After Get Out, horror fans were eagerly director and writer Jordan Peele's next movie - one that came sooner than expected. Just two years later, he brought 'Us' to the big screen, starring Lupita Nyong'o as a mother trying to looking after her family when they're confronted by their exact doubles.
The movie isn't just a successful creepy thriller, but one that has spawned dozens of internet theories as fans delve into what exactly was really going on in the movie. There are numerous reveals at the end, some of which mean a re-watch seems necessary to figure it all out - but there are still lots of different ways to interpret it differently.
For those that need a recap over what happened at the end of the movie, here's the big spoiler: it turns out that Adelaide, the character we've been following all this time, was actually the 'Tethered' double from underground. She'd switched out the real Adelaide when they first met as children in the hall of mirrors. In the last scene, she gets a sceptical look from her son, Jason, and we're left wondering what her final smile to him means.
What many of us wanted, after seeing the film's final twist, was for the writer and director to step forward and tell us what he intended us to take away from the ending. Luckily for us, the director dropped in to Empire magazine's spoiler podcast, where he spoke about his take on the ending.
“This movie’s about maybe the monster is you," he said. "It’s about us, looking at ourselves as individuals and as a group."
"The protagonist in the movie is the surrogate for the audience, so it felt like at the end of the day, I wasn’t doing my core theme any justice if I wasn’t revealing that we have been the bad guy in this movie.
"We’ve been following the villain. I say ‘villain’ lightly because I think there are many experiences of the film, and I think a lot of people go through a question of what is good and evil? Does that even exist? Both characters are lovable and terrifying, based on the lives they’ve led they’ve just sort of inverted the paths.”
From there, Peele went on to speak about the final moment between Jason and Adelaide that spawned its own convincing fan theory:
“Adelaide and Jason sharing that moment at the end, I’m purposefully leaving it a bit vague as to what exactly he knows or how far he’s come in figuring out what, if anything, he’s figured out.
"I think the little smile she gives him is a lot of things. I think it’s a connection to the evil smile she once had as a little girl, but also a sort of understanding that her family unit was stronger from this experience.”
Despite his explanation, the fact that Peele left some details out and purposefully gave us an ambiguous ending means we will probably still be debating what was going on by time his next film gets out.
