Jordan Peele’s Us has much deeper meanings and themes than its surface-level family-swap thriller suggests, with the film’s bunnies representing this.

Summary

• Us is a horror-thriller with deeper themes of class divide, social status, and racial equality, as indicated by the recurring appearance of rabbits.
• The rabbits - an Easter mark of Jesus Christ's resurrection - in the film symbolize the rebirth of the Tethered, representing their rise up from being underground and their desire to take their place in society.
• According to Jordan Peele, the rabbits also represent duality and evoke a sense of survival and intelligence though without humanity like the Tethered do, aligning with the overall exploration of class, race, and society in Us.

2019's Us is, on the surface, a family-swap horror-thriller, yet it holds much more meaningful themes and exploration beneath its premise with the film's recurring appearances of rabbits providing one of these aspects. Written and directed by Jordan Peele, Us centers on Lupita Nyong'o as Adelaide who goes on a trip with her family only to be encountered by a doppelganger of herself, her husband, and her two children. The impostors then attack the family, leading to a much deeper story of class divide, social status, and racial equality as tends to be the case with Peele's movies.

Given these deeper meanings, few horror movies like Us are made outside Peele's other filmography. Throughout his films, Peele tends to include several meaningful, symbolic elements that may seem unimportant at first. In the case of Us specifically, one of these elements is the recurring appearance of bunny rabbits. From the opening scene in which the credits appear over many caged rabbits to these rabbits being chaotically free during the film's climactic sequence, the bunnies in the film have a much deeper meaning than their simply unsettling appearance let on by the Us movie's twist ending.

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Us' Bunnies Link To The Tethered & The Concept Of Rebirth

The bunnies in the film are one of the more mysterious aspects, leading to one of Us' unanswered questions. That said, the film does provide some answers on a surface level as to what the rabbits are. The rabbits were initially tied to the government experiment surrounding the clones, or "Tethered" as the film dubs the doubles. After the experiment was abandoned and the Tethered were left below ground, the clones began feeding on the rabbits to survive.

However, the rabbits hold a deeper meaning too. Rabbits commonly symbolize rebirth in human culture as explained by their usage around Easter to signify the rebirth of Jesus Christ. In the case of Us, the rabbits symbolize the rebirth of the Tethered who are now rising up to take their place in society. At the beginning of the film the rabbits are caged, linking to the Tethered being kept underground with no way out. At the end of the film after Red - Adelaide's clone - leads their uprising, the rabbits are free causing chaos beneath ground just as the other Tethered are in the world above.

What Jordan Peele Has Said About The Rabbits In Us

Aside from these meanings, the rabbits have been subject to even further speculation regarding Us' deeper themes. Since the film's release, Jordan Peele has spoken at length about the inclusion of the creatures in his story. When speaking to The Guardian, Peele stated that the rabbits were also meant to signify the idea of duality the film centers on through the Tethered and their human counterparts: “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.”

Furthermore, Peele revealed more about the rabbits in a feature on Us' Blu-ray release as reported by Yahoo. Peele reiterated the sense of rebirth connected to Easter by stating that "Red is the Messiah who is rising from the hole [from] which she was left for dead." Peele goes on to say that the use of animals in the film was meant to evoke a sense of survival and intelligence that animals' eyes possess, but that lacks a distinct human feel just as the Tethered do in Us. All this just proves the meaningful, symbolic ways Peele uses such a simple animal in Us, tied to the deeper exploration of class, race, and society as a whole that Peele weaves into the story of the 2019 film.