It was about three years ago that Jordan Peele revealed his plans for a career 180, going from comedic actor to horror director, and the move has gone quite well. Not only was Get Out a critical hit and a box office smash, but Peele also won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Now he's preparing to release his sophomore effort, Us, to the world, and the debut trailer is honestly one of the scariest pieces of cinema we've seen in 2018.
Holy. Shit.
Get Out definitely had its scary moments, but this first look at Us is aiming to make audiences full-on scream and cover their eyes. Everything about this movie has been a total mystery up until now, and this trailer was absolutely worth the wait, and is full of some seriously strange moments.
Based on an original screenplay by Jordan Peele, Us begins as a husband and wife (Winston Duke and Lupita Nyong'o) travel with their children (Shahadi Wright Joseph, and Evan Alex) on a beach house vacation. At first everything goes swimmingly, with the family enjoying time in the sun, but things start to go very, very wrong one night when they see some mysterious figures standing at the end of their driveway. After a confrontation, the horrifying realization is made that these invaders are the family's monstrous doppelgangers.
I first got to see the Us trailer last week at a special screening on the Universal Pictures lot, and Jordan Peele was on hand to introduce the preview for the work. In the same way that he created a whole special history behind the events featured in Get Out (I highly recommend listening to the movie's fascinating director's commentary), he has once again crafted a specific background for what's on tap in his next film, and is prepared to introduce the world to a whole new kind of terrifying creature. Said Peele,
It has been a labor of love. It is a horror film. I dedicated a lot of myself to create a new horror mythology, and a new monster. I think that monsters and stories about monsters are one of our best ways of getting at deeper truths and facing our fears as a society.
Commentary about our world was something that was very much front and center in his directorial debut, but Jordan Peele also stressed another aspect of Us: it's not a movie about race. While the film does have a black family as the lead characters, that's not something at which the film will be specifically pointing. The writer/director explained,
Very important for me was to have a black family at the center of a horror film... But it's also important to note this movie, unlike Get Out, is not about race. It is instead about something that I feel has become an undeniable truth, and that is the simple fact that we are our own worst enemies.
In addition to Winston Duke and Lupita Nyong'o, Shahadi Wright Joseph, and Evan Alex, Us also stars Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Perhaps the best news of all is that this is not a film taking its sweet time getting to theaters, as much like Get Out it too will be an early-in-the-year release. You'll be able to see it in cinemas everywhere starting March 15th, and you can be sure that we'll have more details about it heading your way in the coming days, weeks, and months.
