#ustrailer

I’m a huge fan of Jordan Peele’s Get Out and am glad it got the recognition it deserved. Now, trailers have dropped for Peele’s follow-up, another horror film titled Us. How does it look?

A family of four (Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Evan Alex, Shahadi Wright) are vacationing with their friends (Tim Heidecker and Elisabeth Moss) when they are confronted with twisted duplicates of themselves. Unable to escape the island they are on, they watch in horror as these mirror images who think as they do and know everything they know go on a bloody rampage.

Us looks promising. Firstly, it looks terrifying. I particularly like Lupita Nyong’o, who has this guttural laugh that bores into your mind and makes you want to run. Like all good horror films, it looks as though we’re following a small cast of people we’ll get to know, sympathize and care for. The premise seems simple but effective with both the potential to be filled with symbolism. A nightmare scene of a single black rabbit among white rabbits is a hint at just that, and I suspect Winston Duke being kinda corny is a hint that the doppelgangers might be twisted, living stereotypes of what black people might be perceived as. I like the recurring shots of those scissors - they sure look intimidating - and honestly, masks just kinda freak me out. Did you see the film’s poster? Nightmare fuel for me.

My biggest concern is that this is a horror film. Did Peele have not one, but two dynamite ideas stashed away until he got the backing to bring them to life, or did a studio approach him and say “We want another Get Out”? I respect the desire to bring some class to the horror genre, which has gotten some high-quality pictures in recent years with stuff like Hereditary, A Quiet Place, It and The Killing of a Sacred Deer but is still largely filled with duds. However, I worry that maybe Peele’s just getting pigeon-holed.