Us is a 2019 American horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele, starring Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Elisabeth Moss, and Tim Heidecker. The film follows a family who are confronted by murderous doppelgangers known as “the Tethered”.

In 1986, young Adelaide Thomas goes on vacation with her parents to Santa Cruz. At the beach, she wanders off while her father is playing whack-a-mole and enters a funhouse, where she encounters a doppelgänger of herself in the hall of mirrors. When her parents eventually find her, she is unable to speak. They take her to therapists to make her gain her voice again. Many years later, she is now a grown woman and Addie is married to her husband Gabe and they have two kids, teenager Zora and son Jason. They go to stay at Addies’s late parents’ lake house and after settling in they go to the Santa Cruz beach to meet their friends the Tyler family.  Jason is temporarily missing when he sees a man with blood dripping from his hands.

That night, a family of four dressed in red appears in the Wilsons’ driveway. They break into the Wilsons’ home and attack them. The Wilsons quickly realize the four intruders are doppelgängers of themselves, led by Adelaide’s double, Red. The doppelgängers can vocalize only crudely, but Red is able to speak. Red explains that the doppelgängers are called the Tethered, that they share a soul with their counterparts, and that they have come to “untether” themselves. The family is separated by their dopplegängers: Red makes Adelaide handcuff herself to a table, Zora is pursued by Umbrae and Gabe by Abraham, and Jason is sent to “play” with Pluto in the closet. Zora evades Umbrae and Gabe manages to kill Abraham, while Jason discovers that Pluto mirrors his actions and manages to lock him in the closet. Red is drawn away by Pluto’s cries, allowing Adelaide to break free. The family regroups and escapes on their boat and head to the Tyler’s home.

However the Tyler’s are killed by their own tethers who attack Addie’s family when they come to the house. They end up killing the Tylers’ doubles and turning on the news to see that millions of Tethered have been murdering their counterparts across the nation. The doppelgängers subsequently join hands together to form a massive human chain. s day breaks, the Wilsons arrive at the Santa Cruz boardwalk, where they find the road blocked by their own car, on fire. Pluto has set a trap for the Wilsons, standing over a gasoline trail with a match. Jason, remembering that Pluto imitates his actions, makes Pluto walk backward into the fire. Red reappears and abducts Jason, and Adelaide runs after them. hile Zora and Gabe recuperate in an abandoned ambulance, Adelaide returns to the funhouse and finds a secret tunnel in the hall of mirrors. It leads to an underground facility overrun by rabbits, where Adelaide finds Red. Red explains that the Tethered were clones, created by the U.S. government to control the public.

The experiment failed and the Tethered were abandoned underground for generations, mindlessly copying the actions of their surface counterparts, until Red organized them to escape and take revenge. The two fight, with Red anticipating and countering all of Adelaide’s attacks. Adelaide finally manages to overpower her, stabbing her, then choking her. She finds Jason hidden in a locker. She takes him to the ambulance and the family drive off. As the movie ends Adelaide recalls the night she met Red in the hall of mirrors. It is revealed that Red was the real Adelaide and the surviving Adelaide is the doppelgänger; that night, “Adelaide” choked “Red” unconscious, dragged her underground, handcuffed her to a bed, and took her place in the surface world. As the Wilsons drive off, Jason loks at her as if he knows something and she smiles back at him as the camera pulls back to show that the Tethered have joined hands across the country.

Creepy in places and generally on the scarier side of things, I felt myself wanting to know what happens to the tethered once they all make it out and how do the rest of the world handle them. Maybe they should make that. 7.5 outta 10!