Jordan Peele Creates "Monster Mythology" In His New Movie 'Us' (Plus More Details)
After the huge success of Get Out, which won writer/director Jordan Peele a well-deserved Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, all eyes are on him to see if he can deliver another amazing movie with his follow-up, which is called Us. We recently published a plot synopsis that was attached to test screenings of the movie, but now Peele and stars Lupita Nyong'o and Winston Duke are shedding some light on even more Us movie details, including the fact that this film is "more firmly in the horror genre" than Get Out.
"For my second feature, I wanted to create a monster mythology," Peele told Entertainment Weekly. "I wanted to do something that was more firmly in the horror genre but still held on to my love of movies that are twisted but fun."
The movie centers on a couple, Adelaide and Gabe Wilson (Nyong'o and Duke), who take their kids to Adelaide's beach house for the summer. They spend a day on the shore with another family (led by Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker), but afterwards "Adelaide — who's haunted by a lingering trauma from her past — becomes increasingly more paranoid that something bad will happen to her family. As night falls, the Wilsons see four figures holding hands and standing silently at the bottom of their driveway."
As you can see in the photos over at Entertainment Weekly, the figures appear to be versions of Adelaide and the rest of her family. Nyong'o, who burst on the scene with her Oscar-winning performance in 12 Years a Slave, has been wanting to work with Peele and is excited about playing a role that's unlike anything she's done before. According to the actress, the movie "turns into this relentless nightmare that taps into [Adelaide's] deepest fears and ours as well — the idea that we might be our own worst enemies." Peele also revealed that the monsters in the movie are referred to as "the Tethered," which explains the imagery on the poster.
Elsewhere in the piece, we found out that Peele gave Nyong'o ten movies to watch in preparation for her role here so the two would have "a shared language" during the production: 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.
Armed with all of this context, it seems as if the director may be exploring themes of identity, trauma, and maybe even depression; if "the Tethered" are essentially copies of the film's protagonists, that seems like a cool opportunity to literalize the idea of "us" fighting against our worst impulses. (Now I'm getting flashbacks to the climax of Annihilation.) Head over to EW to learn more and to see another first-look photo from the film.
Us arrives in theaters on March 15, 2019.