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Us and the Family Ties that Bind

I keep seeing their faces. Their eyes. Madness radiated from them. The damaged woman. The mother. The final girl. Her face was full of angry, terrifying joy. Her face was twisted by secrets.

It’s been a couple days since I saw Us, Jordan Peele’s latest horror film, and I’m not sure which woman is haunting me more.

Us is a story of families, of community, and class. It’s also the story of two women and how dangerous they became when cornered, how they defended the life they’d created.

Adelaide fights for her family. She clings to them, unwilling to give them up. She kills for them.

Red, her double, is driven and just as deadly. 

The women are eerily alike. Jordan Peele challenges us to watch ourselves and consider if we are the evil in our worlds. Isolation and madness give birth to worse, and we have only just met the children these women created.

Us is tense and brutal. It’s never clear whether the endearing people we’ve met will survive, physically or emotionally. They fight through a landscape that borders on surreal. I found myself considering if it were truly scary, only to realize my arms were clasped tightly around my body and my legs were drawn up into my seat, bracing for what came next. Us  pinned me in place.

Who do we root for, when the battle is with ourselves?

  • Jolene Haley
    April 1, 2019

    I can’t wait to see this! I love this review. Thank you for posting. Also, is it weird that I LOVE that he brought back “I Got 5 On It.”

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