I Got A Hundred On It: The Monster High Skullector "Us" Set by Mattel Creations

What a beautiful doll release. Blown away from the first look, and nothing's changed.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR US (2019); DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU AT ALL WANT TO WATCH THE FILM BEFOREHAND!

Us is the second of the (currently, three) horror films made by comedian, actor, and screenwriter/director Jordan Peele, preceded by the smash hit Get Out and followed by Nope. 

Peele's horror films are intricately crafted with detail and thoughtful social commentary, while never once forgetting to be thrilling, entertaining, charming, and flat-out good movies. While Get Out is a sharp film about racism and Peele's films all star Black leads, his stories also feature other social examinations and aren't boxed in by racial themes, nor bogged down by painful or exploitative imagery like some "race horror" imitators of Get Out have been criticized for. Us, focused primarily on social class struggle, might be called the proverbial middle child of Peele's films thus far, as I think its horror hook has some weaker writing as pertains to the logic of the narrative, and it's slightly my least favorite of the three. Get Out is simply one of the most perfect films that's been made in the past twenty years; it's exactly what you want from a horror-film cinematic experience even before you get to the striking and purposeful commentary of the piece. Nope, meanwhile, is an extremely intelligent discussion with very strong symbolism and writing, and marries distinctive imagery and fantastical elements the strongest with the commentary at hand. The metaphor peaks with Nope for me. Us is a little shakier in terms of its horror concept and thematic integration, and I find its finale poorly paced despite its great story beats, but it's still a phenomenal showcase of acting and it's by far the most classic, traditional, iconographic, archetypal "horror movie" of Peele's work so far. It's also the most haunting and poetic in its theming to me. I've probably spent the most time musing on Us of the three Peele films, and gotten the most invested in it personally. Us and Nope are basically flawless cinema with perfectly-told impactful stories, but Us is the one that really gets in my brain with what it does. You are very much going to see that in this review.

Once...upon a time, there was a girl...and the girl had...a shadow.

Adelaide Thomas had an unsettling experience at a boardwalk funhouse when she was a little girl, as, in the hall of mirrors, she found herself bumping around her reflections until she saw one reflection that didn't match. She was looking at the back of her head. Then it turned around and the figure turned out to be an identical girl. Scarred by the encounter as an adult, the married Adelaide Wilson is leery about going back to the summer house with her husband Gabe Wilson, her son Jason, and her daughter Zora, fearing the other Adelaide will come back for her somehow. Her fears come true when Jason spots a family of four in the driveway who look mostly just like them, later remarking "It's us" when they are clearly seen. These doppelgängers are all dressed in red coveralls and wear singular gloves and carry pairs of golden scissors. The leader of the pack is Adelaide's double, Red, and she is the only one who speaks, though her voice is tortured and barely functional. (The name "Red" is never actually made known during the film, but became known through the credits and promotional material.)

Red explains through fairy-tale framing that she comes from an underground society populated by the doubles of everybody in the United States of America, living in networks of tunnels hidden below the waking world's feet. In these tunnels, the doubles, dubbed the Tethered, live inferior and horrific mirrors of the lives of the people above, with more details explained later in the film. When people ride a roller-coaster, their Tethered mime the motions mindlessly downstairs. When Adelaide conceived happily with her husband, Red conceived against her will as the scene was mirrored. When Adelaide had a C-section, Red had to tear her own belly open. The other Tethered family doubles have their own flaws and aberrations. 

Red says she has brought the Tethered to the surface so they can take revenge and take the places of the people they are bound to, planning to form a chain of figures standing hand-in-hand across the country as a public demonstration. 

From here, it's a fun slasher flick with very classic horror vibes and very strong visual costuming iconography for the Tethered. The dual performances of the film, particularly Lupita Nyong'o as Adelaide Wilson and Red, are very compelling. Us was Nyong'o's first leading film role after gaining recognition in supporting parts, and she crushes it. Red is the flashier, less typical role of hers that garnered more buzz, but I don't think enough credit is given to Nyong'o's work as Adelaide in comparison. I loved her in both roles. The whole Tethered concept can have several, if not many, logical holes poked into it, but the message gets across, and that's what's more important.

