Movie · 2019 · Horror, Mystery · 1h 56m · R · English
Curator score: 6.5/10 (2.6M ratings)
Watch yourself.
Overview
Husband and wife Gabe and Adelaide Wilson take their kids to their beach house expecting to unplug and unwind with friends. But as night descends, their serenity turns to tension and chaos when some shocking visitors arrive uninvited.
Ratings
Curator score: 6.5/10
IMDb: 6.8/10
Letterboxd: 3.64/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 93%
Metacritic: 81
TMDB: 6.9/10
Director
Jordan Peele
Production
Monkeypaw Productions, Universal Pictures, Perfect World Pictures, Blumhouse Productions, QC Entertainment, Fuji Television Network
Cast
Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop, Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon, Madison Curry, Ashley McKoy, Napiera Groves, Lon Gowan, Alan Frazier, Duke Nicholson, Dustin Ybarra, Nathan Harrington, Kara Hayward, Jordan Peele
Curator Review
Verdict
A smart, unnerving home-invasion horror that plays like a genre thriller on the surface and a dense social allegory underneath. It’s especially rewarding if you like horror that sparks debate, rewards rewatching, and mixes dread with dark humor and big-image symbolism.
Best for
Viewers who like horror with subtext and social commentary
Fans of twisty, theory-friendly movies
People who enjoy tense family-centered thrillers
Audiences open to surreal, symbolic storytelling
Viewers who like horror with sharp visual style and memorable set pieces
Skip if
You want a straightforward explanation and clean answers
You prefer minimal symbolism and maximal realism
You dislike horror that is intentionally ambiguous
You’re looking for a purely character-driven drama without genre escalation
Overview
Us is a sleek, crowd-pleasing nightmare that starts as an invasion thriller and steadily mutates into something stranger and more unsettling. Jordan Peele stages the film with real control: the family dynamics feel lived-in, the jokes land, and the scares arrive with a sense of play that never fully lets you relax.
Worth noting
What makes it linger is the way it invites interpretation. The movie is built on doubles, class anxiety, identity, and the uneasy relationship between comfort and denial, but it never reduces itself to a single thesis. That openness is part of the thrill: you can watch it as a propulsive horror movie, then keep unpacking it afterward.
Bottom line
It’s less tidy than Get Out, and some viewers will find that frustrating, but the ambiguity is also what gives it its afterlife. The performances, especially Lupita Nyong’o’s, carry the film through its most heightened turns and make the whole thing feel both operatic and personal.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Lucy (4.5★) · 16215 likes
“but your people took it for granted”
this is such an interesting movie in the sense that you can go as deep as you’d like to go with it. at surface level is a very thrilling and accessible horror movie, but the possibilities are endless from there in all kinds of different directions. i’ve been thinking about it more and more, and during my rewatch tonight my mind was racing with bigger picture theories the entire time
the most fascinating… more
Vince East (5★) · 8261 likes
Themes Explained:
After a second viewing and researching various theories, I’ve realized there is a lot more to Us than I initially thought. The surface-level explanation of the plot is generally straightforward, but Jordan Peele has embedded so much symbolism and thematic commentary into the film that require a bit more digging into. I have taken the ideas that stood out to me the most and compiled an interpretation that I feel is closest to what Peele was going for.… more
tru (4.5★) · 7935 likes
and to think, if it weren’t for you, i never would’ve danced at all
Patrick Willems (4★) · 6902 likes
Best use of "Good Vibrations" maybe ever
demi adejuyigbe (4★) · 6862 likes
I really, really, really enjoyed this film. But as I left the theatre, I had so many more questions than I entered with, and the more I talked about it with a friend the more I realized that it is a complete inverse of the structure in Get Out (which tightens to a conclusion, as opposed to unraveling as you get more answers) which set me up to be disappointed. My fault!
I’m confused by so much of what happened… more
2016 · Thriller, Science Fiction, Drama · 1h 44m · PG-13 · Curator 5.8/10 (1M ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A claustrophobic survival thriller that keeps shifting between trust, control, and threat.