This week is Halloween and as is the case every year, many of the costumes you’ll be seeing are a snapshot of the pop culture that has resonated with people over the past 365 days. That means among other things we’ll see Alita costumes, Scoops Ahoy outfits, all manner of superheroes and lots and lots of Jokers. The costumes will come from horror movies as well, including Jordan Peele’s Us. But the director doesn’t approve of Us Halloween costumes, as he explained:
I’ve started receiving a lot of pictures of people in tethered costumes, which doesn’t make me comfortable. I like the fact that the movie is happening, it’s a phenomenon, it’s resonating, it’s iconic. But, I don’t know, there’s something about it. They’re impersonating the stalkers and sending me stuff. I just feel like…just don’t go into that mindset. She was in character, or at the very least, in mood on set at all times as Red. Which was pretty terrifying for me.
Halloween is still a few days away but Jordan Peele has already been inundated online by people sending him images of themselves wearing Us costumes. People are dressing up as the Tethered in their red jumpsuits (which is actually a super simple and effective costume) and letting the director know about it. While you might think the Oscar-winner and huge horror fan would be stoked about this, it actually makes him a bit uncomfortable.
It’s a bit of an odd take because you would think seeing his characters permeate pop culture enough to be a popular Halloween costume would be a huge sort of marker of success for a film and a filmmaker. Other iconic horror characters like Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Pinhead and Ghostface have all maintained a presence at the costume shop for years and decades after their debuts, even as the films they originate from have went in and out of favor.
And Jordan Peele does like that Us has resonated in a way that people care about it, but he’s not a fan of seeing the costumes, or at least not a fan of having pictures of people in the costumes sent to him. That’s because of the nature of the characters themselves. The Tethered are these stalker doppelgängers so having people flooding his inbox with pictures of horror stalkers is a bit unsettling for the director.
Jordan Peele might be taking things a bit too seriously, but he’s coming at Us and the Tethered from a different perspective than we are. As he told Variety, Lupita Nyong’o was in character or in a frame of mind as Red during the majority of filming on Us. That sounds like some nightmarish method acting given how disturbing her character was in the film itself.
So given that, Jordan Peele isn’t too keen on opening messages and seeing a bunch of Tethered. He’s cool with people wearing costumes from Us as long as he doesn't have to see it, he just doesn’t want people to send him images of themselves dressed as that or any creepy characters for that matter.
Check out our 2019 Release Schedule to see what movies, horror and otherwise, you can look forward to the rest of this year and let us know what costume you’ll be wearing on Halloween in the comments below.
