The first thing that flashes on-screen in Us, the latest from Get Out writer/director/producer Jordan Peele, is a creepy little tidbit of information: There are thousands of miles of tunnels beneath the United States with “no known purpose at all.” The anxiety that line triggers—that anything could be happening right under our feet—courses throughout Us.
Us is a movie about doppelgängers—our evil twins that, according to folklore, must be killed, lest they kill us and assume our identities. But Us is also about shadows emerging from their own darkness; the illusory depths of mirrors; the fear we project onto the “other” instead of examining our own brutality; and, more abstractly, the barbaric history of slavery and mass genocide that America has unsuccessfully tried to bury, how the country is actively destroying itself, and what it’ll look like when its chickens finally come home to roost.