Warning: contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.
Jordan Peele followed his first movie, "Get Out" with "Us" this year, and his second movie was even better than the first in some ways. There are several different ways to interpret Us, and as interpretations go, they could all be right. For a basic premise as to what is being interpreted in the first place, here is a simple rundown of the plot:
A family of four vacation at the old summer house of our main character, Adelaide. When she was younger, Adelaide was traumatized by going into a funhouse on the boardwalk beach and finding an alternate version of herself, a doppleganger, if you will. In a purposely ambiguous scene, what happens between Adelaide and the alternate version of herself is not shown. Later on, Adelaide's family of four is attacked by dopplegangers of themselves from a secret underworld below the United States made up of everybody's alternate versions, which were made by the government to somehow control the population. These dopplegangers were known as the "tethered". It turns out that all those years ago, Adelaide's doppleganger had switched places with her, and the "underworld" version of her was living aboveground the whole time, while the "real" version of her had been trapped underneath with the rest of the tethered.
And as if that wasn't enough, there are also rabbits interspersed through the scenes of this "underworld", shown in cages at first but then depicted as roaming free later on when the "real" Adelaide helped form a revolution that encouraged the tethered to start killing their counterparts. At the very end of the movie, the tethered are also shown forming a chain known as Hands Across America, holding hands, while cheerful music plays in the background.
So what's going on here?
Personally, this movie seems to be about societal or financial class. While the tethered are living belowground with only rabbits for food, their alternate verions are living aboveground with yachts to hang out on in their spare time. Most definitely a commentary on the divide between those who are privileged and those who are not.
It's probably no coincidence that "Us" could also stand for "US" as in "United States". The fact that the tethered are just alternate versions of the main characters shows that our lives could be very different, depending on the circumstances in which you were born in raised. In many ways, having a privileged childhood versus having a childhood where you had to worry about where your next meal is from is based on luck.
And why the rabbits? Rabbits can represent rebirth and fertility, which is indicative of the tethered's rise to freedom, lead by the "real" Adelaide, hence why the rabbits were in cages at first, but later on were shown roaming free when the tethered were also free.
The tethered also represent repression. We repress the dark parts of ourselves that we don't want other people to see; our most raw impulses. And they are also literally shoved underground. They could stand for almost any issue America isn't willing to face head on, or any part of the population that tends to be marginalized or ignored. They were abandoned and left to fend for themselves.
The fact that Red, Adelaide's counterpart, had actually chained her underground and forced her to grow up as a member of the tethered, while Red herself left the underworld behind and lived above ground, not doing anything to expose the treatment of the tethered or trying to get them free when she was older and more able to do so, could represent people who are fortunate enough to make their way out of underprivileged living conditions, but still look down upon the less privileged because they see themselves as better for being able to get out.
To sum it up, Jordan Peele is a master of metaphor. His use of symbolism reminds me of Stephen King and how almost every object, every scene, and every character could mean way more than what meets the eye.
