It was May 2018 when Jordan Peele first dropped a teaser poster for an upcoming film entitled Us. Not a goddamn additional thing was revealed. And thus, the mystery-based marketing game began.
Soon after, we had casting news: Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke would star, among others. Most recently, a reported synopsis leaked from an apparent beta-test screening, which has still yet to be officially confirmed by Peele and company.
We’ve all been eagerly awaiting more scraps since. Well, it looks like we now have more breadcrumbs to go along with our tea.
Peele has released a first-look at the upcoming horror flick.
The “vague” details provided to Entertainment Weekly are:
The story is set in the present day and follows Adelaide and Gabe Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke) as they take their kids to Adelaide’s old childhood beachside home in Northern California for the summer. After a day at the beach with the Tyler family (which includes Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker), 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… (Did shivers just go up your spine?)
The Wilson children are portrayed by Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex, whom Peele describes as having embodied “relative fearlessness.”
Nyong’o, in particular, was pretty much onboard from the get-go, having been a fan of Peele’s directorial feature debut, Get Out. “He was on my wish list of people to work with,” she said. “The very fact that I have not done anything like it was appealing, because it promised growth and excitement and new territory.”
The Get Out director gave Nyong’o a horror homework assignment to prepare for her role: watch 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.
Peele knew Nyong’o and Duke (who have spent ample time together filming and embarking on press tours and the awards circuit for their 2018 blockbuster, Black Panther) would have chemistry as a couple.
“I could see signs of them flirting online—they’re both flirts in general—you could see the couple in them who would want to be together, so the chemistry is just on,” noted Peele.
Most excitedly, we get the name of the monster: The Tethered. As Nyong’o pointed out, the film will highlight the possibility that “we’re our own worst enemy.”
The team behind Us, Universal and Monkeypaw, has basically been conducting a marketing masterclass for its upcoming debut trailer, set to drop on December 25 (a scary Christmas present, if you will). Several members of the press and various influencers have been receiving mysterious boxes of giant golden scissors, which the official movie poster indicates may serve as the main weapon of the antagonist.
Gifts galore. Golden scissor gang gang.
Us cuts into your consciousness in theaters on March 15, 2019.