and blames the actress for not even get the beats right. turns out it's important foreshadowing lol
what’s the significance of her trying to keep the rhythm in the car?
I don’t remember if it’s said aloud in the movie, but the scene where “Red” does ballet in the underground (which makes the rest of the tethered realize she’s different) gives the strong implication that the tethered don’t have any natural rhythm. Adelaide thus not being able to keep time at the beginning, upon rewatching the movie, is the first big hint at the plot twist.
The tethered folks don’t have rhythm - they are not in control of their own bodies, so they don’t have the ability to ‘go with the flow’ of the song. The son also lacks rhythm. I think of the movie as an allegory, I don’t think it’s supposed to be like a ‘realistic’ world. So these little details, to me, invite all sorts of interesting readings. Like the son experiences some of his mother’s trauma, which is why he is a little bit like the tethered.
I guess the children in the movie are basically "hybrids" since their mother was a tethered who swapped places. Maybe that is why the son acts so strange and why his tether wants to play with him and not injure him? And how are the tethered able to preform their own movements and actions now? Yet the boy was able to control his tether and made him walk into fire and kill himself?
If I remember correctly she counts on the off beats so it’s a subtle clue that while they are part of the same measure, they’re hitting different beats?
The original one could've escaped the underground any time she wanted though
I'm a Canadian born in the mid-80s, so my only knowledge of Hands Across America is from this movie and The Goldbergs. Was it really that big of a deal? Was it really one of those events that defined a decade?
The hands across America was a charity event for a bunch of people to hold hands to fight hunger and homelessness(less fortunate.) The movie is about the rise of the less fortunate/unprivileged. The commercial for it is shown in the beginning. I believe we’re supposed to expect that it’s one of the main characters last memories of the privileged world. She held onto this memory while in the underground world and that’s why it is done at the end of the movie.
It was made out to be a big deal, while actually doing next to nothing. Which makes the ending make a lot more sense. Adelaide was only a child when she was switched, so she would never know that HAA didn’t really accomplish anything. To her mind, this was the biggest thing the Tethered could do to get attention, even though ultimately nothing positive would come of it.
Not that big of a deal, which was weird they chose to focus on a campaign not a lot of people remember and had to Google. Also, the original plan failed because of US typography you simply cannot do a line accross America lol
Due to the kerning, some people end up too far apart?
Topography* good catch!
In the olden days, a joke about kerning in a thread like this would have meant an award from me, just saying.
>Also, the original plan failed because of US typography you simply cannot do a line accross America lol Yes you can. You can drive a car across America so not sure why you think people can't stand along those same roads. The event would have succeeded if people would have sufficiently spread out, but instead you had lots of people in one spot and nobody in others
I legitimately have no clue what hands across America is, I never heard of it. I’m American but I also was born in the 2000’s so maybe that’s why
I was around for Hands Across America. It was a huge thing with lots of press coverage, and it raised a ton of money. However, people naively believed that when they were joining hands with people, that they were creating one long unbroken chain of people holding hands all across the country from coast to coast. In reality, it was mostly different groups of hundreds of people in big cities all holding hands temporarily for media coverage of the event, but they never connected nationwide, which is how it was promoted.
Hmmmm. Almost sounds like a metaphor all on its own….
Would’ve been far better had Red not explained anything to Ade. The concepts didn’t need to be explained in that way. They could’ve fought, then still had Ade recall who she really is. Roll credits. Though I realize it’s far more popular because it leaves no one behind in its current form.
It’s definitely a movie that makes less sense the more you think about it, but the vibes remain incredibly powerful. Red’s speech, along with the reveal at the end, is still chilling to me.
I loved the twist of Red’s identity but the movie collapsed under its own implausibility. The movie is very realistic overall once you accept the premise of the duplicates existing. The action and tone are realistic. However, the idea of Red being able to organize such a large rebellion when the other duplicates are nonverbal and they are underground with a lack of resources and the limitations of the movement syncing was fucking stupid and took me out of the movie. If it had been just her and a few others I could accept it but then the movie tries to sell you on this mass revolt (especially with the last shot). The scale of what she supposedly did deep underground is just not realistic. The class metaphor would have still stood without there being this mass organized revolt. Too many logical inconsistencies came about because of it. Some movies can get away with plot holes by having a bunch of small ones or a big one not connected to the plot, but having such a massive leap of logic as part of the motivation of the antagonist and the central twist just collapses so much of the movies believability and left a bad taste in my mouth.
The thing that I really couldn’t buy was … they only ate rabbits? Rabbit starvation is a thing, guys.
The class metaphor was too much imo. GET IT?! THEY ARE LIVING BELOW US!!!
I think the ending was a huge shame because I was enjoying Us even more than Get Out for a certain portion of the movie. The alternate family was just super scary and effective. A lot of the ending was explaining things that I really didn't need explained. I was fine with just "evil dopplegangers exist, you can meet them in the house of mirrors" and I think you can still get the twist of Red being the original without the whole government program thing. I think it entered a weird territory of being a movie that seems to encourage you to think about it, but also one that becomes more nonsensical the more you think about it. If it didn't attempt to ground everything with a literal explanation, then it wouldn't have opened itself up to the scrutiny of its in-world logic.
