We: Plot Twists and Hidden Meanings in Jordan Peel's New Horror Film

The plot of the movie

In 1986, young Adelaide accidentally moved away from her parents on the beach of Santa Cruz and ended up in a room with mirrors. There she was so much afraid of her reflection that for a while she stopped talking.

Already today, adult Adelaide Wilson with her husband Gabe, daughter Zora and son Jason go to rest in a summer house. Zora is an active girl who runs and reads about conspiracy theories. Jason is an introverted, silent boy with a strange habit of flicking a lighter.

Gabe buys a boat and persuades the whole family to go to Santa Cruz Beach, where they meet the Tyler family of their neighbors.

In the evening, a strange family comes to the house of Adelaide and Gabe: they are all copies of the Wilsons, but they are dressed in red robes. Of these, only a woman named Red speaks, but she does it as if she is being strangled. She says that Adelaide always had a "shadow" that had to repeat her entire life path, regardless of desire. To take revenge, the doppelgangers try to kill the Wilsons, but they manage to escape.

At the same time, Tyler's doppelgangers kill the entire family. Similar incidents occur throughout the country. The Wilsons try to escape, but Red steals Jason, and Adelaide sets off in pursuit.

The film ends with Adelaide descending into the dungeon. It turns out that as a result of secret government experiments, each person has been created a bound double, or a shadow. These entities could telepathically control people living on the surface. Then the experiment was closed, and the shadows were left to their own devices. Under the leadership of Red, they mutinied and came to the surface. But all this is only in order to join hands, forming one continuous chain.

Adelaide finds Red, kills her and saves her son. He takes one rabbit with him - they were kept in cages underground as food for the bound ones. In the finale, all the doubles join hands, creating a chain of people, and the Wilsons drive away.

Explicit and hidden plot twists

First of all, the film is built like a good thriller or horror: it is dark, violent, and the behavior of the shadows is scary. But in the finale, director Jordan Peele shows some interesting twists that change the perception of the entire plot.

Shadows rule people, not vice versa

The first hint of this can be seen when Zora reads another theory in the car that the government added fluoride to the water to make people more obedient. Then, of course, the whole family laughs at her. Then, when the shadows come to the Wilson house, Red says that she had to repeat everything after Adelaide.

But in fact, it is not the shadows that follow the people, but the people repeat the actions of the creepy creatures bred by the government. With their help, someone really wanted to rule the country, but the experiment was abandoned.

Some reviews suggest that from the moment the experiment was abandoned, the situation changed and the shadows gradually began to copy the originals themselves. Such a feeling is created from the scene where people have fun on carousels, and their counterparts underground just walk in circles.

But this change of place in the film is not directly mentioned. There is a possibility that this is just a hint at the meaningless behavior of people: they repeat the actions of their deranged doubles. Moreover, if the shadows copied the behavior of the originals, the next plot twist would not work.

Adelaide is Red's shadow, not the other way around

Red had to repeat the actions of Adelaide only because in fact she is a real person, and Adelaide is just a shadow. When the girl was lost in childhood, she met her double in the mirror room. She strangled her, dragged her to her room and changed her clothes.

Hints of this are given throughout the film. Firstly, the girl stopped talking after she was found (and the “connected ones” cannot talk). Even as an adult, she tells a friend on the beach that she doesn't like chatting.

Secondly, Red is the only one of the shadows who can speak. And her voice sounds like that, apparently due to suffocation in childhood. It turns out that Adelaide all her life was afraid not of a new appearance of a double from a room with mirrors, but of the fact that her true essence would be revealed.

Jason is Pluto's shadow, not the other way around

This is not spoken of directly as the previous twists. But there are a few hints that have allowed many viewers and journalists to draw such a conclusion. When the doppelganger family appears, Jason, who loves to wear a Chewbacca mask, and Pluto in a white mask go to play. It turns out that the shadow's face is badly burned.

Perhaps he is the real son of Adelaide, who was burned because of his love to play with fire. After that, his mother changed places with a double, as she had once done herself. Jason is withdrawn and doesn't speak much. At the same time, the feeling is created that they communicate with their mother non-verbally, as do the “connected” ones - in the car, they even snap their fingers synchronously, not falling into the beat of the music. And on the beach, Jason plays in the sand, but does not build castles, but digs tunnels, similar to those in which doubles live.

At the end of the film, he begins to manipulate Pluto's actions, sending him into the fire. Well, in the very finale, he and Adelaide exchange very significant glances, and the boy puts on his mask again. And in this case, the fact that he brought a rabbit with him looks more ominous: it is likely that the boy just took care of food for the future.

Meaning and implications

Like Jordan Peele's previous film Get Out, the new film was created not only to scare and surprise the viewer. “We” has several semantic connotations associated with both politics and ordinary human behavior.

