Jordan Peele’s new movie, Us, is out in theaters

The more we think about Jordan Peele’s Us, the more we question what we thought we knew about the movie. That’s a testament to Peele’s layered filmmaking. There are so many references in the film, as well as allegories about class, Americans’ ugly history, and ideas about nature, nurture, and humanity. And, of course, there’s that enormous twist:

Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) is actually what’s called a Tether, a doppelganger created as part of a forgotten government experiment, who switched with her human counterpart when they were children. It changes the entire film, bringing into focus every scene, every detail that we just saw.

Warning: There are spoilers regarding the plot of Us in this post.

Us is a movie that sticks with you long after you’ve seen it in theaters.

Two years after Jordan Peele’s buzzy and groundbreaking film debut electrified pop culture, Get Out remains not only one of the most important films of 2017 but also one of the most significant films in recent memory. It’s a canny, vastly entertaining horror movie, deeply rooted in well-established tropes of the genre but equally rooted in the experience of being black in America. Get Out was the rare crowd-pleaser that enjoyed tremendous critical acclaim, a viral meme factory that also received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture and yielded Peele the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

So it’s hardly a surprise that Peele’s follow-up film, Us, has had one of the buzziest openings of 2019 so far. The highly anticipated and critically acclaimed horror movie had advanced ticket sales that surpassed both Get Out and 2018’s sleeper horror hit A Quiet Place, and knocked Captain Marvel off her box office throne with a record-breaking $70 million opening weekend — the highest ever for an original horror film, and second-highest for an action-adventure movie.

Anticipation for Us, Jordan Peele’s follow-up to his 2017 smash hit Get Out, was extraordinarily high heading into its opening weekend. And the movie now has receipts to show for it.

Bolstered by stellar buzz from its SXSW premiere and strong critical reviews, Us raked in enough money in its first weekend to make it the largest domestic opening weekend ever for an original horror film (that is, it’s not a sequel, a reboot, or based on another existing property). It topped $70 million domestically, beating the previous record holder, last year’s A Quiet Place.

Jordan Peele clearly has an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema, and his newest film, Us, exults in shouting out a huge range of movies — everything from Jaws and The Shining to The Goonies and even the lipstick scene from Black Narcissus. In fact, prior to the movie’s release, Peele revealed a list of films that he had asked the cast to watch in order to create “a shared language” between them all about the kind of movie they were making. That list is as follows: Dead Again, The Shining, The Babadook, It Follows, A Tale of Two Sisters, The Birds, Funny Games, Martyrs, Let the Right One In, and The Sixth Sense.

Many of those titles have a particular resonance to the plot and themes of Us. But watching Us suggests several more titles that Peele didn’t mention that also influenced the film. Here’s a rundown of some of the most telling ones, some from Peele’s list, some not. You should definitely seek them out if you want to gain an even more in-depth understanding of Peele’s complicated cinematic achievement.

You can be forgiven for being confused at the end of Us. The movie, like creator Jordan Peele’s directorial debut Get Out, is rife with metaphors — only in Us, the allegory is much more ambiguous. That’s partly due to the complicated relationship between the main character, Adelaide, and the mysterious woman, Red, who appears out of her past. (Both women are played by Lupita Nyong’o in an incredible dual performance.)

If you’ve already seen the film then you know there’s a lot more connecting the two women than a mere case of stalking. But you might not have caught all the details — or how the connection between Adelaide and Red ultimately helps enrich the film’s overall symbolism.

Guess what? Spoilers follow!

First things first: I’m going to give this article a headline that’s something like, “Us’s ending, explained” or “Us’s ending, dissected,” and I should tell you upfront that I’m not going to explain Us’s ending. I can’t.

Jordan Peele’s Us, its title signals, is not a movie from which we as viewers can be detached. It demands from the start that we recognize an uncomfortable fact: Out in the audience, we’re part of the story.

And it’s a movie about doubles and doppelgängers, so of course the title is pulling double allegorical duty. Peele is a walking pop culture encyclopedia, especially horror and science fiction (he’s hosting and producing CBS’s Twilight Zone reboot, which premieres on April 1). So there’s no way he named his Get Out follow-up without self-conscious reference to Them!, the 1954 sci-fi film in which a nest of giant irradiated ants threatens Americans from tunnels beneath New Mexico, a recompense (a voiceover at the end tells us) for the hubris of the atomic age.

In 2017, Jordan Peele electrified audiences with his instantly quotable Get Out, which ultimately earned more than $250 million worldwide and snagged a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars.

Now Peele is back with his widely anticipated new movie, Us, slated for release on March 15, 2019. The trailer — which looks legitimately terrifying — dropped on Christmas Day.