With his second horror film, we brought Jordan Peele another socially critical genre contribution in 2019 that had even more brutality and creep compared to Get Out – and a final that remains in the memory years later.
Since we stream in the subscription to Netflix, let’s take a look back at the enigmatic events at the end of the horror films and the importance of the associated (tethered). Here you will find an explanation and possible interpretations that help you to better understand the film.
Attention, spoilers follow at the end of us!
Horror at Netflix: This happens at the end of us
After Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) and her family were able to defeat almost all of her doppelgangers, her son Jason is kidnapped by Red. Alone and targeted, Adelaide makes its way to the mirror cabinet to save her son. Behind a hidden door, Adelaide descend into the world of tethered, down into rabbit construction. Here we learn that Truth about the doppelgangers.
These are clones made by the government with which people such as puppets should be controlled. But the government experiment was abandoned and the Tethered remained helplessly coupled to their doppelgangers of the upper world in tunnel systems underground until it finally got too much for them. The final confrontation with Red and a brutal pas de deux can survive.
But then we experience the terrible truth. Adelaide is actually a tethered one who as a child exchanged with the real adelaide has. She managed to get rid of her past completely and to be with her family. The happy ending does not last long, because we see hundreds of tethered, holding hands a chain across the United States, which shows how many human victims have already demanded.
We are a metaphor on …
In order to better understand the end of we, we have to look at the meta -level and meaning of the film. As in Get Out, Jordan Peele opens a dialogue about social injustice and breaks down the topic on an intimate story. So the people and the tethered people living in the underworld stand for the two -class society and the terrible one Balance of prosperity and poverty.
US (US … understood?) Is American through and through. The film looks at a nation with guilt, the prosperity of which is at the expense of others and which is built on a foundation of suffering. Here the characters live a carefree life and have long since hidden the price that others had to pay for their privileges. The events and figures of the upper world reflect numerous Archetypes and topics of modern America about here. Here are some examples:
ignorance: Jason knows that his mother is a tethered.
Explanation 1: The revolution of the oppressed
Almost like a episode Twilight Zone, we end on a cynical note. For a long time, people lived in safety and prosperity at the expense of others. The oppressed minority of the clones, which lived in the shadow of the privileged, now calls for retaliation. With their scissors, they separate the band that connected their fates with those of their oppressors. Now you can be all of you and take your lawful space under the sun.
As a final picture we see a human chain of Tethered, which, like once, Hands Across America want to set an example in the Reagan era, an era in which the class differences in the United States were extremely high. But this sign does not stand for peace, but is a memorial to show the sheer mass of the socially disadvantaged, which is no longer a minority.
They form a red line across the USA and use it to remind the so -called Redlining on, the systematic and mostly racially motivated distinction between socially weaker groups of people. If you see the attitude of the tethered as a T-pose, the end symbolizes the dominance of the forgotten and marginalized.
But why did the Wilson family survive the end of the world? In a nutshell: they are the connecting element of the two social classes. As People of Color, you belong to a historically suppressed group of people. In addition, the children are the result of the meeting of both sides.
Explanation 2: A society destroys itself
Since the doppelgangers are clones of people, they literally stand for us. You are our dark side. They are The repressed trauma of past generationswhich gets back to the surface. The trauma on the foundation of which our carefree society is built. So the end should symbolize us that the downfall threatens if we continue to live in naive ignorance, because something is boiling under the surface that should no longer be ignored.
The final picture of the human chain also plays an important role here. This is peeper criticism of the Naivety and double standards The Hands Across America campaign. Because of meal and hope, problems such as hunger and poverty do not dissolve by themselves. So the end symbolically stands for the non-conflict with problematic topics.
Of course there are other (UA biblical, Marxist) interpretation options for the end of we. But as you turn it and turns, the finale remains a warning finger at our society and humanity, which for various reasons is dismissing itself.
Alice in Horrorland: So the end of us is even more tragic
In We are numerous references to Alice in Wonderland and Alice behind the mirrors, which give the final twist a particularly depressive note when we Film from the perspective of the original cadhera regard.
This was dragged into the underworld (the Wonderland) as a child. She grew up between bizarre people and white rabbits while her doppelganger lived a carefree life.
For them, the life of compulsory marriages, rapes and unwanted pregnancies was determined. After years of suffering, Adelaide returns to the upper world to practice revenge. In the final confrontation with her opponent, she has the upper hand and is about to defeat her tormentor. Unfortunately, it is killed in the fight and Adelaid’s decades of suffering ends on a tragic note.
This article was first published in a similar form in March 2019 at Moviepilot.