More details on Jordan Peele’s Us accompany first look images

Last Updated on July 21, 2021

Less than three months out from the release of GET OUT writer/director Jordan Peele's second film US, we still know very little about the movie. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Peele has now revealed a few details about the story… but he has still left plenty of questions unanswered.

Along with the quotes from Peele, EW also shared a pair of images from the film, one of which features Lupita Nyong’o, looking like she's having a rough day. The other image shows four people holding hands on a dark night, dressed in the sort of unusual red outfit glimpsed on the US poster that was released last week. It feels like a spoiler to me, but US is shrouded in so much mystery that I'm going to trust that they didn't give anything major away with either of these pictures.

Starring 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, US is 

set in the present day and 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…

That sounds like the set-up for a home invasion story about a family being attacked by four people, Peele actually says that he went into this project wanting to 

create a monster mythology. I wanted to do something that was more firmly in the horror genre but still held on to my love of movies that are twisted but fun."

Peele even went so far as to tell EW that the monsters in the movie are called "The Tethered".

So they would have a "shared language" of horror references during filming, Peele gave Nyong'o ten genre films to watch before production began: 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.

Nyong'o says that the film turns into a "relentless nightmare" that taps into her character's deepest fears. She was excited to work on a movie like this, as the 

very fact that I have not done anything like it was appealing, because it promised growth and excitement and new territory."

Produced by Peele, Sean McKittrick, Jason Blum, and Ian Cooper, with Daniel Lupi serving as executive producer, US is set to reach theatres on March 15, 2019.