8 Horror Movies With Deeper Meanings Than You Realise
2. Down The Rabbit Hole - Us
Us is full of different readings that run across its crazy storyline. Seeing a bunch of doppelgängers rise from their home in the underground and kill those on the surface, Adelaide Wilson and her family must try to survive and learn the truth of what their doubled 'tethered' beings are - effectively another version of themselves created through a government cloning program that they share a soul with.
Director Jordan Peele does his darnedest to pack the movie full of imagery and representation that isn't obvious on first watch - and whilst the plot of 'Hands Across America' becomes clear by the end, there's also recurring rabbit motifs that serve to reinforce Peele's vision.
Whether it's the opening shot of caged rabbits, a stuffed toy, a jumper with the Vietnamese word for rabbit on, or actual real life animals, they're all over. Apparently they're a food source for the tethered, but they also serve to represent the test animals that the underground society are treated as, as well as their collective, winding human burrow under the surface.
Of course, Alice in Wonderland also takes a trip down the rabbit hole to a strange new world - just as the tethered come out of one to terrorise those above. Peele says it best himself: “They’re an animal of duality. They’re adorable but they terrify me at the same time... And they got those scissor-like ears that creep me out.”