In his documentary Jerry Building: Unholy Relics of the Third Reich, the architectural critic Jonathan Meades observes that tunnels are a form of 'infantile structure...the burrow, the warren, the uterine comforter...associable with secret societies, and the desire of the human to take on animal form.' Jordan Peele's 2019 film Us, which has a lot to say about childhood, secrets, and the animal, begins with an observation about tunnels, telling us that 'There are thousands of miles of tunnels beneath the continental United States. Abandoned subway systems, unused service routes, and deserted mine shafts...Many have no known purpose at all.':
Meades observes that the Nazis' infantile obsession with burrows and tunnelling (they were building underground bunkers long before the war began) would acquire a new importance when they were forced to 'scurry, crawl and hide in the dark'. But Us, like most horror movies that deal with the depths, isn't about burrowing in, except in its unsettling opening and, to an extent, its climax. Instead, it's concerned with what might get out.
That something unheimlich might emerge from underground is hinted at in the presence, in the opening shot, of a VHS copy of C.H.U.D., Douglas Cheek's 1984 movie in which the people of New York's streets are menaced by the quasi-titular (but more on that tomorrrow) Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller. So when Lupita Nyong'o's Adelaide 'Addy' Wilson strays from her arguing parents at a seaside theme park and becomes lost in the 'Vision Quest' themed hall of mirrors, we're primed to see something disturbing emerge from the dark. What we get, however, is a different flavour of disturbing to cheek's shambling, toxic zombies: an exact duplicate of Addy: her doppelganger.
We will learn, later in the film, that said doppelganger is one of 'the Tethered': clones created by the government and kept underground as part of an experiment to see if they could somehow be used to control their originals on the surface. We will learn that the experiment failed, and the Tethered have been abandoned underground to a life of empty mimicry of their originals (their name refers to a peculiar psychic connection between the clones and their counterparts) and eating the caged rabbits left behind by the scientists. But the first thing we will learn about the Tethered, when a family of them visit Addy and her family at their vacation house, is that they want revenge. Addy's Tethered counterpart, Red, explains her motives in a speech which also serves to introduce us to the twisted copies of Addy's husband and children which make up Red's family:
'Once upon a time, there was a girl and the girl had a shadow. The two were connected, tethered together. And the girl ate, her food was given to her warm and tasty. But when the shadow was hungry, she had to eat rabbit raw and bloody. On Christmas, the girl received wonderful toys; soft and cushy. But the shadow's toys were so sharp and cold they sliced through her fingers when she tried to play with them. The girl met a handsome prince and fell in love. But the shadow at that same time had Abraham, it didn't matter if she loved him or not. He was tethered to the girl's prince after all. Then the girl had her first child, a beautiful baby girl. But the shadow, she gave birth to a little monster. Umbrae was born laughing. The girl had a second child, a boy this time. They had to cut her open and take him from her belly. The shadow had to do it all herself. She named him Pluto, he was born to love fire. So you see, the shadow hated the girl so much for so long until one day the shadow realized she was being tested by God.'
What follows is a game of cat and mouse between the Wilsons and their Tethered reflections, plus two tethered duplicates of two family friends played by Tim Heidecker and Elisabeth Moss, and their children. This culminates in Addy descending into the tunnels again (the 'Vision Quest' attraction has been restyled as the less culturally-appropriative 'Merlin's Quest') to confront Red and rescue her kidnapped son, Jason (in the course of which Red explains more about the Tethered's origins).
What's most compelling in all of this is the air of unreality Peele creates around the story. The confrontation with the doppelganger, or the Shadow, is a big, mythic, Jungian theme, as is descent into the underworld. The styling of the hall of mirrors, in both its guises, reminded me of those creepy, fairytale-style covers that you see in pictures of some of the books on hypnotism which would eventually morph into the pseudoscience of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. Rabbits, of course, have a longstanding connection with adventures underground (go ask Alice). As with Peele's previous film, Get Out, the scientific veneer (in this case the scientists who create and then abandon the Tethered) really serves as a plot contrivance to allow Peele to tell a story about disturbing magic - magic which strikes at the core of one's identity.
Because one of the film's last revelations is that Addy herself is one of the Tethered. In the hall of mirrors as a child, she strangled her doppelganger - the real Addy - unconscious, and replaced her. The damage to the original's vocal chords is why Red speaks in the scratchy, terrifying voice in which she addresses Addy.
Maybe this is why, as Addy finally escapes with her family, and sees evidence of Red's plan (inspired by another pop culture reference from the opening scene) coming to fruition, she smiles. Because she, more than anyone else in her family, understands the drive to get out of the sunken place the army of the Tethered has escaped from. Because she already got out. And this, perhaps, explains why of all her family - including her physically much bigger husband, Gabe - Addy proves to be the fiercest fighter in disposing of her family's doubles. Because she knows what it's like, down there in the underground shadow of America - and she doesn't want to go back.
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