Jordan Peele’s new horror flick Us broke records at the box office bringing in $70 million in ticket sales over the weekend. But many moviegoers say the movie was a confusing, befuddled mess.
Us makes history as the biggest box office for a standalone horror film in first weekend sales, according to Showbiz411.
But many moviegoers say Us is not a horror flick or even a psychological thriller. Critics say the movie plot had more holes than Swiss cheese, and Jordan Peele is no Stephen King or Alfred Hitchcock.
If anything, Us proves movies don’t have to make sense to be entertaining.
Us is not a sequel to Get Out – Peele’s Oscar-winning social-commentary movie about body snatching and white guilt.
Us stars Lupita Nyong’o as Adelaide Wilson and Winston Duke as her wisecracking husband, Gabe Wilson. The Wilsons are an upper middle class family of 4 who are forced to literally fight themselves to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.
Us continues the body snatching theme of Get Out, but without the white guilt.
SPOILER Alert: Don’t Read Any Further if You Haven’t Seen the Movie!!
Decades ago, the U.S. government created “Tethered” clones of all humans for population control.
But instead of controlling their human counterparts, the Tethered clones mimic the movements of the humans they are symbolically tethered to.
With the experiment a complete failure, the scientists abandoned the clones in underground tunnels, where they were left to fend for themselves by subsisting on raw rabbit meat. Apparently they never learned how to cook.
In 1986, 8-year-old Adelaide and her upper middle class parents vacation in Santa Cruz. While visiting the boardwalk, Adelaide is wearing a Hands Across America t-shirt that later becomes a central theme of the movie.
Hands Across America was a well-meaning, ambitious celebrity-driven campaign to raise funds to end world hunger. Unfortunately, most of the $35 million in proceeds went into the pockets of the organizers.
Adelaide stumbles across a funhouse where she encounters her exact double in the hall of mirrors. Her clone subdues her and drags her into an underground bunker when she chains Adelaide to a bed.
The clone then returns to the surface and assumes Adelaide’s life, as well as her soul (don’t ask).
30 years later, the clone who assumed Adelaide’s life reluctantly returns to Santa Cruz with her Ivy League husband, Gabe Wilson, and their two children, Zora and Jason.
Later that night, a spooky family of four wearing red jumpsuits appear outside the beach house. Adelaide immediately realizes the real Adelaide – now named Red – has managed to escape the underground facility with her family of clones, who happen to be exact copies of Adelaide’s husband and children.
The clones break into the house and each family member is confronted by their individual clones. Only Red has the ability to speak – since, technically, she’s human.
There are many questions left unanswered by the end of the movie.
No, Jason isn’t a clone. But he did learn that his mother is a clone after he was briefly kidnapped by Red and overheard her talking to Adelaide.
At the end, Adelaide gives Jason a knowing smile as they leave Santa Cruz. Like his clone, Jason decides to shut his mouth and wear a mask to hide the truth.
