I was already a fan of Jordan Peele when Get Out was released, but that film was so incredible that he immediately shot to the top of my list of directors to keep a very close eye on. Judging by the excellent trailer for Us, it looks like it’s going to be a more than worthy follow-up and, at least according to a recent interview with Rolling Stone, it’s also going to be scarier than Get Out was.
Apparently, Peele doesn’t even consider his last effort to be a strict horror film, telling the outlet the following:
I’m such a horror nut that the genre confusion of Get Out broke my heart a little. I set out to make a horror movie, and it’s kind of not a horror movie. As a horror fan, I really wanted to contribute something to that world.
It seemed pretty damn horrific to me, so I’m interested to hear about what heights of terror he’s aiming for in Us. As the interview goes on to explain, if Get Out was “existentially terrifying; Us is spill-your-soda scary,” with the hope that some of the general audiences who turned up for his last movie showing up for this one, too, and being thoroughly freaked out by what he serves up. Peele even has ambitions for the film’s monsters to become part of the canon of horror cinema in the same way that the classic Universal Monsters are.
Another way Us is going to be different is a shifting of focus in what Peele’s trying to achieve, with the director telling Rolling Stone:
“It’s important to me that we can tell black stories without it being about race. 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. 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!”
Even better, we don’t have too long to wait to find out exactly how horrifying Us is going to be. It’ll premiere at SXSW on March 8th, before a wide release soon after on March 22nd. Even with all of the superhero and interplanetary action we’re due this year, Peele’s effort has got to be one of the potential cinematic highlights of 2019 – for me, at least.