The film's Tethered serve as a metaphor for class inequality as a society of people subjugated and forced to live a worse life while those above are comfortable. The metaphor hits its peak by the end of the film, where it's revealed Adelaide Wilson was never Adelaide Thomas. She was the Tethered half of her duo with Red all along, and Red was little Addy Thomas from the start of the film. Back in the funhouse when little Addy saw the other girl, that other girl swapped places and tossed Addy down underground where she was forced to live in the Tethered tunnels and became Red. Red is coming back for "Adelaide" because her life was directly stolen by her Tethered, making Adelaide Wilson a darker character, especially because she then kills Red, who had a fairly noble, if warped, intention to liberate the people she joined. Adelaide is dedicated to her original crime of trading places, and closes the loose end by killing Red and continues on with her life while seeming troublingly vicious at the end, opening a lot of questions about her true morality and mindset. She's not wrong to have wanted better for herself, and it seems like growing up aboveground gave her opportunities and emotions she wasn't able to access before, but she's also a portrait of the "got mine" mentality and reverts to a feral state in ways that call her core into question. The oppressed person broke out but joined the dominant system and never dropped the ladder back down to rescue anyone else, and condemned a pretty innocent person to misery just for her being privileged. In turn, that condemned person tries to rise up and free the oppressed through gaining class consciousness, but her liberation aim is to destroy the oppressors in revenge. Neither considers uniting together against the bigger problem, though Red does indicate "Adelaide" could have joined her on the surface that day. In truth, the conflict never was us vs. them. It's just us on both sides.

I do think the movie's plot twist is dropped bizarrely late, after the climax and Red's death. It would hit great if it was dropped during the duel, sharply jolting the audience as they begin to question who should rightfully win as the fight is ongoing. Dialogue from Red also seems to contradict the reveal when she rebukes Adelaide by saying "You could have taken me with you" as if she were speaking as the Tethered copy, despite being the original who demonstrates awareness of her role as the original (it doesn't seem like she forgot which one she started as given how pointed her revenge plan is). Despite the twist's concept genuinely being baked into the rest of the film, the finale's writing and means of revealing the truth makes the twist feel more like a last-minute addition with how messily it's delivered. 

It makes sense that there are Skullector dolls for Us. It's Peele's most iconographic film, with the most standout character designs for its actors. Get Out and Nope star pretty normal-looking people, and nobody that fits a "monster" classification. Nope features nothing that could easily be Skullectorized. The Tethered, however, are uncanny enough and they're styled in slasher-killer tradition, so they fit right into the Skullector line. There was also no shot they were ever going to do just one of Nyong'o's characters because the theme of duality and doubles is so essential to the story, and because the assumed final girl can be argued, if uncharitably, to be the real monster all along. Red was never going to be released alone. I called this pair for a prospective Skullector two-pack on my own private list of predictions, but I didn't expect it to actually happen...or to look quite this good.

This release feels a bit similar to the Welcome Committee Frankie situation, where these dolls have evidently been finished and ready for a while, and we knew about this release a year before it eventually dropped. The reason for Frankie's delay is all too grim and easy to understand--they're a nonbinary doll with visible queer theming in that doll release, and retailers were turning their backs on the rainbow dollar in the leadup to 2025. Their eventual release is to be commended. With the Us set, I'm not so sure. The difference comes of the Skullectors not having their full stock photos leaked that far ahead of time, though the pictures we saw were official enough. Perhaps this was the intended release schedule for the set all along, but it's been a long wait. I don't know if corporate sabotaged this release or what, but the dolls are worthy tributes to the film, and finally arrived and did make it to the Mattel Creations frontpage...if you scrolled down a little. They weren't at the top of the page during the launch, though, making it hard to find the link. They released on October 6 and 7, but they probably should have been released on October 11, based on the significance of 11 in the film's symbolism.

The price of a Skullector duo rose with this set, going from the $90 we've been given to expect to $100. Awfully sneaky to make that price increase occur on dolls who make a good argument for it...especially during a time where I'm taking issue with some of Mattel's doll production quality, like neck articulation.

These dolls didn't arrive to me for so long after purchasing that I filed a customer service case. They got re-ordered and re-guaranteed for me, indicating some kind of clerical error befell me. I don't know what went wrong; it's not like the dolls were the most highly-demanded Skullector drop, but because of that, there were still copies left to ensure I got one after the first order went nowhere. If these two had sold out, I'd have been handed a refund like I was with the Xenomorph. I'm glad I didn't have to aftermarket the Us set too.

The shells of the box show Adelaide and Red in profile facing each other on one side, and the side portrait shows them inverted along the lines of Red's scissors in a composition that reflects the "Adelaide above, Red below" living situation of the characters but also evokes a classic "face" playing card with diagonal lines inverting and mirroring the figures of the kings, queens, and jacks. This may be a nod to the way the film courts some Lewis Carroll imagery. 

