Mirror Mirror on the Wall: The Bible and Ethics in Jordan Peele’s 2019 film Us

Abstract

Jordan Peele’s horror movie, Us, takes moral ambiguity to its logical extreme by creating a world, or, rather, two worlds, in which good and evil mirror each other on multiple planes—the narrative, the visual, the spatial, the racial, the ethical—and by its use of a biblical verse—Jer 11:11. The Wilsons, who inhabit “our” world, view the “Tethered”, who inhabit a nether world, as evil insofar as they have emerged from the shadows to terrorize and kill them. The Tethered, however, view the humans as evil, insofar as they take for granted the ability to enjoy and act in the world. Like the prophet Jeremiah, the film draws the audience’s attention to its own iniquity—and the consequences.