What if we really are our own worst enemy?

One of my favorite Langston Hughes poems, The Final Curve, states:

When you turn the corner

And you run into yourself

Then you know that you have turned

All the corners that are left

What if you really are your own worst enemy? You can only run so far until you have to face yourself. And no one can save you from yourself. Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o), a loving mother who would do anything to protect her family,  has run as far as she could from her childhood trauma. However, in the end - something very dark and sinister is revealed about her. We soon find out after investing so much into the idea of her - that she’s not who she portrays herself to be.

Adelaide has achieved what most Americans desire - a beautiful family and home - but at what cost? I along with plenty of others who viewed Us walked out of the theater not knowing how to feel about the movie or Adelaide. She wasn’t the hero that we had been cheering on which makes us uncomfortable because Adelaide and her doppelganger, Red, illustrate the good and evil that exists in all of us.

Most of the time what we’re taught to fear is outside of us or the “other.” But we find out at the end of the film that we are the “other” that we’ve been fearing all along.