With three directorial features under his belt, Jordan Peele has already proven himself to be a powerful force to be reckoned with. A valuable addition to the horror genre, Peele’s movies use killer doppelgängers, mystifying aliens, and plain old evil people to tackle complex themes like racism, trauma, and privilege, and he never fails to terrify his audience in the process. While his first movie, Get Out, took the film world by storm by telling a straightforward and horrifying story about a white family lobotomizing young Black people and taking over their bodies, his sophomore endeavor, Us, took a far looser approach, using government-made clones to tell a chilling tale of inequality while leaving lots open to audience interpretation. By looking at the differences between his first and second films, we can see how Jordan Peele was able to build on the success of Get Out in order to tell a more complex and open-ended story with Us, and how this change shows how much he grew as a storyteller in just one movie.
What Is ‘Get Out’ About?
With Get Out, the plot, while completely insane, is also fairly simple. Photographer Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) goes to visit his white girlfriend Rose’s (Allison Williams) family, the Armitages, for the first time, and quickly realizes that they have a bizarre fascination with the fact that he is Black. After some disturbing interactions with the Armitages, their white, wealthy friends, and their two Black housekeepers (Marcus Henderson and Betty Gabriel), Chris comes across Logan (LaKeith Stanfield), a young Black man who behaves bizarrely and is married to a much older white woman.
Long story short, Chris learns that the Armitages have been kidnapping young Black people like Logan (who is actually named Andre) and cutting out their brains, replacing them with those of old white people. They call this the Coagula procedure, and from then on, the consciousness of the victims is trapped in a mental void called the “Sunken Place.” The elderly people are thus granted longevity, while those they kidnap become unwilling passengers in their own bodies. Chris nearly meets the same fate but escapes by killing the Armitage family with the help of groundskeeper Walter (aka Grandpa Armitage), who briefly regains control of his body to shoot Rose and then himself.
‘Get Out’s Simplicity Lets Us Appreciate Jordan Peele’s Social Commentary
While there are many impressive things about Get Out, its surprisingly straightforward story amidst all the madness is one of the movie’s greatest strengths. The explicit nature of the plot allows the audience to craft their own thoughtful analysis of its themes because they’re not busy trying to figure out what the hell is going on. When Chris is tied up, a TV in front of him lights up and a video of Rose’s grandfather, Armitage patriarch Roman (Richard Herd), enters the screen and explains that Chris and the other victims have been chosen for the Coagula procedure because of the “physical advantages” they’ve enjoyed for their entire lifetimes. Art dealer Jim Hudson (Stephen Root), who is set to take over Chris’s body, further explains that the older white people desire to be strong, fast, and cool, which is how they perceive the young Black people they steal.
Jordan Peele's Alternate Ending to 'Get Out' Was Way Too Real
Jordan Peele originally had an ending that was too depressing for the psychological thriller.Hudson lays out the entire procedure for Chris (and the audience) step-by-step, from the hypnosis, to the mental pre-op, to the physical transplantation. With this knowledge plainly given to us, we’re able to use our brain power to really delve into the depth of the Armitage family’s ignorance. The vicious elite in Get Out spend the movie fawning over Chris without ever even attempting to get to know him, admiring his skin color and physique. One man even asks him if he thinks being Black has more advantages or disadvantages in modern America. This is really the only time that any of the Armitages' guests actually inquire about how Chris perceives himself, and it’s done by brazenly putting him on the spot and asking him to unpack the complexities of racial inequality in one probing question. The people seeking out the Coagula procedure only perceive the positive things that they assume about Black people’s experience, disregarding any hardships they may face and only stripping them down to physical attributes. This highlights the immense privilege of Get Out’s white characters, as they not only think that Black people have unfair advantages, but also that they deserve to steal these advantages for themselves.
Jordan Peele Leaves Lots Open to Interpretation in ‘Us’
Peele's second movie, Us, also explores inequality but through a wildly different lens. Us follows the Wilson family — Adelaide (Lupita N’Yongo), Gabe (Winston Duke), and their children Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and Jason (Evan Alex) — who embark on a regular vacation that quickly takes a deadly turn. Throughout their trip, Adelaide has a sneaking suspicion that something is out to get her and her family as she fearfully reminisces on a frightening trip to the local funhouse when she was a kid. She is soon proven correct when nefarious doubles of all her loved ones show up at their summer home in the dead of night, breaking in and trapping the Wilsons inside. The matriarch of the intruding family, Red, is a twisted mirror image of Adelaide, and the only one of her group who speaks. She reveals that she and her family are members of the Tethered, who live underground and lead a paralleled but torturous existence to their counterparts above while experiencing none of the joy or benefit. Because they are forced to do whatever their doubles do, the Tethered have come to kill them off and “untether” themselves so that they may live freely in the world.
