Jordan Peele’s Us was inspired by a classic Twilight Zone episode

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

GET OUT writer/director Jordan Peele is executive producing, hosting, and narrating the CBS All Access reboot of the classic anthology series The Twilight Zone, and we know that at least one of the new show's 10 episodes will be a remake of an old Twilight Zone episode; Adam Scott is starring in Nightmare at 30,000 Feet, a new version of a 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone that starred William Shatner (and was remade as a segment of the 1983 Twilight Zone movie with John Lithgow in the lead). One classic episode that probably won't be getting a remake this season is the 1960 episode Mirror Image… and that's because Mirror Image has already served as inspiration for Peele's new film US.

One of the most highly anticipated genre releases of the year, US stars Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Anna Diop, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex, Cali Sheldon, Noelle Sheldon, and Madison Curry in a story that follows 

Adelaide and Gabe Wilson (Nyong’o and 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 (including Moss and 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…

As revealed in the trailer, those four mysterious figures are homicidal doppelgangers of the Wilson family.

Mirror Image starred PSYCHO's Vera Miles as 

a woman who encounters her duplicate in a bus station and becomes convinced it arrived from a parallel universe, bent on replacing her. 

Peele revealed the Mirror Image inspiration in a Rolling Stone article in which he praised the episode for its 

terrifying, beautiful, really elegant storytelling … It opens up a world. It opens up your imagination."

It opened up Peele's imagination so much that we're getting a full feature from him based on the idea of people confronting their doubles.

US is set to reach theatres on March 22nd. The Twilight Zone will premiere on CBS All Access soon after, on April 1st.