Us 4.5 stars☆☆☆☆☆

“I don’t feel like myself” says the nervy Adelaide, as they try to settle into their beach house for their holiday with their children Zora and Jason. “I think you look like yourself” says her husband Gabe.

Doppelgangers both fascinate and repel us. They look like us but make us squirm. When we hear we have one, it threatens our identity. How could friends who know us so well not realise it wasn’t us?

In storytelling they draw us in though, from Shakespeare’s twin mix-ups to those Instagram posts of stunt performers standing in costume next to the identically-dressed star that they’re doubling for – doing the dirty, dangerous stuff so someone on much higher pay can shine in relative comfort.

Us is mainly about privilege and the way identity feeds into that, though its many themes feel like separate layers. Writer-director Jordan Peele has done a superb job, with each of those layers made up of jigsaw pieces that only become apparent later. Those scissors sure have been busy. It’s very steadily-paced, the tension unbearable at times, but actually the two hours fly by.

The doppelgängers in Us all wear red jumpsuits, outfits that can both self-define a group or be a symbol of conformity. The first ones appear on the driveway of the Wilson family after darkness has fallen. It’s day 1 of the family’s vacation, and they’ve spent the afternoon on Santa Cruz beach with their friends Kitty (Elisabeth Moss) and Josh (Tim Heidecker).

Josh is one of those men who is always completely prepared. He’s exactly who you need in a horror film. He’s even got a back-up generator for when the power lines go out! Not that it helps him, but still.

Gabe (Winston Duke) has bought a boat, to the family’s general hilarity. Later it provides some light relief to cut the tension lest we all explode. “You can have the boat for all I care!” Gabe tells their very own home invaders. “Nobody wants the boat, Dad” points out Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph).

Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) didn’t want to go to the beach and once there she doesn’t want to make small talk with Kitty. The seaside funfair terrifies her, reminding her of a childhood trauma there when she wandered off and ended up in a deserted hall of mirrors, meeting a little girl who looked just like her.

The adult Adelaide is ever-watchful and scratchy. En route to the beach in the car they pass a dead man covered in blood being carried into an ambulance. He has a sign saying Jeremiah 11:11. In this film full of signs here a sign is a sign. Later it turns out he’s Victim Zero.

Once by the sea, Kitty hints at work she’s had done on her face, so she looks the same but better. She and Josh have identical twin teenage girls. Their own doppelgängers. Can doppelgängers have doppelgängers? Hell yes!

That night the doppelgänger Wilson family break in, wide-eyed and grunting, apart from Red (also Lupita Nyong’o) who half-croaks and half-snarls a fairytale about a pampered girl and her mistreated shadow that she’s waited decades to tell. They’re here to slay – literally! But she also wants to savour the turning of the tables. “What do we want? We want to take our time” says Red, a twisted version of a protest march chant.

Everyone seems both repelled and drawn to their murderous lookalike, and none more so than Adelaide who seems more connected than most to her other half (and to the location – why did they buy a house so near the scene of her childhood trauma?)

Peele takes the action out of the Wilsons’ holiday home, to find more doppelgängers. Neighbours too are targeted by red jumpsuit-wearing killers; this is a country-wide phenomenon. Homes that were safe spaces become prisons, but outside the danger is as great. TV crews record what’s happening, as this new version of us emerges. “Someone said they’re coming from the sewers!” says a panicked eyewitness.

Peele plays with our understanding and self-perceived cleverness. What happens literally happens. Some of the themes are blatant (and the final twist obvious). Take those shadows: the family walking along the beach seen from above, tall shadows cast next to them; Zora’s doppelgänger name Umbrae which also means shadows; Red’s story. But it’s the little asides and throwaway lines which have a significance that’s only apparent afterwards.

Experimentation is key. Teenage Zora has convinced herself that the government puts fluoride in the water as a mind control drug. Rabbits are a recurring symbol – food for shadows, and also lab animals there to make people’s lives better.

The doppelgängers are Us but they’re also the U.S. “We’re Americans” declares Red, fellow citizens, suppressed for so long. It’s not enough to claim that those above ground aren’t personally responsible, and “out of sight, out of mind” doesn’t absolve anyone.

The doppelgängers demonstrate that if you don’t treat people with humanity then both they and you become inhuman and animalistic. The kids literally scuttle around. Adult movements have a robotic quality, as if the’ve learnt how to be human at one remove. Or maybe it’s always just below the surface – trying to escape by car, Zora demands to drive as “I have the highest kill count!”

The performances are uniformly (ha!) excellent, with the extraordinary Nyong’o utterly chilling as Red (she’s also pretty scary as Adelaide). There’s something pitiless about Red, relentless at taking back what’s hers. “Don’t burn our house down” she laughs to Jason and his opposite number, Pluto, as they go off to play. It’s terrifying and she knows it.

Us is sometimes very funny, seeing people die to a Beach Boys soundtrack. “CALL THE POLICE” shrieks Kitty at their more poshly-named Alexa as their own red jumpsuit-wearing doppelgängers come for them. Instead it plays Fuck Tha Police by NWA. (There’s also a great Home Alone gag that will make you feel really old.)

Several of the doppelgänger names are based on mythology. Jason’s is called Pluto, who was the god of the Underworld. The twins’ doppelgangers are Nix and Io. Nix was a goddess of the night (and one of Pluto’s moons). Io too was a goddess, wandering the world while tormented by a gadfly (make of that what you will). And Red? Maybe it represents communism, believed to have been hiding under American beds during the 1950s. Maybe it’s rage. Maybe it’s the jumpsuits.

Despite the incredibly neat jigsaw work there are also lots of threads left hanging. But that’s because the film raises so many questions in the hours afterwards. Peele has set us off on a quest to spot the clues and work out what he means and I’m sure he’ll enjoy some of our more off-the-wall answers (and those elements we miss).

“It’s our time now. Our time up there,” says Red, though it’s unclear whether she’s demanding a complete swapping over of position and privilege, or simply of taking their place among the rest of society and enjoying the benefits previously denied to them.

If you must know, I’ve added a couple of big spoilers but you’ll have to scroll down for them…

Watch the trailers below, or check out cast and director interviews from the SXSW film festival premiere.

The Us first trailer:

The Us second tailer:

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You scrolled, didn’t you… Okay, here goes: the doppelgängers are the result of a now-abandoned government experiment, and live in tunnels underground. Adelaide is actually one of them, after the child Red knocked out the real Adelaide in the hall of mirrors and took her place with Adelaide’s family above ground all those years ago. At the end, as the family drive off looking for safety, Jason realises what she is, and puts his mask back on. There’s a final shot of thousands of red jumpsuit-wearing people holding hands across the country, an idea twisted from the real Adelaide’s Hands Across America t-shirt that she was wearing when she was taken. And here’s that quotes from the Bible, the Book of Jeremiah, 11:11: “Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.” (I’ll hurt them and don’t ask for mercy, basically. But it could just as well refer to the past treatment of the doppelgängers as the above ground-ers.)