A mother (Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o from Black Panther, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and 12 Years a Slave) and a father (Winston Duke from Black Panther) take their kids to their beach house expecting to unplug and unwind with friends (including Emmy winner Elizabeth Moss from TV series The Handmaid’s Tale). But as night descends, their serenity turns to tension and chaos when some shocking visitors arrive uninvited.

https://www.slashfilm.com/jordan-peeles-us-plot-synopsis/

Watch yourself.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DuUAVDWU8AA0FJv.jpg

https://twitter.com/JordanPeele/status/1073264456140898306

(Trailer drops Christmas Day)

Us - Official Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNCmb-4oXJA

Yo, I'm ALL the way the fuck in for this

Loved how they flipped the 'take a classic song and make it creepy' trope by using 'I Got 5 On It'

I was hoping that Get Out was going to be more horror-centric than it was and this looks like I'm getting what I wanted.

This looks fucking amazing

>Yo, I'm ALL the way the fuck in for this
>
>Loved how they flipped the 'take a classic song and make it
>creepy' trope by using 'I Got 5 On It'

I thought this was just car commercial or something when it first came on during the game yesterday. Right up until I heard that part then stopped wrapping gifts & paid full attention.

>I was hoping that Get Out was going to be more horror-centric
>than it was and this looks like I'm getting what I wanted.

The horror elements seemed kinda tacked on in that one but looks like he's goin full throttle this time.

>This looks fucking amazing

>Yo, I'm ALL the way the fuck in for this
>
>Loved how they flipped the 'take a classic song and make it
>creepy' trope by using 'I Got 5 On It'
>
>I was hoping that Get Out was going to be more horror-centric
>than it was and this looks like I'm getting what I wanted.
>
>This looks fucking amazing

Our enemy is...us?

Not necessarily feeling that premise, Blood.

Peace,

Spirit (Alan)
http://wutangbook.com

My worst enemy is certainly not me.

And I don’t think all characters are interchangeable regardless of race. This is a film with Black protagonists. Their blackness is part of the story whether the writer is conscious of it or not. This is America, film has been racialized here for over a hundred years at least (Birth of a Nation etc). A film with Black protagonists where they are their own worst enemy sounds like a flawed premise to me. If I find out later that there is an entirely different premise, I might be interested, but (for now) I’m not remotely interested in seeing this film.

Peace,

Spirit (Alan)
http://wutangbook.com

Us - In Theaters March 22 (Nightmare)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKuvOrCmFTY

It's very fun. Plenty of scares and laughs, little puzzle pieces of foreshadowing sprinkled throughout, the actors are dynamite, it's gorgeously shot, and the music is fantastic. Peele's basically playing with Spielberg, Shyamalan, and Haneke all rolled into one here-- which are definitely good thriller directors to use as reference points. Like Get Out, it hits its crowd-pleasing beats beautifully.

One complaint: it's *way* less specific thematically than Get Out... to the point where I'm not sure if Peele even has a specific theme in mind here. It felt at times like he was tossing a lot at the wall to see what stuck. Get Out was incredibly tight-- that was one idea beautifully fleshed out, and here we've got a bunch of allusions and references without that clear through-line. I don't mind the ambition-- it's still an insanely fun flick, and the broadness will certainly allow people to project their own personal stuff into the movie-- but don't go in expecting something as tight as Get Out.

Still, no sophomore slump here. He's constructed another big-hit horror flick here. It honestly has a *very* Twilight Zone vibe, so it also serves to make me more excited for Peele's Twilight Zone reboot too.

>Still, no sophomore slump here. He's constructed another
>big-hit horror flick here. It honestly has a *very* Twilight
>Zone vibe, so it also serves to make me more excited for
>Peele's Twilight Zone reboot too.

The buildup was masterful, the payoff just only somewhat disappointing because some of the themes weren't all cleared up, but enough to chew on that this is a very satisfying experience.

Usually avoid opening weekends/big crowds but this is the kind of flick that warrants it. Even the 11am show was packed and ppl were locked in from the opening shot

...we had good fun in this one all the way around, acting was on point, dug the score/sonics etc, and when it was over I turned to my wife and said 'that felt like a good Twilight Zone episode in movie form' (meant as a compliment, cuz I love TZ).

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/arts/lupita-nyongo-us.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage

This Is Lupita Nyong’o. Hollywood, Please Keep Up.

In “Us,” the race of the main characters is never depicted as remarkable. “It’s really not exceptional to be black, or to be African, and I think that’s a powerful statement in and of itself,” Nyong’o said.

By Reggie Ugwu

March 20, 2019


AUSTIN, Tex. — When she was around 11, Lupita Nyong’o’s parents brought home a cassette tape that changed her life. It was of the song “Regulate” by the West Coast hip-hop dynasts Warren G and Nate Dogg. Nyong’o and her five siblings, then living in a suburb of Nairobi, could only partially savor the lyrics of the song — a hearty, slang-ridden narrative of a thwarted mugging, topped with a soupçon of ceremonial group sex. But the music was hypnotic and evocative, suggesting an absorbing pocket universe. Nyong’o remembers wearing the tape out, rewinding it over and over until she knew all of the words by heart.

Of the many apparently effortless but difficult-to-emulate things the 36-year-old star of “Us,” the new psychological horror film from Jordan Peele, has done in front of a camera, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the rapping. She’s done it twice, both times in videos filmed in the back seat of a car and posted on Instagram: the first to celebrate her three millionth follower and the second with her “Black Panther” co-star Letitia Wright, on the week of the film’s premiere.

