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2019 movie
- Accidental Aesop: Relying too much on technology, especially voice-activated technology, could get you killed. While Kitty was going to die anyway, it certainly doesn't make her last moments any better when the Alexa stand-in Ophelia plays "Fuck tha Police" in response to her desperate plea to call the police.
- Accidental Innuendo: The Tyler twins get one when their parents tell them to go back to sleep. "Just because we're in our rooms doesn't mean we're sleeping."
- Alternate Character Interpretation:
- Abraham seems to be enjoying himself substantially less than the other Tethered. Does he feel remorse about killing? Alternatively, is he upset because Red openly admits she doesn't love him? Relatedly, does he feel inferior because Red is a "real" person, and thus both of her children are half "real," while he is completely a "shadow?" Or, perhaps, is he just completely disconnected from his life after years of simply going through the motions of whatever Gabe was doing, and so no longer feels anything at all?
- Massive debates exist on the best way to interpret Adelaide, following the revelation that she is a Tethered. Opinions on her range from a good person who did a bad thing to escape a desperate situation and genuinely wants to save her family and stop the Tethered onslaught, to a morally bankrupt Boomerang Bigot villain who sees her loved ones as possessions and fights the Tethered solely to safeguard her own secret. A third viewpoint is that she repressed the memory of being a Tethered entirely, recalling it only at the end of the film when she seems to give a surprised expression as the truth of her past is revealed to the audience.
- Additionally, there's Red herself. Does she truly love Pluto? Aside from allowing him to dote on her and letting him out of the closet when Jason traps him, she nevertheless expresses no emotional pain towards Pluto's death, instead opting to snatch Jason immediately afterwards. If the latter, does that mean she set her son up to die as a shot at revenge on Adelaide?
- Aluminum Christmas Trees: To younger viewers and non-Americans watching the film, it may seem like the "Hands Across America" commercial in the prologue is some kind of Retraux throwback to charity drives in the 1980s due to how impractical pulling that sort of thing off would be. Except that the drive was something that actually happened in real life.
- Angst? What Angst?: Jason and Zora seem completely unfazed after killing Dahlia and Io respectively, despite being very young children. Justified after the plot twist, as they are half-human and half-Tethered.
- Award Snub: Many felt that Lupita Nyong'o should have been nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars. In fact, there are many who will go far as to say Nyong'o was robbed of a win, especially since that year's Best Actress competition was regarded as one of the weakest in recent memory.
- Awesome Music:
- The use of Luniz's "I Got 5 On It" works both in the normal family scenes as well as to chilling effect during the horror scenes.
- The riff from "I Got 5 on It" is a remix of the riff from Club Nouveau's "Why You Treat Me So Bad?" Even the theme is a Tethered!
- The movie features a similar, slightly more orchestral version in the climax: Pas De Deux.
- The theme of the film titled "Anthem".
- Minnie Riperton’s “Les Fleurs”, which plays as the film concludes.
- The use of Luniz's "I Got 5 On It"
- Common Knowledge: The Tethered are revealed to be government-created experimental clones designed to control the ones above. When the experiment failed, they left the Tethered to die in the underground facilities. This has been unanimously accepted as fact...except that it's not. Red precedes this entire speech with the phrase "I believe..." Red doesn't actually know how the Tethered came into existence, she only explains to Adelaide her belief. That said, the film never presents an opposing theory, leaving Red's as the only one the film acknowledges.
- Critical Dissonance: While critics and audiences almost unanimously loved Get Out (2017), Us is proving to have a greater divide between audience and critical reception. Audiences seem to be more mixed on the film than critics, who see it as good as Get Out if not better. Case in point, Get Out had a CinemaScore of "A-" (a rarity for horror films, many of which get "B+" rankings if they're adored by audiences) and Us had a less enthusiastic "B". A big component of this seems to be that the film's slow-burn approach to horror is completely different than Get Out, along with the movie's central allegory being a lot more esoteric compared to the unsubtle but important moral presented in Jordan Peele's previous film. Another common complaint is the movie's explanation of what the Tethered actually are, in that the movie puts too much effort into trying to provide a "logical" explanation that still makes distractingly little sense, and the Tethered were more interesting when they were left creepily unclear.
- Diagnosed by the Audience: As the Tyler twins say, Jason is weird. Zora admits that he has trouble focusing. He's fixated on his sparking magic trick, and is almost never seen without his wolfman mask. This has led to some Epileptic Trees over whether or not his Tethered heritage caused some odd mental effects, or whether he's simply a neurodivergent child.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: Josh and Kitty (played by Tim Heidecker and Elisabeth Moss) are extremely popular, though they're only in about two scenes (and then around two more as their Tethered counterparts), with their performances and the genuine fear factor of their deaths and their Tethered getting mentioned a lot.
