Jordan Peele gets everyone shook on Christmas with ‘Us’ trailer
Filmmaker Jordan Peele interrupted the Christmas festivities yesterday by releasing the creepy and spine-tingling official trailer for his new film, Us.
The Get Out director admitted the trailer’s release date to be highly intentional. I mean, what better time to exhibit a horrifying preview of a home invasion film than at Christmas, when the whole family is gathered together in one space?
The new horror film follows the story of Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) and Gabe Wilson (Winston Duke), who take their children to Adelaide’s childhood beach house in Northern California for the summer. Adelaide, however, becomes increasingly paranoid about her family’s well-being as she is haunted by a past trauma.
The film’s tagline, “We are our own worst enemy,” is visibly rendered in the trailer as viewers watch the Wilson family confronted by villains who are revealed as terrifying doppelganger versions of themselves.
Though up until yesterday, information on the film was very limited, there was still enough hype surrounding the film owing to Universal Pictures who also teamed up with Peele for Get Out.
The ominous pair of gold scissors that are of front and center in the film’s poster has been inscribed in the mind of horror film enthusiasts and admirers’ of the filmmaker who are keenly awaiting the film’s premiere in March next year.
In discussing his love of the horror genre, Peele stated,
“Something I love about the horror genre is that everyday objects become weapons, so I wanted to create some elegant iconography. But the inherent duality of two equal objects that are connected, and an object that’s used to sever or cut, is very important to the film. I’ve dedicated a lot of myself to creating a new horror mythology and a new monster. I think that monsters and stories about monsters are one of the best ways of getting at deeper truths and facing our fears as a society.”
Peele, who is evidently a devoted horror film buff, made Nyong’o watch his self-curated list of 10 of the best scary movies to prepare for the role: Dead Again, The Shining, The Babadook, It Follows, A Tale of Two Sisters, The Birds, Funny Games, Martyrs, Let the Right One In and The Sixth Sense.
Given the monumental critical and box-office success Peele’s first feature film and directorial debut, Get Out had in 2017, many will be quick to look for similarities between the two films. Yet, Peele insists that unlike Get Out, his new film is not exclusively invested in exploring race. He explained,
“It was very important to me to have a Black family at the center of a horror film. This movie, unlike Get Out, is not about race,.Aadding that instead of exploring our fraught racial climate, Us will probe deeper into what makes people tick and what scares us the most. [Us] is about something that I feel has become an undeniable truth. That is the simple fact that we are our own worst enemies.”
Though Peele has insisted that the new film is distinctly different to Get Out, that hasn’t stopped people developing and speculating some wild fan theories in the wake of the trailer’s release.
I want to throw this theory out there now: Lupita being off-beat when she was trying to get the son on beat is probably on purpose. I bet you it’s going to be a significant plot detail/twist….favorite this.
— Professor Storm. 💋🌪 (@hi_im_storm) December 25, 2018
So I’m calling the movie now
Lupita used to drive reckless and got into a fiery car accident. Killed the little girl was was the twin of the little boy. That’s why she isn’t driving in the trailer. Also why her doppelgänger has scorched eyebrows and explains burnt boy
#UsMovie— DONT BUY MADDEN 23 (@CollectiveMindP) December 25, 2018
https://twitter.com/Smooth_Orator/status/1077578693059530752
My family and I are already cooking up #Us theories. My dad and sister suggested the boy might be a link between the families. I corroborated this with the fact that the Dopple-boy has his mouth sealed (speak no evil?), and the real boy was the first to find one of Them. pic.twitter.com/OWLFdvuBb5
— Justin (parody) (@_winley_) December 25, 2018
We will still have to wait a little while until we can see Peele’s second feature film, as Us is set to be released on March 15.