Red can be compared to the two bossy Queens in the Alice books--like the Queen of Hearts, she's intimidating, red-themed, and goes for the head in one scene (it's a plush toy she decapitates, but still), and like the Red Queen, she's called and looks red, and has a chess-like story--like a pawn who crossed the board to become a queen, Red crossed into the world of the Tethered and became their savior. We also see plenty of rabbit imagery in the film, the Tethered's tunnels are accessed in a house of mirrors, etc...If this playing-card-esque portrait is meant to throw in for the Carroll allusions, then it's a great contribution to the symbolism the film built. 

The back side of the shells contains a portrait of Addy and Red in the Tethered classroom seen at the climax.

The other narrow side has the film title, as expected.

On my copy of the set, the "front" side of the box shell, with the Skullector name on it, parted over the back of the inner box rather than the window side of the box with the dolls. That might not be correct, and the shells can easily be put on so the profile portraits slide open over the dolls, but it looks great this way when paired with the text copy. 

The text on the back of the box takes itself entirely seriously with absolutely zero Monster High lingo camp, and in doing so, turns out a genuinely beautiful chilling dual poem of Adelaide and Red's internal monologues juxtaposed side-by-side and exploring their mentalities. 

I love this piece of writing. It's a great tie-in to the film. I'm surprised how additive this set feels to the work that Us did in its storytelling. The playing-card portrait and this poem feel like sincere contributions to the world of Us and its thematic ethos. The designers really conversed with the movie here.

Here's the dolls on the other side. They're set against a backdrop of the funhouse where the two characters first met. A Skullette and a chain of people are seen in the tree scenery.

Certificate of authenticity was taped on the back of the doll tray as usual.

Unboxing these dolls took on a bit of an odd note, since my usual process of snipping tags with my scissors suddenly felt significant and resonant to the imagery in the film.

Lupita Nyong'o is beautiful, so it's not too surprising the dolls are too, but still. Wow. 

These dolls are depictions of the climax of the film where Adelaide and Red have a one-on-one duel and Adelaide's shirt is covered in blood. Red's look is unchanged throughout the film. 

Adelaide at the end of the film.

Red.

Here's Adelaide.

Adelaide is the first Skullector doll reflecting the "hero" role in a serious horror conflict, with the line otherwise focusing on villains. The closest we've gotten previously was Lydia Deetz opposite Betelgeuse, but those films are comedies. We have Adelaide here in this doll release because the antagonist simply cannot narratively function without her specific foe, and because both characters are deeply blurred by the end, leaving no clear-cut moral victor and exposing our designated protagonist as somebody more troubling. I have to imagine twin dolls are more production-friendly, anyway, when they're this identical at base--casting color and all. The only base difference before hair rooting, paint, and costume would be Red's glove sculpt. The only previous MH twins to have basically identical bases before rooting and paint are the Skullector Grady sisters, who have one hand each in mirrored cupped shapes (so they can stand hand-in-hand) as their only base difference.

The more I think on Adelaide, the more complex she becomes. She seems like a genuinely good woman who cares for her family and cherishes what she took. There's something very easily relatable to her implicit feelings of imposter syndrome; many people can feel like they just don't fully mesh with society because of how they were born, feeling the need to mask and always feeling inadequate and on fragile footing when they do. And yet, Adelaide's instinct to secure her place in the good world was cruelty; to deprive another person. She becomes feral, snarling and panting, when killing some of the Tethered, and deeply regresses to the wild state she started in when dueling Red. Was she a monster? I don't know. I think the film believes that indicting Adelaide is to indict oneself, because the reality of things is that all people who live in comfort are accepting exploitation and at least passively utilize the unequal class system to their advantage. And why should the oppressed be expected to face the oppressor with kindness? Adelaide Wilson committed a direct and personal act of oppression to free herself, but her crimes are not unique in truth, and it's shown that having opportunity and comfort brought out a more dimensional person in her, Maslow-style. Once her needs were met, she seemed to become a more rich person and I don't think we're meant to find her behavior false or inauthentic, to think she doesn't love her family. She also shows tenderness and an instinct of mercy toward Red's children despite them exhibiting the unwell and brutal impulses of the Tethered they were raised among, which indicates a real empathetic side to her which Red has none of. Red has no heart for her children, and while the lack of consent in bearing them very understandably contributes, she still cannot see them as people. Adelaide, a Tethered, grew up in comfort and has love to share with her enemies. Red, a surface human, was cast into misery and lost her heart. That's a whole lot of nurture theory going on. 