The real enemies of the people

People are their own worst enemies. This idea is primarily traced in the constant hints of dualism. There is a lot of symmetry and reflections in the film. Even as a child, Adelaide meets a scary man with the sign "Jeremiah 11:11". This refers to a passage from the Bible, hinting at the impending punishment of the human race.

Therefore, thus says the Lord: behold, I will bring upon them a calamity from which they cannot escape, and when they call on me, I will not hear them.

Jeremiah 11:11

But this is not just a prediction of a tragedy, but also a symbol. “11:11” looks mirrored, and then these numbers will appear constantly: on a T-shirt, watch, in the score of a football match. In addition, they mean just four units - the family of heroes and the family of their counterparts.

And then doubles and reflections are encountered throughout the film. Adelaide enters the mirror room, Zora looks in the mirror in the house. Their neighbors have twin daughters. Jason sits opposite his "tied" and moves in sync with him. Doppelgangers carry out reprisals with golden scissors. These two symmetrical halves, connected in the center, are the key symbol of the film.

But the main thing, of course, is that the antagonists of Adelaide and her family show their exact copies. So Jordan Peel hints that in most cases the main enemy of man is himself.

“The work on this film started with the idea that we live in a finger-pointing culture, you know? Whether we are talking about the fear of a stranger from another country, or from another apartment, or from another street, we would rather point our finger at someone else than point it at ourselves,”the director notes in an interview with Kinopoisk.

The finale of the picture reveals the theme even more: when Adelaide laughs, killing Red, it is no longer clear who is the hero and who is the villain in this story.

Class and racial discrimination

But the plot is not limited only to the morality of life. Like Saw's first film, We contains a story about the problems of the consumer society, as well as class and racial inequality.

It is noticeable that Gabe is trying with all his might to look like a typical representative of the middle class. He even buys a boat, although the family doesn't need one. When they break into their house, the hero first of all invites them to take the money, boat and cars. In addition, Gabe is clearly jealous of Tylers' neighbors and tries to be equal to them in everything.

At the same time, life with neighbors does not look too fun. They are completely dependent on their weaknesses: alcohol, cloud assistant and gadgets. Of course, Tylers die in the end. And in this regard, the film can be considered an exposure of the consumer society: people are ruined by excesses.

I grew up in a privileged environment. I was not rich, yet my family was middle class. I grew up in New York City, American, with access to a good education. And I've taken it for granted most of my life. If you look at my personal contribution to the world's evil, then I am inextricably linked with someone who was deprived of everything that I got just by right of birth.

Jordan Peel in an interview with Kinopoisk

An analogy of class inequality can be considered the ladder along which the shadows rise from their dungeon - a hint of a career ladder. Nobody noticed them for years, and in the end they decided to declare themselves. And they just wanted to show that they exist - as a result, all the "connected" are built into a huge living chain.

This is analogous to the actual 1986 Hands Across America, which is shown at the very beginning of the film. Then more than six million people, including many celebrities, held hands for 15 minutes. The action was designed to defeat hunger - many participants handed in $ 10 for a place in the chain. Apparently, Red has memories of this action and she urged the "connected" to do the same.

Colored robes for twins have two meanings at once. On the one hand, this is an allusion to former and current prisoners whom society refuses to accept - the director himself spoke about this in an interview. On the other hand, it can be considered a statement on the topic of racism. The life of the shadows underground and their clothes are analogous to the slave system, and their emergence to the surface is a reminder that they are the same people as everyone else.

Moreover, Jordan Peel says that he deliberately invited black actors to the main roles. His statement even caused a lot of controversy.

I can't imagine taking a white guy for the lead role. It's not that I don't like white guys, but I've seen such films before.

Jordan Peele

In fact, his words and reactions to them just reflect what the director shows in the film: people want to see only what they are used to, not noticing representatives of the lower classes or other races.

The influence of enemies on politics

Of course, there were some political statements. Although, unlike many other films of recent times, here again they talk about the responsibility of the people themselves for what is happening. Even the name of the painting Us can mean not only "We", but also United States. This is confirmed by Red.

- Who you are?

- We are Americans.

Dialogue between Gabe and Red

The ending of the film with a story about secret government experiments hints at the belief of many people that the country is surrounded by enemies and it is they who somehow influence the elections and the real situation in the country. So, for several months in the United States, an investigation was conducted on Russian interference in the presidential elections.

“The starting point of the story is fear of 'others', fear of invaders and outsiders. But this is a mistake when you consider the damage that we do to ourselves. The real monster is home grown, Jordan Peele says in an interview with Mashable.

If we put all the subtexts together, then the film "We" calls to stop looking for enemies from the outside and to realize that the country is formed by the people who inhabit it. At the same time, all interpretations are united by the same idea: most people look for the guilty among others, not thinking about their participation in common evil and not noticing the inequality and oppression that are happening around.