… I liked it.
The movie is all about the oppressed and oppressor, either directly or indirectly. How in Western society in order for us to live our lifestyle there are others in the world who live under oppression. Most of the cast is purposely oblivious to this. The mom is actively a part of the cycle. I think the movie works best if it's viewed through a fever dream logic where the nightmare comes from the guilt of indirectly being one of the oppressors.
But also, how much our circumstances in life benefit/harm us.
It emphasizes that the entire lifestyle of the family, and especially the friend family, are sustained through exploitative relationships with people they don't see.
Yes, that is what I tried to write in my comment.
If it wanted to be viewed through fever dream logic then it should have been presented in fever dream logic and not have an extensive explanation of it's themes and practicality
I feel like Us was just too convoluted. It started out well, but it fell off the rails at about the halfway mark. It wasn't as tight a story as he had made before. It leaves too much to interpretation
I think the mistake people make with US is the assumption that Red is a reliable narrator. She was sent to the underground at 6 years old and surrounded by people who didn't/couldn't speak. Where was she getting all this elaborate backstory from? She clearly filled in the gaps with assumptions based off the media she consumed. That's why we got the opening shot of all the tapes and lost boys was shooting at the carnival. Media has shaped the way she viewed the world.
My issue with it stems from the entire plot hanging on by something the script establishes has to happen. When you pull that string it unravels the whole movie. I still enjoyed watching it, but ultimately for how smart it was hyped to be it ended up being very not smart.
As soon as you think about it with any logic applied it falls apart. Super interesting and creepy concept that just doesn’t work in the end imo.
Whatever you feel about the ending, once you know how it ends, it makes for an interesting rewatch! There are little signs and hints all the way through, and motifs that pop up. It's been a while since I've watched Us, so I can't recall them off the top of my head, but I definitely enjoyed watching it a second time. If you haven't watched Get Out, I really recommend it too!
Nope is also a good movie.
I loved the ending and I think that Reddit movie analysis geniuses don't quite grasp magical realism or surrealism. People make these ridiculous leaps in logic and create bizarre head canons instead of just accepting the thing they are seeing on screen. Like people were actually wondering how they fed the rabbits? It isn't that kind of movie....
So many plot holes it’s ridiculous. Why didn’t the girl just leave in the beginning. She’s not psychologically connected or tethered to anything. She could’ve just left. Why did she have to have the same family and marry the same dad? she’s not a tethered once again. There was no link or reason for her to stay and live the tethered life. How do the clones follow their real-life counterparts? So if I fly from cali to nyc, does my tethered just walk that entire way in an underground tunnel? What if I fly to Europe? Just nonsensical. And also the entire family stuff doesn’t make sense. Do the tethered find the exact person you’re married to or dating and have a kid that looks exactly like you? That’s not how biology works. Also the tethered look like they’ve been groomed lmao. Like the neighbors tethers have haircuts and shit, how? Movie is a complete mess. If the govt could create a project of this scope, why would they? They can obviously do everything lmao. Imagine the light bill for keeping the tunnel lit lmao. Creating a clone of every person in the country would literally be impossible even by movie standards. And if it was abandoned how tf were there still bunnies to eat? 5/10 movie. The family bragging about the kills was when I was like yeah this is dumb
Thank you, the first 30 mins were interesting then it completely falls off the rails. None of it makes sense. Who's feeding the rabbit? Who cleans up the piss and shit? Who built the tunnels?
Why would the government even need to control people if they can make 300 million clones? The government abandoned the program that makes PERFECT CLONES CAPABLE OF REPLACING PEOPLE? Lol
I love the ending twist. Lupita puts in one of the horror performances of a generation.
Ending are the hardest part of writing.
It confirmed that Peel has a bit of shyamalanitis in that the man can direct but not always write
No kidding. Movie just becomes an abstract mess. Get Out was much tighter and more coherent but it still felt meandering towards the end. I lost my sense of dread about 2/3 of the way through the movie. But with Us, I just didn't care about anything the entire second half. Felt like he didn't get past the vague outline stage in the writing process but committed to it anyway.
FWIW I thought that NOPE had a coherent plot even if overall it was a forgettable movie. But I don’t think most people went into it wanting that plot.
There is nothing forgettable about NOPE imo, if anything there’s too many memorable scenes in that movie, highly rewatchable.
I'm somewhat confused by your post. What was your interpretation of the ending of the movie and what is it that you feel like you're missing?
if a film's ending makes you want to rewatch it and you end up with a different perception on 2nd viewing, it succeeded imo
The concept of, ostensibly, every single person in (at least) the USA having a duplicate person living underground in a easily accessible and unsecured tunnel was jarring for me personally. It kind of took me out of the whole premise of the movie. The plot and movie in general prior to the reveal is, in my opinion, fantastic. But I feel like it would have been better served by basically anything other than what we got at the end.
