"I'll Keep You Safe": Exploring the Mother-Child Unit in Jordan Peele's Us
Evan Alex, Lupita Nyong'o and Shahadi Wright Joseph as Jason, Adelaide and Zora Wilson in Us. Courtesy of Universal Pictures. Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Us (2019). Jordan Peele's second film, Us , begins as a benign home invasion movie, following the Wilson family on holiday as they are stalked and attacked by their doppelgangers (or as the film calls them, the tethered); however, it quickly becomes much more. Though Us tackles many themes with dexterity and nuance, the familial unit is front and centre, bringing particular attention to the relationships between family members and challenging our expectations of what a family should be in a horror film. When not neglected from the narrative entirely, horror film families are fragmented, abusive and sources of trauma; conflict tends to arise from within the family unit as a result of external forces (such as in The Shining, Pet Sematary or Poltergeist), destroying the family from the insi...