Jordan Peele says he was inspired by the current state of the nation when he was making his sophomore film Us, which premiered Friday to great fanfare at South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas.
“This movie is about this country,” Peele told the audience, according to Variety. “And when I decided to write this movie, I was stricken with the fact that we are in a time where we fear the other: whether it is the mysterious invader that we think is going to come and kill us and take our jobs, or the faction that we don’t live near that voted a different way than us. We’re all about pointing the finger, and I wanted to suggest that maybe the monster we really need to look at has our face. Maybe the evil is us.”
Us tells the story of Gabe (Winston Duke) and Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), who take their kids on a family trip to Adelaide’s old childhood beach house. Soon, the vacation becomes a nightmare when Adelaide becomes increasingly paranoid that something will happen to her family.
The first trailer for the film arrived on Christmas Day, introducing the world to Peele’s long-anticipated follow-up to 2017’s Get Out. An even scarier trailer dropped during Super Bowl Sunday last month
Us is out in theaters on March 22.
