Director: Jordan Peele
Writer: Jordan Peele
Stars: Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss
1 Hour, 56 Minutes
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/305x6mQ
Synopsis
We learn from the Hands-Across-American commercial on TV that this takes place in 1986. The family goes to the boardwalk at the beach, and Adelaide, the little girl, wants a “Thriller” T-shirt. She walks off while her father’s playing a game and her mother goes to the restroom. She goes down the steps into the darkness towards the water. She finds a lonely fun house booth out there called “Find yourself,” and she enters. The lights go off, and she has a hard time finding her way out of this hall of mirrors. One of the versions of her in the mirror doesn’t turn around when it’s supposed to. The girl screams. Credits roll.
We jump ahead to the present day. The little girl now has a family of her own, and they’ve just arrived at their summer house. There’s some mention of going to the beach, and the mother gets a weird look in her eyes. We flash back to Adelaide as a little girl, and she won’t talk about what happened. Her parents know she’s been traumatized somehow, but they don’t know any specifics, because Adelaide refuses to speak after the incident.
Back in the present, Adelaide refuses to go to the beach, but her husband really wants to go, so she gives in. On the way, they pass the same crazy man that Adelaide saw so many years ago. The family goes to Santa Cruz Beach with their friends Kitty and Josh. The “Find yourself” booth is still there. Her son Jason runs off, but he only goes to the bathroom; no harm done, but Adelaide freaks out over it. She wants to go home, as this whole trip is just too much for her.
She talks to Gabe about what happened so long ago, and suddenly, the power goes out. Jason comes in and asks who that family standing outside is. There’s a man and woman and two children out there. Gabe goes out and confronts them, but they just stand there. When they finally move, they’re very strange.
They finally break in. They’re the same four people, only a little different. “It’s us,” says Jason. The “other mother,” Red, explains that she was once Adelaide’s shadow. The shadow hated the real girl. She calls this “The untethering.” They make Adelaide handcuff herself to the table. The four imposters each pair off with their duplicates. For the most part the normal folks win and get away in the boat.
Meanwhile, Josh and Kitty hear something outside. Their own doppelgangers are a little more effective than the first bunch, quickly overwhelming and killing the real people. Adelaide and the family then knock on the door. Kitty/Dahlia grabs Adelaide and pulls her inside while the kids and Gabe do battle with Josh and his family.
It takes a while, but our family defeats these guys as well. The police don’t answer the phone, and we start to wonder if everyone is in this situation. They turn on the TV, and yep, it’s everywhere. There are huge numbers of these fake-people.
Red eventually grabs Jason and takes him back to the boardwalk. Hundreds of red-garbed clones are holding hands, all in a row. Adelaide goes back inside the fun house and goes down inside the works of the place. There are a vast number of underground tunnels for maintenance underneath. She goes down, down, and more down until she finds an escalator… going down. She finds a huge complex overrun with rabbits.
We finally get a weird explanation about the people below controlling the people above and how it was all an abandoned mind control experiment. Red became obsessed with Adelaide and the world above. The other “tethered” saw her as something special and started following her lead. She did all this to reenact the Hands Across America with duplicates, and of course, to steal their lives.
Commentary
This was far better than I was expecting. Many reviews I’ve seen compared this to Jordan Peele’s other big hit, but I thought “Get Out” was just horribly overrated. I was expecting that this was as well. No, it’s really good all by itself.
The final explanation for what happened was very weird, but I guess it does explain things if you don’t think about it too hard. I’m not sure what the world will look like when they all stop holding hands, but otherwise, it all makes sense.
The final twist was something I thought was obvious even before the credits began, but didn’t think it would go there, so I forgot about it. It did happen, but it was so much an afterthought that I’d forgotten about the possibility, so this actually worked out in the end.