When Jordan Peele made Get Out, he proved that a movie about race starring a black lead can do extremely well. His highly anticipated upcoming film Us also stars black leads, but is making a different point.
Us is more of a straight-up horror film than the psychological thriller-esque horror of Get Out. It stars a cast of black lead characters playing a family who are terrorised by some creepy-ass doppelgängers. Very Freudian. Very scary.
Ahead of dropping the second trailer at the Super Bowl, Peele released it himself via the Reddit page of Monkeypaw productions.
What is different about Us is that is not a racially driven plot. It just does what the horror genre neglects to do: cast black leads. Lupita Nyong’o and her Black Panther co-star Winston Duke star as the parents of two children, played by Shahadi Wright-Joseph and Evan Alex.
“It’s important to me that we can tell black stories without it being about race,” Peele said in an interview with Rolling Stone last week.
“I realized I had never seen a horror movie of this kind, where there’s an African-American family at the center that just is.” He continued. “After you get over the initial realization that you’re watching a black family in a horror film, you’re just watching a movie. You’re just watching people. I feel like it proves a very valid and different point than Get Out, which is, not everything is about race. Get Out proved the point that everything is about race. I’ve proved both points!”
Us is set to be released on March 8 this year so get ready for another genre-shaking masterpiece from Jordan Peele.