Tags: Us, Jordan Peele, horror film analysis, the Tethered, doppelgänger, social commentary, class divide, Hands Across America, Adelaide Wilson, Red, identity, film studies, UC Berkeley
Jordan Peele's Us follows the Wilson family as they are hunted by their underground doppelgängers, known as the Tethered. The film uses horror to explore American class division, repressed identity, and the idea that privilege is built on the suffering of an unseen underclass. Every major scene layers visual symbolism (mirrors, rabbits, scissors, tunnels) over a narrative that ultimately asks who the real monster is.
The Tethered
Underground doppelgängers of every person on the surface. They were created as part of a government experiment to control the population above, but the project was abandoned. They live in tunnels beneath America, forced to mirror the actions of their surface counterparts without any of the comfort or choice.
Red
Adelaide Wilson's Tethered counterpart and the primary antagonist. She is the only Tethered who can speak. She leads the uprising of the Tethered to the surface, orchestrating a nationwide version of "Hands Across America."
Adelaide Wilson
The protagonist and mother of the Wilson family. Her childhood encounter with her double at the Santa Cruz boardwalk haunts her into adulthood. The film's twist reveals the full significance of that encounter.
Doppelgänger
A double or look-alike of a living person, often carrying sinister or supernatural connotations. In Us, each surface person has a Tethered double living underground.
Hands Across America (1986)
A real charitable event where people formed a human chain across the United States to raise money for hunger and homelessness. In the film, it appears as a TV advert in the 1986 prologue and becomes the Tethered's method of protest in the climax, twisting a symbol of unity into something deeply unsettling.
Jeremiah 11:11
A Bible verse referenced repeatedly on a homeless man's cardboard sign: "Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape." Functions as a recurring visual motif foreshadowing the inescapable arrival of the Tethered.
The Twist / Adelaide Switch
The film's climactic reveal: young Adelaide and her Tethered counterpart (Red) swapped places during the 1986 funhouse encounter. The Adelaide the audience has followed for the entire film was originally a Tethered, and the "villain" Red was originally the real surface girl.
Funhouse of Mirrors / "Vision Quest: Find Yourself"
The Santa Cruz boardwalk attraction where young Adelaide first encounters her double. Its name is ironic, since the quest to "find yourself" becomes literal: she finds another version of herself. Mirrors throughout the film reinforce the doubling motif.
The film opens with an epigraph about the thousands of miles of tunnels beneath the continental United States, many with no known purpose. This text, paired with the ambient sound of ocean waves, sets up the idea that something exists beneath the surface of American life, hidden and forgotten.
The next image is a young girl watching a TV advert for Hands Across America in 1986. The advert frames unity and charity as feel-good national events. Peele positions this optimistic imagery as a surface-level performance of togetherness, one that the rest of the film will interrogate.
Young Adelaide then visits the Santa Cruz boardwalk with her parents. Several details accumulate:
A homeless man holds a sign reading Jeremiah 11:11, introducing the biblical warning
The funhouse attraction is called "Vision Quest: Find Yourself"
Once inside, the lights go out, Adelaide whistles "Itsy Bitsy Spider," and hears someone else whistling it back
She encounters a girl who looks identical to her but is not a reflection
This prologue establishes the film's core tension: something that looks like you, that mirrors you, but exists in a space you cannot see or control.
The Wilsons (Adelaide, Gabe, Zora, Jason) arrive for a beach holiday. Adelaide is visibly uneasy returning to Santa Cruz. Her anxiety escalates through several beats:
She flashes back to the boardwalk, recalling the man with the Jeremiah 11:11 sign, now dead on a stretcher
Jason briefly goes missing, triggering Adelaide's fear that the past is repeating itself
Jason sees a man standing on the beach with arms outstretched and blood running down his fingers, echoing the posture of the sign-holding man from 1986
These moments pile dread onto the location itself. Santa Cruz is not just a setting; it is the site where Adelaide's double life began, and every coincidence signals that the buried past is resurfacing.
Adelaide tells Gabe she feels the girl she saw as a child is still out there, still following her. She cannot explain the coincidences rationally, but the feeling of convergence is overwhelming. As she speaks, the power cuts out.
This scene works on two levels. On the surface, it is a wife confiding an irrational fear. Underneath, knowing the twist, it is a Tethered woman who escaped the tunnels decades ago, terrified that the person she replaced is coming back for her.
The Tethered family appears in the Wilsons' driveway. They look almost identical to the Wilsons but with small distortions in posture, expression, and movement. Their appearance is uncanny: familiar enough to recognise, wrong enough to disturb.
Red is the only Tethered who speaks. She tells the Wilsons a story about a girl who had a shadow, and the shadow's life was defined by suffering while the girl above lived in comfort. This monologue is the thesis statement of the film: privilege and deprivation are tethered together, and the people below have come to claim what is theirs.
⚠️ The 1986 prologue is not just backstory. Every visual detail (the sign, the funhouse name, the whistling) pays off later. Expect questions asking you to trace a motif from the prologue through the full narrative.
⚠️ Hands Across America is both a real historical event and a symbolic device. Be prepared to discuss how Peele repurposes a real cultural moment to comment on performative solidarity versus structural inequality.
⚠️ Red's monologue at the Wilson house is often cited as the film's thesis statement. It articulates the Tethered's grievance and maps directly onto class-based critique.
⚠️ Jeremiah 11:11 recurs across scenes. Track each appearance and what it foreshadows at that point in the narrative.
Jordan Peele, Us 2019, horror film studies, the Tethered, doppelgänger motif, doubling in horror, class metaphor in film, underground symbolism, Hands Across America, Adelaide and Red, funhouse mirrors, Jeremiah 11:11, identity and privilege, repressed self, shadow self, social horror, American horror, UC Berkeley film studies, accelerated reading and composition