Lupita Nyong'o also never gives the feeling of a front or a deception in her performance as Adelaide upon rewatch. Adelaide Wilson the loving mother is a real person, but she came from a terrible place, one that re-emerges when confronted with the inciting crime. Adelaide Wilson may still have flaws in her demeanor from her Tethered nature, but she grew and thrived upon her life on the surface. Was it worth Adelaide Thomas's torment? 

Red says "if it wasn't for you, I would have never danced at all", crediting the second Adelaide for Red's own ascendance in the Tethered...but if it wasn't for Adelaide Thomas, Adelaide Wilson would have never been happy. And yet...we're left with the question of if it was ever truly necessary for the one to suffer for the other's benefit. The true villain is a far greater structural force, but we're all stuck in the drama of the two classes. And there's still that mindset of "equality feels like oppression to the privileged", where Adelaide demonstrates how the privileged can be intolerant toward any disruption to their comfort that may arise in service of helping the disadvantaged. Then again, could Red not also be read as a portrait of the intolerance toward a loss of privilege? Red genuinely suffered, yes, and internalized the experience of the deprived once forced into their class, but it's possible to interpret her as someone unable to tolerate the loss of better, someone who desires to be on top again rather than a true liberator and equalizer. Is she a voice for the voiceless she was forced to join, now seeing herself as one of the group she was pushed into, or are the Tethered all pawns for her personal revenge and climb back to the higher position? These are very complicated characters. Peele's other films can prompt essays to analyze the content until you reach the fairly clear intent of the stories, but Us is a proposal of theme with ambiguity that's ripe for personal interpretation about character motives.

Adelaide's hair has been lengthened and enlarged in silhouette per the Skullector style, and also likely as a consequence of small doll proportions, but it looks great. It replicates the film hairstyle's full-head braiding, and there's a Skullector addition of a golden hair pin shaped like a fire poker. 

Adelaide first uses a poker to free herself from being cuffed to a table, then carries it as her weapon throughout the film, ultimately skewering Red with it, though it's not what finishes her. The clip is a weapon-to-barrette translation similar to the Skullector Gradys' axe hair clips.

It took me far too long to realize Adelaide was packaged with a hairnet, and it made me feel dumb to finally connect the dots. I was wondering why her braids weren't behaving as loose as I expected, why there were tags in her head, why there were odd textures in her hairstyle. In my defense, these micro-thread nets are hard to see, and I didn't realize it at first with Fearbook Venus either!

Here she is with her hair let loose and the tags removed.

Adelaide's microbraids feel just like G3 signature Venus's.  The hair must be the same production technique.

The produced Mattel photos of Adelaide make her braids look smoother while they're fairly wavy on the doll.

Adelaide and Red share a head mold (stamped 2024) and a skintone, and they resemble Lupita Nyong'o nicely. I'm glad to see dolls like Adelaide, Red, and Bianca Barclay bringing very dark skin to Monster High. 

Adelaide's eyes have very neutral subtle eyeshadow. Her irises are brown and have light reflections shaped like ballet slippers. Ballet lessons were used as therapy for "Adelaide" once she reached the surface. The art of ballet is symbolically used in the film. We see how, as Adelaide gained command over dance, the real Addy was thrown flailing around down in the tunnels as she began mirroring in the new role of Tethered and attracted the attention of the others who recognized something different in her. At the end of the film, intercut with the children doing ballet, is the final duel. The original Adelaide, Red, holds a graceful dancer's command in the fight while the thief, our Adelaide, reverts to a bestial state, swinging blindly at her opponent. The final fight is a show of how much Red has broken her antagonist and gotten into her head. Adelaide Wilson prevails despite this, though Adelaide Thomas still achieved her goal of exposing her Tethered's true nature to herself and to the son she got with the life she stole.

Adelaide's eyes also have brown flecks in her left sclera, a detail Red shares. This appears to be a reflection of Nyong'o's real appearance, as similar darker flecks can be seen in her sclerae.

I think Monster High Adelaide's face does a good job of carrying an ambiguous quality, with her brows lending her a potential fierce or darkly determined quality in accordance with her darker aspects. She's still capable of looking innocent or warm, but there's something to the face that suits such a fraught and uncertain character.

Adelaide's earrings are symmetrical golden handcuffs with Skullettes on them.

