Jordan Peele is one of the dominating voices of modern horror. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who disagrees. His movies Get Out, Us, and Nope have become contemporary classics, and while there are arguments to be made about which of his directorial efforts is the best, most horror fans can agree that they want to keep seeing what he comes up with.
His original takes are often surprising and genuinely scary. Laden with social commentary, Peele is a clever writer and a stylish director who knows how to craft compelling horror stories that stay with you.
But one of his films freaked me out more than the rest and has stayed with me since I saw it in theaters. I'm talking about Us (2019). I know it is one of Peele's more divisive films, but I haven't stopped thinking about Us since I saw it in theaters.
An uncanny horror story
The uncanniness of someone identical to you existing out there in an underground world as part of a dark and disturbing conspiracy is seriously alarming. Us makes you second-guess your own reflection in the mirror. What could be more startling and world-shattering than noticing your reflection is suddenly not following you? That's what happens in one of the early scenes of the film.
Us also taps into our fears of doppelgangers and skin-walkers. It doesn't directly correlate to the skin-walker mythology from Navajo culture, but it draws on similar feelings—the idea of seeing something that is supposedly human, yet slightly off. Like a creature mimicking humans and struggling to get their attributes just right.
There are many horror stories online like these, such as on the popular Reddit forum creepypasta and even circulating on TikTok. Imagine stepping outside your house and seeing your twin lurking in the shadows.
I don't think Us was a perfect movie. It does try to do a lot in its runtime and falls apart a little in the second half. Still, the mythology behind the "tethered" and how they stalk Adelaide (Lupita Nyong'o) and her family sticks with you. The first half of the film, when the suspense is building and the mystery is being laid out, really rattled me. That and Nyong'o's perfectly unhinged performance as Red, Adelaide's tethered counterpart.
Sure, slasher movies are scary. Seeing Freddy Krueger in your nightmares or Michael Myers chasing you with a knife is no one's idea of a party. How do you make that even scarier? Turn the killers into people who look exactly like you and your loved ones. Killers who move like you, walk like you, breathe like you. Even if you're lucky enough to escape, how do you ever stop wondering if you are still you?
A substack writer named Lincoln Michel penned a good piece on uncanny horror a couple of years ago, explaining why it is so profoundly unnerving. It's "the feeling you get when something is simultaneously frightening and familiar. It is a feeling of eeriness. Offness. The creeps." It affects you psychologically in a way that not many other horror subgenres can manage.
Peele excels at examining and extrapolating all possible tension out of the subject. That's why Us remains one of the few horror films from the past decade to rattle me.