“Us” is written and directed by Jordan Peele, two years after his directorial debut in feature films, with “Get Out”.  “Us” concerns the Wilson family, who go on holiday to California. They stay in the childhood home of the mother. Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), who remembers a childhood traumatic event at a seaside carnival. When the family visits the carnival, she becomes quite anxious, and in flashback we see that she remembers coming face to face with a little girl who looked exactly like her. At night four intruders enter the house, and the intruders look exactly like them. The doppelgangers try to kill the family, and it soon becomes apparent that there are lookalikes all across the country, hunting down and killing the people they resemble. The story follows where these others come from and why they are driven to kill.

There are excellent performances by all the cast, and especially Nyong’o as Adelaide and her double, who seems to be the leader of the others and is the only one who is heard speaking English. (The doubles seem to have a language of their own, composed of growls, yells, and other noises). Nyong’o is superb depicting Adelaide’s fear and confusion, and the double’s psychotic intensity. She clearly defines each character as being very different, and this makes their face off with each other very believable. I thought it very interesting that Red moves like a dancer, making a virtual dance out of all her movements.

Elisabeth Moss has a small but very interesting role as a friend of the family Kitty Tyler. It is clear the Tyler’s marriage is very rocky, and they are easily dispatched by their doubles. It is the double of Kitty who is quite compelling, being distracted from her desire to kill by her urge to emulate her original, cutting her own face in mimicry of Kitty’s plastic surgery. This is a vital delay for the protagonist to retrieve the upper hand.

I was also very impressed by Evam Alex as the young Jason Wilson (and double). Jason doesn’t speak very much, and often wears a mask, to the point where the viewer might wonder if he has some sort of disability (a question that is not answered). Disability or not, the character is very intelligent. It is he who works out how to use the doubles’ compulsion to imitate against them. Alex’s performance as the mute (other than growling) double of Jason is really convincing, almost animalistic in its quality.

There are many clever images and foreshadowing moments. The ‘Hands across America’ commercial young Adelaide sees is imitated into reality by the tethered, believing this is their statement that they are taking over. The scissors that they are each armed with is ‘untethering’, a severing of their bond. Adelaide’s double moves like a dancer, as Adelaide is a dancer.

On the down side, there are a lot of problems with the story, questions left unanswered that really should not have been left dangling. For example, we are told that the doubles are clones, that it was an experiment that was abandoned. The idea was that they would use the tethered to control people, but it didn’t work.  So, if it was abandoned, how have they been getting food? Where do they get their red overalls (not to mention the scissors)?

Going back to Hands across America, we can assume the tethered know about this as Adelaide told them about this. But why do it? Adelaide herself is not a clone so surely not compelled to mimic. While the metaphor is interesting, it doesn’t make sense within the plot.

Rabbits are seen at the start in small cages, typical of lab animals. At the end they are seen hopping around free. So, again, the obvious metaphor is that the lab animals (the tethered) are now free. Who’s been feeding the rabbits? Rabbits don’t live very long so these rabbits are not the same as the ones seen at the start. Have they been ‘breeding like rabbits’? Have the tethered been taking care of them? Many of the tethered, when observed in their original environment, seem to be quite unhinged. So would it occur to them to take care of rabbits?

Let us have a look at the mimicry that the clones are apparently compelled into. However, this is depicted in an off and on sort of way. The tethered are clearly capable of agency and taking action. But they revert to mimicry at the oddest times. Unfortunately this did end up feeling like something of a plot device. The clone of Kitty is distracted by mimicry at an opportune moment to give Adelaide the chance to get free and kill her. The clone of Jason is compelled to mimic until he is engulfed by flames. This seems as if it s a device to kill off those characters, as other times tethered characters do not mimic.

**Spoiler alert** If Red is Adelaide and Adelaide is Red, this raises several questions. We see her dancing down below. She isn’t a clone, so how does she gain the skill her counterpart was gaining up above? Does the tethering go both ways, or is it something she takes on by being in that environment? This is not answered. Why is her voice so strange? There’s no indication of injury. Is it from disuse? Other tethered characters don’t vocalise like that. More generally, some of the tethered speak and some do not. There seems to be their own language of growls and screeches. But some at least speak English. No reason is given for this difference between them.

There are no bad guys in this movie (except for the government types who ran the experiment.) The people who just go about their daily lives know nothing of the tethered, so how can they be held responsible? Of course, the metaphor of the haves and have nots can be seen here, but I don’t think it really works because of the lack of knowledge about the existence of these people. The tethered seem in many respects to be insane. They certainly would not have any real moral compass, no teaching of right and wrong, so would have no compunction in killing their doubles if that seemed good to them.

“Us” is a great idea but is fundamentally flawed. It does make for an entertaining movie, but the film is full of floating metaphors that have no grounding in the world of the film. The cast is excellent, the direction, cinematography, even the music, all come together to make what should have been a brilliant film. It is let down by a script that is full of half-baked ideas that make no sense. Some may say that explanation is not required, but I would disagree with that. If you are going to explain the presence of these people AT ALL (ie the failed experiment story) then you need to explain it properly, not leave so much dangling. It’s a decent movie, and worth watching, but certainly not the great movie it could have been.