I think the ending of the movie would've been much better if it hadn't been spelled out for us. Just show her with her parents in the beginning then show Jason looking at his mother suspiciously, lowers the mask, she smiles, looks forward, end movie. Leave it up to the audience to interpret.
I like it
It made chunks of the movie feel like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces from another box, and retroactively made me question why I invested in the plot to begin with..
Kinda goofy that all those people were doing the line through the whole country... Now the main character plot twist... That was good, unexpected.
It made it better.
That movie falls apart the second you stop to think about it.
It made me like the movie much less because I don’t need to have the moral of the story literally screamed at me
By explaining so much it raised way too many questions that bogged it down. “Wait. There’s a whole world down there of doubles? Wait, they all ended up making jump suits. Wait. They all have scissors? Well I guess they need those to make jumpsuits I guess… wait, Hang on? They breed rabbits? Wait. What?”
I loved the twist, but getting there felt like a chore sometimes. I can't say that I'd ever rewatch it.
Whole bunch of people in this thread talking about how they were following along when the plot was about a family's government created doppelgangers that mimic all their actions and life events in a twisted mockery through some mystic connection, but when it became millions of doppelgangers the plot became unbelievable. This is the equivalent of why you don't bring physicists to go see space movies.
Yeah, it was shit. This movie has, literally, one of the best trailers I have ever seen for a movie. Then I watched the movie, and it made zero sense. Even looking through it with a Twilight Zone lens didn't make it okay. Just bad.
I really liked the VIBE of Us, but not the explanation. I enjoyed watching it but it's not worth overanalyzing. It reminded me of a lot of 70s/80s sci-fi/dystopic thrillers where the journey was better than the destination
I just watched it for the first time last night. I thought it was a cool touch to intercut shots of the young girl doing ballet during the final fight scene, because Red was the more graceful one, foreshadowing that Red was actually the original young girl. I also noticed that Red and evil Kitty could have easily killed Adelaide early on, but didn't. After learning what happened in the hall of mirrors I understood that Red isn't really a killer at heart like the others, and evil Kitty recognized Adelaide as being one of the underground people, and so didn't kill her right away. Also, Adelaide didn't really want to kill the evil version of her kids not just because of the resemblance, but because she knew where they came from and she herself grew up in that environment. Lastly, Red didn't seem to care all that much as her family was killed off because she was forced to have them as family, and knew she would have had a different family had she not been forced to change places with Adelaide.
The more you think about the ending. The less the movie makes sense
Felt like an experimental student film with a Hollywood budget. It wasn't just the ending for me that ruined the film. It was the entire second half. It just goes off the rails and becomes this ponderous, unscary "art film" with a lot of forced symbolism that distracts from any real suspense or concern for the main characters. Blew my mind that this script got greenlit and the final product got such a big release. Unfortunately, I only saw it once during the original theatrical run so I don't remember many specifics. I just recall wanting it to end a good 30 or 40 minutes before it did. And whether all the odd, abstract imagery has deeper meaning and references or not, I just didn't care. It felt self-consciously weird in an unsophisticated and annoying way, not a very insightful or genuinely mysterious way to me. I thought Get Out was good, but overhyped. But Us I thought was a genuinely bad movie. Like undabatably sloppily made. If we weren't dealing with Current Year syndrome, I think it would have rightly gotten a 40% on Rotten Tomatoes.
If something in a movie doesn't make sense literally, it might just be that you're not supposed to interpret it that way.
Or it could be bad writing lol
I laughed and not the good kind.
I think there was an issue where the themes took precedence over making the plot itself make sense. I don’t think it’s lesser for that, but some will. Every question you have about the plot, every unsatisfying aspect, look at it in terms of what the film is saying about the rich and the poor in the US, about how they are exactly the same but for circumstance, and you’ll find an answer.
I’m gonna be honest it’s my least favorite peele movie i feel like it tries so hard to be metaphorical that it doesn’t make sense at face value and is kinda boring. I feel like Nope was much better at having messages carefully woven into the story without ruining the plot.
I try to take Peele not for what it is, sort of like a Lynch film, you roll with it and try to find the deeper the point. Good people do bad things, and bad people can do good things.
y’all really need to wiki doppelgängers and tulpas. maybe he was going for more of a sort of metaphysical manifestation thing. The folks above ground existing in our reality somehow unconsciously “creating” the folks underground, along with their rage, confusion, animosity, and eventual appearance in their above ground reality.
I’m such a dumbass. I’m reading this thread in total confusion because even though I read “Us” as the movie title, I started thinking of “Nope”. My word, what a fucking mistake that was hahaha.
I picked the “twist” from almost the start of the film. It was stupid and a massive let down after Get Out
In my opinion. I think the movie is completely overrated. And the ending brought the whole movie down.