This Trailer Mash-Up For ‘Us’ Is Absolutely Terrifying

Adelaide Wilson, along with her husband, son, and daughter, goes on a much-needed trip to find sun and sand and take a dang load off from the madness that has been the last oh ten thousand years. The problem is, because travel agents are now microwaves, she and her family end up at a little place in Florida by the name of Mar-A-Lago.

As the family tries to enjoy their trip, there’s a gnawing sense that something is terribly, terribly wrong around them. Oh, yeah, that’s right: it’s the rising white nationalism and racism stoked by the rhetoric of the Trump administration and the GOP.

In the trailer, the family’s worst fears soon become a reality when Fox News punditry, tiki-torch Neo-Nazis, and MAGA-hat-wearing white supremacists begin to surround the house. Add on top of that the human toeface that is Tucker Carlson and a couple of fear-mongering NRA ads, and pretty soon the Wilsons all of us (you know, America) could find ourselves in a fight for survival, or at the very least, for a less fearful, race-baiting, fear-mongering culture.

FIELD NOTES FROM THE FUNNY OR DIE STAFF

Jordan Peele’s horror film Us is a masterpiece, obviously, and if you don’t agree you should learn to be better at stuff. The movie also bursts at the seams with his trademark layering of tropes and tricks to lull the audience into experiencing large, difficult ideas by hiding them in plain sight.

The movie has caused a lot of talk, WHICH IS ONE OF THE WHOLE FREAKING POINTS TO MOVING PICTURES and another measure of its success. But one thing that isn’t ambiguous, thanks to Jordan Peele’s own comments on the matter, is how the film is very clearly portraying America at this critical moment quite possibly destroying itself from the inside out.

In an interview with Yahoo Entertainment, the director just flat out said it:

Thus, as if the creepy masks and ornate lethal shears weren’t enough to convince you otherwise, this is a movie that everyone should see. But it’s not a movie that everyone should like, because it isn’t exactly trying to preserve our self image as Americans. Jordan added in his interview with Yahoo Entertainment why he takes this approach: “I think one of the things in a horror movie that can challenge the scariness is when the answers are easy and it is tied up in a nice, neat bow. I wanted to provide enough answers to satisfy and fascinate, but also give peoples’ imagination runway to sort of take them into their nightmares.”

CREDITS

Published at Wed, 27 Mar 2019 14:00:00 +0000