Jordan Peele Dropped A Terrifying 'Us' Trailer
Get Out director Jordan Peele debuted a fantastic bit of holiday fare on Christmas Day-a truly horrifying-looking trailer for his upcoming film, Us.
It stars Black Panther’s Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke as husband and wife Adelaide and Gabe Wilson, who, in the trailer, take their two kids on a beach house vacation. They’re holidaying with friends played by Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker, but the seaside idyll is short lived as they’re beset by home invaders that turn out to be terrifying doppelgängers of each family member. (Peele told Entertainment Weekly that his scissor-wielding look-alikes are called "the Tethered.")
While the racial commentary in Get Out was more frightening than most of its scares, he's made it clear that Us is different. "Very important for me was to have a Black family at the center of a horror film," Peele said at a screening of the trailer. "It’s also important to note that this movie, unlike Get Out, is not about race. It is instead about something I feel has become an undeniable truth. That is the simple fact that we are our own worst enemies."
The movie doesn’t have to be about race because a horror film about a black family is revolutionary enough. The genre has historically relied on tropes any fan is familiar with: The black guy will die first; the well-behaved, often literally virginal white woman will die last, if at all. This is because true terror relies strongly on empathy. It’s just scarier to watch someone fight for their life when you identify with them, when their screams feel like they could be your screams, their vivisection your vivisection. Accordingly, black characters have often been disposed of quickly, as their deaths are imagined to mean little to largely white audiences. Just inverting these tropes and forcing the audience to physically and emotionally identify with a black family under siege is a huge step forward for the genre.
('You Might Also Like',)