Adelaide was put in handcuffs in the living room scene as the Tethered family took the Wilsons hostage, with Adelaide ordered to cuff one wrist to the crossbar of a table. She gets the cuff free from the table bar it's chained to using the poker to break the bar, but her other wrist ends up in the empty loop once the Tethered copies of their friends attack and cuff Adelaide to a bed. From there, her wrists are linked for a while and she uses the chain to constrict Red's throat and break her neck after winning the duel, then finally using Red's keys to unlock the cuffs. It's not explained why Adelaide remained stuck in the cuffs after defeating her friends' Tethered family. If the friends' Tethered had the means to open the cuff that had been closed around the table leg and get it around her free wrist, surely the tools to fully unbind Adelaide would have been accessible after the friends' Tethered were killed, right? Like I said, the messiest of the Peele films. At the end of the film, it's revealed the cuffs were a very personal thing for Red, as Adelaide cuffed her down in the tunnels when they first swapped places. It's likely the cuffs weren't standard-issue in the Tethered kit and that Red had them on her for just the one person--her double.

Adelaide can wear the earrings around her wrists, but it's not a flawless effect.

Adelaide's costume starts with an off-the-shoulder long-sleeve top made of net, reinterpreting the film costume to more glam effect. In the movie, this was an open-front cardigan.

It's still surprising how overtly bloody the Adelaide doll is here. It's stylized with a cartoon contour, but this net top design is unambiguously a blood-soaked shirt like in the film. It's so obvious, full pictures of Adelaide triggered Tumblr's censor AI and marked the post about this review as mature until I posted a version without Adelaide's costume visible. As Adelaide becomes more bloodstained in red, the more like the Tethered she symbolically looks as the film builds to the reveal she is one, while her costume being white and "painted red" also recalls the roses from Alice. Adelaide in all white versus Red in all red also means Adelaide could be placed as the other chess Queen from Through the Looking-Glass. 

Two black marks appear on the top--on the shoulder where the cardigan was torn in the film, and on the back under her right arm.

I'm not sure what these marks represent. Burns? Dried blood? Holes in the clothing? It looks good and lends a nasty edge to the doll regardless, giving her costume even more of a rough and gory look than I would expect for Mattel.

Under the net top, Adelaide is wearing a sleeveless white jumpsuit with a delineated but stitched-together top and pants made of the same fabric. The fabric is white-toned but subtly patterned with a faux-camo design of a mass of rabbits overlapping each other. 

Rabbits are one of the film's visual icons. In the direct storyline, they're bred in the tunnels and serve as the Tethered's food source and provide some unusual imagery in the tunnels and a bit of Alice symbolism of a world of madness. There's also notes of Easter imagery with the Tethered's desire for a rebirth into society and the idea of rabbits as a reflection of wildness and inhumanity in human nature--something very connected with Adelaide, who shows capacity for a lot more brutality and selfishness than one would expect at first.

The legs are gathered for a slight baggy effect on the bottom. The fabric is a slightly stretchy material that works well. I also like how the doll version of the Adelaide costume is more similar in cut to Red's coveralls, heightening the duality theme. These dolls really rose to meet the narrative intelligence of Peele here, and I love that so much.

Adelaide is wearing a gold belt that matches her other jewelry. The belt has a Skullette buckle in the middle and chains with charms--a rabbit, a ballerina, and a strawberry. Early in the film, Adelaide is seen eating strawberries while her family eats fast food, perhaps just to set her apart as the secret "other" or to symbolize how she clings to the natural pleasures of the world that she would never get underground. The Tethered subsist on rabbit, so strawberries might represent the ideal opposite of the awful sustenance she escaped.

Both Red and Adelaide are wearing shoes based on ballet slippers, though the sculpts are different.

The straps of Adelaide's shoes are printed with the words "TETHERED TOGETHER", which is how Red describes the link of the two halves of the U.S. 

Before becoming Red, Addy Thomas saw ads for the (real, nonfictional) Hands Across America campaign using such language of tethering to describe the linked hands of people in the fundraising demonstration. Red implicitly chose the name for the underground people from that. Much of Red and the Tethered's M.O. and mythological terminology can be extrapolated from the memories and culture she was exposed to in her brief time on the surface.  

The platforms of the shoes show chains of people, matching the Tethered's "Hands Across America"-derived public demonstration. 

I know the fan community has been pushing back on the trend of objects as shoe heels in Skullector dolls, and especially those which don't match the rest of the shoe in style and color, but I think these dolls do it fairly well by giving it some purpose. The two have mirrored pairs, with Adelaide's heels being a white rabbit and her son Jason's wolfman mask, which he has almost all the time.

The soles of the shoes have some texture.

