The first trailer for Jordan Peele’s new film, Us, was released yesterday (Dec. 25).
It’s a pretty substantial trailer, about a family on holiday who seem to meet warped versions of themselves in what appears to be a twist on the home-invasion genre. The preview bears a lot of resemblance to the structure of Peele’s first film breakthrough, Get Out:
Both trailers are quite long. Neither are teasers, in the conventional sense.
Both begin with a gentle opening that sets up the relationships between the main characters. In Get Out, it’s an excerpt from the opening scene that sets off the plot—a young black man is visiting his white girlfriend’s family. In Us, it’s a young family jamming to a 1990s hip-hop classic in the car on their way to a beach holiday. About a third of the way into both trailers, we’re told this isn’t what it seems.
Like the Get Out trailer, once the premise is established, the new trailer moves to a series of vignettes of scary scenes from the rest of the film that only make sense in retrospect. In Get Out, it’s the key confrontation between Chris and Rose’s family by the front door—and then later we see him tied to a chair in the basement in preparation for a horror lobotomy.
Perhaps the same is true of the white room filled with rabbits that Lupita Nyong’o’s bloodied Adelaide Wilson walks into at some point of the film. The scene features her doppelganger’s red outfit, gold scissors, and leather glove. The scope of Us expands rapidly in the trailer. It’s clear that this is not a simple home invasion.
Us will be released on March 19, 2019 in the US.