‘Us’ spins horror spotlight to a black family
Somewhere in the middle of writing his new movie “Us,” Jordan Peele had an epiphany. There was a black family at the center of this thing, and the Oscar-winning filmmaker of “Get Out” – a longtime fright-fest connoisseur – recognized he’d never seen that before in a horror film.
“I realized that element was pushing the boundaries of representation that have been established and that that was an important thing,” says Peele, who won a screenwriting Oscar for his 2017 directorial debut.
The Armitage clan at the center of his social thriller “Get Out” was white – and also really evil. The families dealing with crazy circumstances in films such as “Poltergeist,” “The Shining” and “Hereditary” also are white. But in “Us” (now in theaters), the Wilsons – mom Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), dad Gabe (Winston Duke), teen daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) and young son Jason (Evan Alex) – are an African-American family that comes face-to-face with malevolent doppelgangers and have to survive a night with their look-alikes trying to kill them.
“When I did my first movie, I was just hoping it wouldn’t get shut down,” Peele says, laughing. “Now I’m in a place where I get to say, ‘Look, I’m going to have this black family at the center’ (because) that’s what I want to see. So there is a special-ness, a now-ness.”
Many moviegoers will connect with various family members, and Peele thinks they’re all a little part of him – though after having his first son, Beaumont, with wife Chelsea Peretti in 2017, the director could relate more to Gabe.
“He’s the average American dad that we all recognize,” Peele says.
Duke’s goal with Gabe was to give his fun-loving (at least until the horror stuff starts) father a familiar appeal for the audience and have him “feel a lot like Homer Simpson, like they could invite him into their living rooms one time a week for 24 years.”
The “Black Panther” star appreciates Peele’s progressive work in a genre that usually isn’t “in support of blackness,” he says. “The black family no longer becomes the primary and first casualty. You see them as heroes. You see them as the all-American nuclear family. It’s not primarily white faces in those positions and that’s really refreshing.”
Adds Wright Joseph: “Representation is really important for young black kids in America. To see people that look like them in a horror movie, or just any movie, really makes us feel so special.”