Adelaide comes with a brown rabbit as an accessory, which isn't caricatured or spooky and fits the film's look. The piece is very rubbery.

She also comes with a red paper chain of figures, with finger loops at the end.

Paper chain people are another of the film's symbols. Red cuts and unfolds one chain before Adelaide in an underground classroom before tearing a pair of two apart as a symbol of the Tethered breaking their dependency on their other halves. The classic paper craft is connected thematically to the Tethered's use of scissors and matches the imagery of their coordinated demonstration.

The paper chain appears to be laser-cut cardstock, so it's fragile as any real paper, but sturdy enough to not be flimsy. I'm not sure this accessory suits Adelaide very well, since it's Red who was paired with it in the film. All of the accessories really only suit Red here, since Adelaide is less associated with the items iconic to the movie. I'd have given her the fire poker for real, but in this context, that would violate Mattel's doll weapons taboo.

Adelaide and Red are on the median "mid-teen" G1 body type, which suits Lupita Nyong'o's stature.

Now to Red.

The Tethered's aesthetic is hinted to have been designed by Red, who evidently had a child's knowledge of classic slasher movies from her time starting out on the surface and would have been able to cite them as inspiration. The coveralls are very much in the vein of Halloween's Michael Myers, while the single brown glove wielding a bladed weapon evokes A Nightmare on Elm Steeet's Freddy Krueger. The red costume color may also come from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video. Addy Thomas wins a "Thriller" T-shirt at the boardwalk carnival on her last night on the surface, which her double steals to pretend to be her, so the imagery from the song could have been very prominent in her mind. 

Red is oddly poised, being disturbingly graceful and rigid alike in her motions, giving her an eerie and appropriate sense of command. Nyong'o emulated a cockroach in her motions as Red, and the physicality of the character really sells her as a horror character as well as somebody who's spent her whole life calculating a revenge. Red is graceful and controlled as a point--to show Adelaide she was the original "civilized" one of the duo and that she has the power in their reunion. In some ways, yes, it might be fair to say Red has lost her mind from living as a Tethered, but I think to assume she's not aware of exactly how to present herself to her thief would be a mistake. 

Red's hair is pretty spot-on to the film, depicting natural short afro curls with some larger curls or knots sticking out of the rest of the hairstyle. The proportions of this hairdo really aren't altered for the doll, though the film hairstyle looked a bit more irregular and erratic to suit the unkempt living of the Tethered. This feels less altered than Adelaide's doll hair, though.

The standout curl pieces are loose coils that were either curled separately or pulled out from the rest of the hair. They can be pulled taut like any coil, and gently pulling them and letting them relax helps them puff out a little more to shape her hair silhouette. I imagine the hair design on Nyong'o at human scale had these elements as denser or firmer stylistic knots, but at doll scale, the visual works fine with these pieces as single curls. The hair texture is really well done. Perhaps the back feels a bit flattened by packaging, but I'd be nervous to tease this hair out too much. Unlike Clawd Wolf's dolls with tight curls, this isn't a hairstyle that's meant to be pulled out to be bigger than it is out of the box.

Red's face paint is great.

While she mostly appears to have no eyebrows in the film, Red's eyebrows are actually designed to look bleached, a touch suggested by Nyong'o as a way to make her look like she's come across the wrong side of her pyromaniac son Pluto's fires without giving her a full burn-makeup look so late in development. I'm not sure how much I like this myself, and seeing her as browless was fine, but I think it makes more sense, given the twist, that Adelaide Thomas still has her eyebrows because she was never a flawed genetic copy. The doll thus paints the brows in a pale blonde-ish color that is quite different from the skin and hair but doesn't pop out with sharp contrast. Red's eyes have scissor reflections in them and she has red eyeshadow. Her lips are a lighter color than Adelaide's. 

Under Red's eyes, metallic gold paint accents have been applied as stylish makeup to evoke the twin thin streams of tears coming from her eyes in the living room scene--tears which Adelaide mirrors, perhaps out of some recognition of her transgression and hidden guilt, or as a response to the Tethered connection influencing her to mirror the crying. 

Tear streaks like this first appeared in Get Out when Chris is subdued through hypnosis, and the iconic image was replicated in the posters for Us as well. (Nope did not feature the imagery.) I'm glad to see it referenced on the doll. Lenore Loomington had glittery teary paint under her eyes for another recent invocation of tears in the brand. I do wish the streaks were longer and thinner on the doll, though. I think the imagery is creepier that way, and plays into Us's symbolism of doubles and parallel figures better. I wouldn't be mad with the gold being pure colorless gloss paint to make the tears literal as in the film, too. 

