Image via Universal Pictures
Writer and director Jordan Peele has made an incredible career transition from acclaimed sketch comedy star to acclaimed horror filmmaker. After Mad TV and Key & Peele—which netted Peele both an Emmy and a Peabody—he wrote and directed Get Out, a horror film and dark satire of so-called post-racial America that won him an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
Now, Peele and his production company, Monkey Paw Productions, have the creative freedom to make whatever they please. Peele is producing and hosting a Twilight Zone reboot on CBS All-Access, and producing a new series, Lovecraft Country, for HBO. Most notably, he's writing and directing his second horror feature film, Us, due out on March 22, 2019.
The details of the film—about a vacationing family being stalked by its doppelgangers—are sparse, but tantalizing. The marketing for Us has been uncommonly creative and creepy, ranging from evocative trailers to unsettling posters to ads that change, depending on the angle you view them at.
Here is everything you need to know about Us, one of the most anticipated films of 2019.
A Twilight Zone episode inspired ‘Us’
The Twilight Zone, hosted by Rod Serling, celebrated the fantastical. It ran from 1959 to 1964 and consisted of short, unconnected stories, each one dealing with something horrific, supernatural, or just plain weird.
Us was inspired by an episode from the first season, titled "Mirror Image," in which a woman encounters her doppelganger at a bus depot and becomes convinced that it is trying to replace her.
“It’s terrifying, beautiful, really elegant storytelling,” Peele said in an interview with Rolling Stone. "And it opens up a world. It opens up your imagination.”
Inspired by this source material, Peele took approximately a year to develop the Us script: six months conceiving and working it out mentally, and another six months to actually get it down on paper.
It's a relatively low-budget affair
Us was made for $20 million. That’s more than the $4.5 million that Get Out cost, but in the era of $100 million and $200 million blockbusters, it’s a sweet deal for a near-guaranteed box office smash. Blumhouse (Paranormal Activity, Happy Death Day, Get Out, BlacKkKlansman) is co-producing the film, and specializes in this sort of low-budget, high-return proposition.
It stars Winston Duke and Lupita Nyong'o
Winston Duke and Lupita Nyong'o play the father and mother, as well as their corresponding doppelgangers. Duke is best known to moviegoers as M'Baku, the leader of the Jabari Tribe in Black Panther. He reprised this role in Avengers: Infinity War and will reprise it again in the upcoming Avengers: Endgame. Us will be Duke's first non-Marvel movie role.
Lupita Nyong'o famously won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Patsey in 12 Years a Slave. Since then, she's had supporting roles in The Jungle Book remake, the new Star Wars films, and Black Panther.
Peele had Nyong'o watch horror films to prepare
If you want a must-see horror film list to prepare for Us, you can't do much better than the ten films that Peele assigned Nyong'o to watch in preparation for her role, so that the actress and director could speak a "shared language" on set.
Those ten films? 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.
The Luniz' "I Got 5 On It" makes a special appearance
One of the first things viewers gravitated towards in the first Us trailer was the use of the Luniz's 1995 smash "I Got 5 On It," which was reworked into a sinister classical version by trailer's end. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly after the trailer dropped, Peele explained why he wanted to use this song.
That song, it came pretty simple, I’m making a movie in Northern California, that’s a bay area hip-hop classic and I wanted to explore this very relatable journey of being a parent [and] maybe some of the songs you listened to back in the day aren’t appropriate for your kids. So that was one level, and another part was, I love songs that have a great feeling but also have a haunting element to them and I feel like the beat in that song has this inherent cryptic energy, almost reminiscent of the Nightmare on Elm Street soundtrack. So those were the ideas that that song hit the bullseye on for me, and also, it’s just a dope track.
Haunting, indeed. The Us soundtrack has two versions of this new reimagining of "I Got 5 On It": One called the "Tethered" mix, which actually morphs the original into the eerie, string-led version, and a second, entitled "Pas De Deux," which is the full, sinister orchestral take on the sample of Club Nouveau's "Why You Treat Me So Bad" used in "I Got 5 On It." Listen to both below.
The film explores deeper themes
A lot of the horror films on Peele's homework list have a deeper meaning and purpose beyond scaring the audience. The Babadook is about dealing with grief; It Follows is a parable about STDs and their stigma. Us will follow in the footsteps of these films.
"I think the main idea that went into writing this film is that we’re our own worst enemy, and that idea created this monster, The Tethered," said Peele in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "I wanted to forge this new mythology that explored our duality and the duality of the characters."
‘Us’ isn't about race
Get Out was a movie that both explicitly and implicitly critiqued the struggles of being black in America. Us is not, nor should it be categorized as such.
“Very important for me was to have a black family at the center of a horror film,” Peele told BET. “It’s also important to note that this movie, unlike Get Out, is not about race."
Even so, Us cannot help but be informed by the lack of racial diversity in Hollywood. It may not be explicitly about race, but the casting of Us is quietly groundbreaking—a statement unto itself.
"I can’t think of a horror movie of this nature with a family in the center of it that uses a black family," said Peele in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. "So I knew just by putting an African-American family in the lead role, already we would be exploring cinematic uncharted territory."
Industrial Light and Magic is handling the special effects
Originally founded by George Lucas in 1975, Industrial Light and Magic is most famous for its effects in the original Star Wars films. More recently, the studio been responsible for the visual effects in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films.
Us’ visual effects are also being handled by ILM. The VFX supervisor for Us, Grady Cofer, was also the supervisor on projects such as Ready Player One and Terminator Genysis.
It's scarier than 'Get Out'
Horror fans looking for their charge of adrenaline might have been let down by Get Out. The film, while clever and thought-provoking, was not heart-attack-inducing in its scares. According to producer Jason Blum, Us “doubles down” on scary.
There are already lots of conspiracy theories about the plot
The Internet hive mind has been working overtime to break down this film's trailers, and their interpretations are fascinating, to say the least.
Some are literal; perhaps the doppelganger family are actual clones, making Us a science fiction film. Other interpretations are figurative, suggesting that the doppelgangers are a physical manifestation of a family trauma or tragedy, which must be confronted for the doppelgangers to go away.
One of the most provocative theories notes that this family is economically well off. The father owns a boat; they all blend into upper-class society. But to do so, they had to hide anything that the establishment would deem to be "other" or "unacceptable." Thus, these doppelgangers represent what the family has had to repress, conceal, or otherwise change to socially advance.
We'll know for sure soon enough.