The reviews have been streaming in for Jordan Peele’s new horror film Us, and they’ve proven that the writer/director of Get Out is no one-hit wonder.
With 108 reviews counted on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing, just two are negative, resulting in a score of 98 percent — the same score held by Peele’s prior effort, Get Out. But whereas Get Out was a psychological thriller with a focus on social commentary, Us is a straight up, old school horror film. And while some critics have been tossing around the “thriller” monicker in reference to Us, Peele himself has been quick to correct the record, recently taking to Twitter to post — without context — “Us is a horror movie.”
‘Us’ is a horror movie.
— Jordan Peele (@JordanPeele) March 17, 2019
The movie is about a family who encounters their evil doppelgangers known as The Tethered, who come from underground and are seeking vengeance on their surface-dwelling counterparts. And the inspirations behind the plot clue the viewer into the horrors the film holds. Peele’s initial idea came from a classic episode of The Twilight Zone (fittingly, Peele is spearheading the next version of the iconic show) called “Mirror Image,” where a woman goes crazy after seeing her doppelganger at a bus station. “It’s terrifying, beautiful, really elegant storytelling,” Peele told Rolling Stone about the episode, “and it opens up a world. It opens up your imagination.”
As Peele further developed the film, his main driving force became the idea that we are our own worst enemy. “I think the main idea that went into writing this film is that we’re our own worst enemy, and that idea created this monster, The Tethered,” Peele told EW. “I wanted to forge this new mythology that explored our duality and the duality of the characters.”
Us doesn’t even hit theaters until March 22, but it already looks to be the horror film of the year… and it has us counting down the days until Peele unveils his next nightmare, whatever that may be.