While Red can be stern and creepy, I think this doll face captures a sadness most of all. Even without the leading detail of the tear makeup, Red looks very mournful and melancholic, though she can definitely look focused and determined at certain angles.

Red has earrings which are Monster High's invention, depicting mirrored red cutout figures in further use of the paper-chain symbolism, most directly invoking the final paper figures Red tears apart at the end of her show-and-tell.

Red's coveralls are red and basically accurate to the movie, with the addition of a subtle pattern of paper-chain figures and abstract forms across it. 

The top section has a shirt collar and a flap with a button where the coveralls open...and it's for real. The button is held in with a tiny loop of thin fiber elastic, and the panel is not sewn down. If you took the button out of the loop, you could open the coveralls down the front to the waist and slide Red out of her costume realistically. The coveralls do open with velcro in the back like normal doll clothes, though, so the button on the front isn't meant to be used. I'm still impressed that it can be, though.

The cuffs and ankles of the coveralls are trimmed with red ribbon--the latter with tails.

Hip pockets are suggested with lines of stitching, but no functional pockets are present. They would be useful for the scissors.

Red's right hand is molded with a fingerless glove painted like brown leather, matching the film. 

Red's belt is gold like Adelaide's and the scissors, and depicts scissors on itself.

Both belts are Skullector inventions, of course.

Red's ballet shoes are brown in a different shade from her glove. The text on the shoes comes from the funhouse attraction the doubles first met at, with the spiritual "FIND YOURSELF" slogan on the sign proving all too literal when each girl encountered another her!

In Red's time, the funhouse was a culturally insensitive hokey attraction called "Shaman's Vision Quest" with appropriative Native American imagery, while in the present, it's called "Merlin's Forest" with a fantasy theme, but the subtitle slogan "FIND YOURSELF" and most of the interior remain. 

Red's shoe platforms feature the Santa Cruz boardwalk amusements as visual texture. The Santa Cruz beach and boardwalk comprise the site of the funhouse where Adelaide and Red's original meeting, as well as the Wilsons' family vacation in the film's present day, take place.

Red's object heels are mirrors to Adelaide's. Hers feature the cloth mask her own son Pluto wears over his burned face, and a red rabbit. 

It's nice that both women's shoes reflect how their sons are mirrored too. It's just enough to expand into the rest of the cast, and the boys are the second-most important duo of surface person and Tethered in the film. 

Red comes with a rabbit to mirror Adelaide's, which is white with black ear tips.

She also carries a pair of the scissors used by the Tethered. These are a very symbolic weapon, as they are not only used to kill the originals, and thus to cut apart the bond of the Tethered to their aboveground counterparts, but the scissors are mirrored pieces which move in tandem like a person and their Tethered, and the finger loops on the pieces are designed to resemble the reflected silhouettes of human heads.

The silhouette of the doll scissors has been altered, for the worse, I think, and the imagery is less clear. This might be the only part where it feels like the designers didn't fully understand a piece of intent in the source material. Changing the scissor loops adds no benefit and reduces a piece of visual symbolism.

It was really looking like the doll scissors were functional (inasmuch as they could open and close), with the oversized turning hub seeming like a good indication. The scissors have a side finger loop like a normal Monster High accessory, but being able to pose the scissors would make these perfect.

They do in fact open!

The back is a flat nonremovable metal screw which is a bit unsightly.

The finger loop on the scissors doesn't feel very useful since it doesn't direct any natural poses, but Red can hold the scissors okay with or without it. The scissor blades are thicker than I'd like for the purpose of sliding them between thumb and fingers.

I wish there was a good place for the scissors outside of Red's hands. Mattel could have so easily molded a hook onto her belt, or put real pockets in her costume. Maybe she can wear them as a hair accessory hidden on the back?

That's kinda something!

I think I can just get some gold wire to bend a small hook through a loop in her belt. Just wish Mattel had provided a solution themselves.

The only symbolic touch the dolls didn't  replicate from the film is the number 11, used as another facet of duality and mirroring, with pairs of elevens also used (A man carries a sign marked for the Bible verse Jeremiah 11:11; an announcer for a ball game discusses an eleven-eleven tie score; Jason sees the time is 11:11 on the digital alarm clock). An eleven is two ones side by side and it would be interesting to see the number somewhere in these dolls as a nod to its use in the film.

