This is Us
Horror film Us looks at ‘culture of finger-pointers’, says writer and director Jordan Peele.
IN between good old-fashioned scares, Jordan Peele’s Oscarwinning horror flick Get Out (2017) offered a subtle commentary on racism in United States with its story of a young black man’s encounter with the family of his white girlfriend.
But the filmmaker warns fans they will be disappointed if they look for similar subtext in his follow-up film Us, even though it, too, is a horror story centred on African-American characters.
The family in this movie just happens to be black, Peele says in a recent interview in Los Angeles. So “don’t come into this looking for a movie about race because it will take you astray”.
He adds: “That being said, just by virtue of putting a black family at the centre of a film like this, you have dynamics that arise that don’t arise in the counterpart ‘white’ film.”
“And that to me is one of the great benefits of pushing the boundaries of representation.”
Us is the tale of a woman named Adelaide Wilson (Lupita Nyong’o) who is terrorised by her creepy doppelganger while visiting her hometown with her family.
It is a metaphor for confronting one’s inner demons, specifically those related to privilege and complacency, Peele explains.
The 40-year-old, who won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for
Get Out last year, which he also directed, explains that he wanted to explore different social themes with this movie.
“I came to write Get Out thinking about a form of expression I felt was being suppressed, and that discussion was a racial one.
“I figured with (Us), let’s try to access a truth I feel is lacking in the way we discuss society, and the idea that we are a culture of finger-pointers,” says the star, who started out in comedy with the sketch show Key & Peele (2012 to 2015) .
“Human beings, whether it’s fear of the outsider or the ‘other’, are much quicker to point our finger outward than we are to point it inward. We possess that tribalism in our nature.”
These are ideas horror loves to play with, he points out.
“One of the big realisations about this entry into the pantheon of doppelganger horror – which, by the way, is all about self-reflection and looking at our dark side – is that it’s one thing to look at our individual demons (but) it’s another thing to look at our collective demons.
“We human beings are capable of a different level of evil when we get together than just about anything on the planet.”
What the doppelgangers in Us represent will vary depending on the viewer. “One of the reasons this movie is a bit of a Rorschach test is because ‘us’ means something different to everybody; it can mean you or your partner, you and your spouse or you and your country,” says Peele, who is married to Brooklyn Nine-Nine actress Chelsea Peretti and has a two-year-old son.
Like Get Out, the film has moments of levity – a nod not just to Peele’s comedy background but also the similarities between comedy and horror.
“I’m realising that comedy is sort of the dark doppelganger of horror. They’re both grounded, they’re both about noticing how reality interacts with absurdity, they’re both about rhythm, and they both, to me, are meant to evoke a very visceral, audible response – a mini-catharsis of sorts.” That catharsis is why Peele has always loved horror, and this is why Us tips its hat to classic films such as The Shining (1980) and Funny Games (1997).
“Horror is probably my favourite genre because it affects me so much. It accesses our most buried emotion, which is fear. And anything that is suppressed like that, when it is released, it is a big release.” – The Straits Times/Asia News Network
Us is showing at GSC cinemas nationwide.