What’s scarier than a family vacation? How about a family vacation where everyone’s evil doppelgängers show up to kill them? That’s the premise of Jordan Peele’s upcoming horror movie, Us, and based on its explosive first trailer it will be even scarier (if somewhat less politically powerful) than his directorial debut, Get Out.
The Us trailer open on a family as they drive towards a beach vacation, with Black Panther actors Lupita Nyong’o playing the mother and Winston Duke as dad (who wouldn’t want M’Baku for a father?), plus two kids. We’re also introduced to Elisabeth Moss and a few other friends. Then, everything goes wrong.
Later that night at the beach house, a mysterious, threatening family shows up. It soon becomes clear that these visitors are actually perfect copies of the main characters, just evil and dressed in red. Each family member gets a terrifying doppelgänger apparently determined to kill them by any means necessary.
Based on the trailer alone, Us finds some impressive ways to turn these famous actors into horrifying monsters without a ton of special effects.
Here’s regular Nyong’o looking scared in the trailer:
And here’s evil Nyong’o carrying the pair of scissors featured in a previous teaser image for Us:
We can't wait to never sleep again after seeing this movie.
Us may be a hell of a lot scarier than Get Out, but it appears to lack to the socio-political commentary of Peele’s first horror film. At a preview event attended by Vulture, Peele said that while he wanted the movie to star a black family, that doesn’t mean Us is “about” race. Instead, he simply wants to create a new monster and new mythology to go with it.
Of course, any good horror movie is a reflection of some truth in our own society, and even if Us isn’t explicitly political, it will still have something relevant to say.
“Stories about monsters are one of our best ways of getting at deeper truths and facing our fears as a society,” Peele said at the event, adding that Us is “about something that’s become an undeniable fact: the simple truth that we are our own worst enemies.”
Lupita Nyong’o will scare the hell out of you when Us hits theaters on March 15, 2019.
Related video: Get Out Inspired “Get Art,” a Viral Artistic Project