- Esoteric Happy Ending: The Wilsons all survive until the end, but we learn that Adelaide was really a Tethered, who replaced and later kills her "real" counterpart, and it seems that her son Jason has figured out the truth, judging by the glare he gives her. And aside from that, who knows what will happen to the USA at large, with every single citizen having a doppelganger that is hunting them down? The final shot is of a long line of Tethered all holding hands in the country side, with smoke rising in the distance and helicopters surrounding the area...
- Fan-Disliked Explanation: A number of viewers, who preferred that the Tethered's origins remain unexplained, weren't particularly fond of the reveal that the Tethered were the result of an abandoned government cloning program. For some, it felt too out of left field and ludicrous for the tone the movie was going for. And that isn't getting into the massive amounts of Fridge Logic this explanation entails. Although, as mentioned under Common Knowledge, the movie actually doesn't explicitly confirm this, it's merely In-Universe guesswork.
- Fanfic Fuel: What would have happened if Red had gone along with Adelaide instead of performing a Twin Switch?
- Genius Bonus: If you listen closely to when little Addy enters the Vision Quest attraction, you can hear that the narrator is recounting the creation story of the Hopi tribe. The Hopi believe that their ancestors lived underground before a great evil caused them to leave and live on the land
- He Really Can Act:
- Tim Heidecker is primarily known for his Tim and Eric comedy performances, but he pulls off an unexpectedly excellent and absolutely terrifying performance as the murderous and animalistic Tex.
- This movie, combined with Black Panther (2018), perfectly shows off Winston Duke's range. The latter movie had him play a very intimidating Scary Black Man who was gruff and serious. Us has him coming from the polar opposite direction, playing a nerdy and goofy yet still badass Bumbling Dad AND an intimidating (in a different way than M'Baku) but mentally slow doppelganger who can only speak in grunts and yells.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: Jordan Peele has stated that one of the things that inspired the film was The Twilight Zone (1959) episode "Mirror Image", about a woman encountering her evil doppelganger. Later that year, Peele himself would host the 2019 revival of The Twilight Zone.
- I Knew It!: As early as the movie's first major scene, viewers began theorizing that Red was the real Adelaide seeking revenge against her Tethered self. They were right. It's even more obvious if you recall the Thriller shirt and what happens in the music video.
- Jerkass Woobie:
- Red. Being taken away from your family and trapped in a world surrounded by soulless copies can’t be good for your health, physical or mental. Can you blame her for wanting to get revenge on Adelaide?
- Kitty isn't the nicest, but her death is genuinely horrible, watching her whole family get slaughtered before having her throat slit while being taunted by someone who looks just like her husband. Similarly, her daughters are bratty, but they're still only kids. They didn't deserve that.
- Magnificent Bitch: Red, leader of the Tethered, manages to organize the stunted clones into a genuine army with a plot to make the world see how horribly they have been treated. Putting her scheme into motion for "the Untethering", she sends the clones to kill their doubles and form a massive chain, effortlessly cornering her own double, Adelaide Wilson, with their families facing off. Red is able to use even the death of her own "family" to her advantage to kidnap Adelaide's son Jason and lure Adelaide into a personal confrontation, revealing Red is the true Adelaide who was replaced by her double as a child. Seeking revenge, Red even manages to potentially poison Jason against his mother, with her scheme at upending society and forming a great chain going into full motion as the film ends.
- Memetic Mutation:
- Acting like the movie is actually set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and that after the dusting M'Baku and Nakia decided to retire to the suburbs together.
- Any meme that makes use of two identical figures (such as Pointing Spider-Man) inevitably gets referenced in regards to the Tethered.
- "If you wanna get crazy, we can get crazy." Explanation
- Fuck the Police! Explanation:
- Moral Event Horizon:
- It's hard to blame Tethered Adelaide for kidnapping and throwing her aboveground version into her place, given how miserable the life of the Tethered is. But, some found it less forgivable when she kills Red at the end, essentially covering up her actions by doing so (alongside some interpreting the smile she gives at the end to mean that she has no remorse for what she did to the original Adelaide), given how she has long since become an adult with a functioning moral code.
- Likewise, while Red herself has understandable motivations for resenting her Tethered, she views her Tethered family as completely expendable, exemplifying this by setting her son up to lure the Wilson family into a staged explosion, not caring that he'd assuredly die as well. She expresses no regret for it, immediately abducting Jason instead. Either that, or she crossed it earlier with her "Untethering" plan.
