The man who won an Oscar in his directorial debut with the horrifyingly timely Get Out is back. From the look of the film’s first trailer, there is no sophomore slump here. In fact, Us will have you hitting play over and over and over again.
It is a truly special trailer that does something that few trailers do nowadays. It doesn’t preview the entire film. One thing is does do is firmly give viewers a sense of the tone and it is one that is markedly different from Get Out and that could not be more of a good thing.
Yet, it still feels deeply horrific as it is one of these horror/thriller pictures that the audience could easily feel that what occurs in the terrifying trailer could actually haunt our lives… well, at least our nightmares.
From the opening moments of the above trailer, I was hooked. As a huge fan of the track I Got 5 on It by Luniz, hearing the 1995 jam as our story is teased had us at “go.” It introduces us to a family that is heading for a little R&R that will—as we keenly know—hardly be restful or relaxing!
Adelaide (Lupita Nyongo’o) and Gabe Wilson (Winston Duke) are a happily married couple who are bringing their kids for the experience of a lifetime—a summer at the beach in NoCal. It’s where Adelaide grew up and from the looks of things, the abode could also be where her story ends.
We have also got our hands on the film’s first official synopsis:
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…
Peele is a master craftsman when it comes to images from his films. That single tear moment from Get Out has become instantly iconic. There looks to be countless others from Us that could arrive as Peele’s pitch-perfect cinematography and production design choices are brilliant—at least from what we can tell.
Us also stars Madison Curry, Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop, Evan Alex, Shahadi Wright Joseph and Elizabeth Moss.
Look for Us in cinemas on March 15, 2019.