It's interesting to put these dolls in comparison with the Grady sisters. Both are licensed pairs of human horror twins, are ideal for posing hand-in-hand, and make for nearly identical base dolls, though the Gradys are much closer to each other than Adelaide and Red are. The two duos also represent extremes on the Monster High human skintone spectrum, with the Gradys being very pale and the Adelaides being very dark.

Us references The Shining's twins in one scene, and it's not the overplayed "come play with us" dialogue and mirrored poses. The Wilsons' friends have twin daughters, and when those girls' Tethered are both down, their bodies are shot and posed exactly like the image of the Gradys' corpses. That's a subtle kind of reference I can respect, for as well-quoted as The Shining film is in pop culture.

Then I started taking fancier photos. My favorite shots in the film have to be the creepy image of the double facing backward behind the other, as seen when Addy Thomas meets her Tethered at the start and when Red initiates the dance duel. My work imitating the funhouse was poor, since that's a hard setup to achieve and the mirrors were hard to work with the gag of one reflection being an actual person.

Adelaide's face capturing her more vulnerable side.

Another great image is Red skittering her fingers across her face with her wide unblinking eyes. The doll can't quite evoke this with her joints and sculpts, but I tried.

I loosely recreated the Tethered classroom with materials I had, and used Red's earrings as her untethered paper dolls.

I tried to do one above/below image contrasting the lives of Adelaide and Red--one in a comfortable house with good food, the other in a lifeless tunnel with rabbit.

Here's the two in the Tethered formation.

And a picture showing Adelaide's dubious triumph, posed so Red looks like her shadow cast on the floor.

The face here is capturing Adelaide's sinister side!

Then I played with shadows and mirrored silhouettes like another one of the Us promotional posters, shooting with backlight to turn Red into a shadow, then Adelaide, then both.

And some more pictures with Red lurking behind Adelaide.

And finally, the duo performing a mirrored pas de deux onstage. The soundtrack piece entitled "Pas de Deux" in the film is a brilliant horror instrumental rearrangement of the Luniz hip-hop track "I Got Five On It" which appears twice earlier in the film. The climax turns the fun song into a dramatic nightmare as it simultaneously underscores the flashback to the duo dancing as girls and the final duel where Red dances around her feral opponent. 

This is a wonderful tribute to Us that shows the designers truly engaging with the material more than just replicating it. This release is as much a conversation with the film as it is a translation, and that's really impressive. Red and Adelaide are gorgeous (stylized) screen-accurate dolls and all of the iconography from the film has been incorporated gracefully into the dolls in a way that respects the theme behind the movie as well as the visuals. These dolls feel weightier than others, to be sure, but in a way that's warranted. Us is a film with a purpose and a vision delivered seriously, and I think the dolls give real love and honor to what the movie is trying to do. I'm not saying Us is so dramatic and stoic that it couldn't have been played for camp like other Skullector sets; Jordan Peele is a comedian and never fails to make his films entertaining and funny. Us is a popcorn slasher with silly comedy, too. But as someone compelled by the poetry and weight of the Adelaide and Red tragedy, I'm glad to see the dolls lean into that tone. 

There are things I disagree with. Red's tear streak imagery being portrayed as real, and longer, would be great. Adelaide's hair being amplified per Skullector style is also a bit iffy. The Tethered scissors are visually and functionally a bit clumsy to pose despite their opening function being welcome. These are minor things, though. 

I was so ready to call these the best Skullectors ever, and perhaps they would have been for a time, with a month or so to breathe, but weeks later, we entered the world where a c**ty Xenomorph is a reality that must be contended with. In no way does that doll doing the most invalidate the Us set's achievement, though. These are in no way the proverbial coughing baby to the Xenomorph's proverbial hydrogen bomb. Skullector Adelaide and Red are beautiful, thoughtful, well-crafted pieces that do great work with their source material and respect its artistic narrative sentiment as much as its horror iconography. The Alien may be the visual drama, but these are dolls at the heart of the narrative drama.

Both the film and the dolls are imperfect, but the dramatic evocative storytelling and imagery wins out for both. Red believes the government created the Tethered, able to copy the body but not the soul of the people above. I believe that for however Mattel may have failed to copy the bodies of Adelaide and Red, they absolutely copied the soul.

[After all this, my apparently lost October 2024 orders suddenly arrived after I'd replaced both. With the Alien being refunded for being considered lost and the Us set being reordered for no charge, I basically had free duplicates with which to recoup my losses on replacing the Alien, and my duplicate Xenomorph has already sold. I suppose good things really do come to those who wait, and even though I flopped on that one, it worked out anyway by letting me resell the extras to balance out the mess.]