After some bloody battles in which the Wilsons kill off their respective Tethereds in self-defense, Adelaide has a final showdown with Red down in the tunnels after Red kidnaps Jason. Here, Red divulges to Adelaide that the Tethered were a government experiment created in an attempt to control the population, but they were abandoned underground when the experiment failed. Red believes that the creators of the Tethered were able to replicate the body but not the soul, so that they and their counterparts became two bodies inextricably linked to one another as the ones above unknowingly puppeteer those below. Adelaide and Red have an immaculately choreographed face-off, with the former eventually killing the latter and taking a frightening, perverse joy in the brutal murder.
‘Us’s Final Plot Twist Offers More Questions Than Answers
Once she and Jason return from underground, Adelaide gathers her family in an ambulance and sets off to Mexico, hoping to find refuge from the Tethered once and for all. As they drive, Adelaide shares a loaded look with Jason, who clearly understands that the vibes are off, and it’s revealed through flashbacks that Red and Adelaide switched places as children. The now-dead Red was actually the real Adelaide, while the doting mother we’ve been rooting for the whole time is actually one of the “monsters” we’ve come to fear. We learn that when they were children, the young Red choked out Adelaide in the funhouse and dragged her down to the tunnels, assuming her identity above. This explains why Red is the only “Tethered” who is able to speak (she isn’t a Tethered at all), and why Adelaide is so fearful of Red coming to get her (she knew Red was out there and would want revenge).
Now, while Us’s ending gives us an M. Night Shyamalan-level plot twist, it does open up a lot of questions. For one, if Red was really Adelaide who grew up in the normal world, how does she know where the Tethered originated from? None of the Tethered know how to speak, so there’s no way that they told her (if they even knew themselves), and no other person seems to know that the Tethered even existed, so it’s not as though Adelaide learned about them before she was kidnapped. This is far from the only perplexing thing about Us’s story. Between the biblical allusions, the Hands Across America plot line, and the confusing idea of how the Tethered exist at all (Where did they get outfits to match those above? Do they change clothes? What’s with the rabbits?), there are many questions that are left unanswered or open to interpretation by the end of the movie.
‘Us’ Perplexing Nature Shows Jordan Peele’s Growth as a Writer and Director
Although some may see Us’s open-ended plot as a detriment, it actually makes for a much more interactive viewing experience than Peele’s previous film. Get Out left little room for interpretation. Peele had a story he wanted to tell, and he told it immaculately, leaving no detail to question and tying up every loose end. Us, on the other hand, reminds us that you don’t have to understand every element of a movie to find it entertaining. For example, at the end of Get Out, we know exactly how we’re supposed to feel about every character. We cheer for Chris, we vehemently despise Rose, and we want Rod the TSA agent (Lil Rel Howery) to be our new best friend. At the end of Us, the rug is ripped out from under the audience, and we’re left to figure out how we feel. We fear the Tethered, but we also sympathize with them when we see how they live, and while we may want “Adelaide” and her family to be safe, we also hate her for what she did to the real Adelaide.
Both Us and Get Out explore privilege in entirely unique ways, and are incredibly effective horror films that will sit with you long after you turn them off. However, Us’s more abstract approach shows Peele’s growth as a storyteller because he’s letting the viewer make their own sense of the movie and find personal meaning. By not spoon-feeding us every answer, his second film is indicative of his willingness to trust his audience to draw their own insightful conclusions. From a movie that lays everything on the table to one that leaves us scratching our heads, Jordan Peele’s first two features show the kind of variety and growth that eclipses that of some veteran filmmakers, a streak that continued with his third film, Nope. As he continues to wow us with his directing and producing endeavors, we can only hope that Peele continues to turn out films that are just as smart as they are scary, and that he never stops pushing the envelope of the horror genre.
The Big Picture
- Jordan Peele's films Get Out and Us tackle complex themes like racism and privilege, while terrifying audiences in the process.
- Get Out tells a straightforward and horrifying story about a white family lobotomizing young Black people, while Us uses government-made clones to explore inequality.
- The simplicity of Get Out allows for a deeper analysis of its themes, while the more abstract nature of Us leaves room for audience interpretation and personal meaning.
