10 More Horror Characters We All Foolishly Thought Had Got Away

9. Young Adelaide (Us)

Us Little Adelaide Jordan Peele
Universal

Jordan Peele's Us goes off the rails a little bit in its final act, but for the most part, it's a creepy, atmospheric horror flick, with some of the best use of music and sound a movie has had in recent times.

It also pulls a brilliant trick on the audience, convincing us that we're rooting for the normal, human version of protagonist Adelaide Wilson, only to reveal in its final moments that her character isn't who we thought she was.

This trickery begins from the opening scene, where young Adelaide bumps into a doppelgänger of herself in a house of mirrors. Understandably, she's taken aback by this development, but nothing bad appears to happen to her, and she leaves with her parents - quite shell-shocked, sure, but otherwise safe and sound.

However, just under two hours later, writer-director Jordan Peele reveals that Adelaide wasn't safe and sound, and that she didn't get away from that house of mirrors like we were led to believe.

Adelaide's doppelgänger actually kidnapped her and swapped places with her, leaving the original, human version to lounge about underground for several decades with nothing but raw rabbit meat to feast on. No wonder she's a bit miffed.

Even though it should've been obvious that young Adelaide didn't just walk away from that house of mirrors with nothing happening, Peele plays us for a bunch of fools, and his clever storytelling makes us believe exactly that.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!