- The Tethered versions of the Tyler family waste no time in butchering their aboveground counterparts. The ones that stand out as especially cruel are Tex, who pretends to extend his hand towards a dying Kitty to assist her before his wife finishes her off, and Dahlia, who later attempts to kill Zora in front of Adelaide as vengeance for Tex's death.
- Narm:
- Red's wheezy voice has been derided by some as silly instead of intimidating. Some of the other Tethered mannerisms could fall into this trope as well, depending on who you ask.
- During Red's Info Dump near the end of the film, we're constantly shown a shot of Red's face taking up most of the camera with Adelaide sneaking up behind her for an attack. The way the scene keeps cutting back to this makes it almost seem like a sketch from Monty Python, where Adelaide keeps moving forward but is not getting anywhere, making an otherwise tense scene a tad silly.
- The scenes with the Tethered in the facility mimicking whatever their human counterparts are doing, for example the couple feeding each other bits of raw rabbit, or the line of people falling down as if they were on a rollercoaster, could seem comedic and silly to some instead of sad and disturbing.
- Narm Charm: Like the "Oh no, no, no, no, no, no," scene in Get Out, as Narmy as Red's voice is, it's creepier for that reason because you get the impression that the woman talking doesn't quite know how to act like a normal human being. Also, there is a reason why Jordan Peele said Lupita Nyong'o's performance as one of the doppelgängers "scared the shit out of" him. Moreover, on repeat viewings it makes sense as to why and how Red's voice ended up sounding that way.
- Paranoia Fuel: The whole idea of a violent invasion/uprising from people who've lived underground potentially for hundreds of years. That's not even getting into the doppelgänger plot.
- Rooting for the Empire: A lot of people want the Tethered to kill their counterparts and take over their lives, as it's shown just how miserable their lives are unless they escape. This becomes especially true once it's revealed that Red is the real Adelaide and that she had her whole life stolen from her by the Adelaide we've been following.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Plot element, really. Since Red is the real Adelaide and the Tethered are controlled by them, Adelaide could have been revealed to be under Red's control the whole time. For example, instead of Red being forced to attach herself to Abraham and bear his children because that's what Adelaide and Gabe do, it could have been the other way around, with Adelaide being forced to marry Gabe. This could further intensify Adelaide's fear and dread of their doppelgangers, knowing that her children only exist because Red's do. On the other hand, it would have interfered with the metaphor about the ones who live "above" having free will as opposed to the ones who live "below" who are not in control of their destinies.
- Unfortunate Character Design: Pluto's mask looks a bit like he's wearing underwear over his face.
- The Woobie:
- Gabe Wilson, a Gentle Giant sweetheart of a Bumbling Dad who prior to his marriage had personally nothing to do with the Tethered and what led to their uprising in the film, but is nonetheless roped into a horrific story along with God knows how many other innocents on the face of the Earth. The Tethered terrorize him and his children, with his leg getting broken in the process, possibly leaving him crippled for life and limping for the rest of the film, just because the woman he fell in love with and married turns out to be a Tethered who had replaced the woman he thought he was marrying long before he ever met her, stealing her life and causing her to lead the mass Kill and Replace revolt in retaliation. Not to mention, before that he's harassed by Josh for not being able to afford nice things like he does, all the while he flaunts money in his face. By the end of the film, he is Locked Out of the Loop over the truth behind his wife, and even if they learned of his wife's true identity and how it led to this mess, it would be devastating for him and his children. Despite having killed his Evil Twin, Gabe's pleasantly normal life is changed forever for the worse, and now he'll have to fight for his and his family's lives once the Tethered completely overrun the planet.
- The Wilson children are also terrorized by their psychotic doubles because of the past of their mother. By the end of the film, their lives will never be normal again, and they must continue to fight back to survive due to the clones taking over the planet, all the while being Locked Out of the Loop (except for possibly Jason) that their mother is really one of the Tethered.
Peter Gabriel album
- Contested Sequel: Though considered good on its own merits, Us released in the shadow of So, Gabriel's most critically and commercially successful album, and thus had a lot to live up to. Thus, while some fans (especially those who see So as a Sell-Out album) consider Us an adept continuation of its predecessor (with some considering it among Gabriel's best work as a solo artist), others view it as a noticeable step down (with some considering it Gabriel's weakest release as a solo artist). The album's darker and more downtempo sound factors heavily into both sides of the matter.