No one would call Nyong’o the next Warren G, but something about watching her rap disturbs an inner accountant. Here is a person whose very first appearance in a feature film, as the unforgettable Patsey in “12 Years a Slave” (2013), made her the seventh black woman and first black African to win an Academy Award for acting; a person whose doll-like facial symmetry and frictionless skin has landed her four solo appearances on the cover of Vogue; a person who speaks four languages and holds a graduate degree from Yale.

And this same person, wearing dark sunglasses and facetiously calling herself Troublemaker, reveals that she also can rap, with appropriate levels of insouciance and conviction, and while remaining on beat. One suspects the divine dealer of dereliction of duty.


Nyong’o discussed her hip-hop hobby on an afternoon earlier this month in Austin, where she had come to the South by Southwest film festival to unveil “Us,” due March 22. Like the rap videos, her foray into horror represents both an abstention from, and an implicit critique of, the Hollywood playbook for stars of her pedigree. Though she has been deliberate about creating a space for herself in an industry that wasn’t built for her, inhabiting and defending that space is another matter. Nyong’o’s performance in “Us,” already earning ecstatic reviews, is a shot across the bow to anyone who would deny her her due.

It was overcast and humid. But we caught a breeze on a digressive walk around Lady Bird Lake on the edge of downtown. Nyong’o, who was dressed for an earlier panel discussion in a gray and black gingham pantsuit, black heels and matching round sunglasses, was trailed by two barrel-chested bodyguards, who kept a wide berth at their client’s polite but firm insistence. As we wound between naked trees down a semi-paved path, more than a few rubberneckers shot her adoring grins and sheepish waves.

Her normal life is much lower maintenance. She’s lived in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn for several years, having opted to stay on the East Coast after school, and spends quiet weekends going to the farmer’s market, or to local restaurants, where, she said with relief, “New Yorkers are too busy to recognize people.”

But such normalcy grows scarcer by the day. Nyong’o spent much of the last two years preparing for, shooting and promoting Marvel’s “Black Panther,” in which she played Nakia, an idealistic Wakandan spy and the hero’s love interest. The film’s worldwide success may turn the Oscar-winning actress into a blockbuster heroine, a rarefied combination that “Us” is positioned to affirm.

In it, she plays both Adelaide, the matriarch of the charming Wilson family, and Red, her bloodthirsty doppelgänger. Peele wrote the characters with Nyong’o in mind, and the two were close collaborators on interpreting the script. They met for the first time shortly after Nyong’o wrapped “Panther” (during production of that film, the actress and lifelong horror fan organized a cast field trip to see Peele’s surprise 2017 smash, “Get Out”) and quickly hit it off.

“He was really inviting of my thoughts and ideas,” she said. “He’ll have this kernel of an idea that is so strong, and then he’ll keep adding to it and clarifying his intentions as he goes along. When he cast me in the movie, I joined him in that process.”

In an interview, Peele said he was grateful for the second pair of eyes. “Right out of the gate she was asking questions about the characters that I didn’t know the answer to — and I knew everything about them,” he said.

In the film’s story, as carefully as it can be described without spoilers, Adelaide embarks on a beachside vacation with her husband (fellow “Black Panther” alumnus Winston Duke) and their two children. It turns cataclysmic when another family of mysterious origin — their mirror images, but as filtered through a particularly ghastly nightmare — shows up on their doorstep.

Peele seeded his script with cryptic prompts for the look and feel of Adelaide’s evil double. One concerned Red’s movement, which Peele conveyed with just two exceptionally creepy words: Queen cockroach.

Another prompt indicated that Red had a scratchy voice, as if withered from lack of use. That seed — contained in a single sentence on the page — was fertilized when Nyong’o attended a fashion event where, to her surprise, she heard a speaker whose voice she thought sounded close to what Peele was describing. The speaker was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary spasms of the larynx. In the film, Nyong’o’s hair-raising performance is defined by a haunting amplification of the disorder, which sounds like what might happen if you swallowed a cheese grater.
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Nyong’o’s set debut in costume as Red, for a long, unbroken monologue that fills in the character’s life story, was one of the most dramatic moments of the shoot.

“She walked into the room and you just felt the air suck out of it,” Peele said. “The first time she did that scene was magic. I think we shot it like 10 times — just because we could — and it was always gold.”

Nyong’o worked closely with Jordan Peele on the “Us” script: “He was really inviting of my thoughts and ideas,” she said.CreditClaudette Barius/Universal Pictures
On the trail in Austin, Nyong’o was recalling how she fell in love with acting when something — someone — broke her focus. It was a large man in a faded T-shirt and white earbuds walking behind us, talking so loudly that we were struggling to hear one another. Nyong’o stopped and turned around. As the man passed by, she gave him a look of such elegant and devastating ferocity that I thought he might evaporate mid-stride, leaving only the earbuds behind. The bodyguards may not have been necessary after all.

Her aunt had been a theater actress in Nairobi, and Nyong’o’s siblings and cousins would perform short skits at family gatherings. Acting was a way to win attention from (and manipulate the emotions of) her mother and father, who defied the stereotype of African parents by encouraging their children to pursue their passions.

Both accompanied their daughter to the “Us” premiere. Nyong’o’s father, Peter, is a politician and the governor of Kisumu County in Kenya. As a young college professor and critic of former President Daniel arap Moi, he temporarily exiled himself and his family to Mexico City, where Nyong’o was born and given a Spanish name inspired by their adopted home. Her mother, Dorothy, is a public relations consultant and the managing trustee of the Africa Cancer Foundation, founded by her husband.
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Nyong’o credited her mother in particular for her self-confidence.

“She’s dignified in the things she knows, and she’s dignified in the things she doesn’t,” she said. “She’s not afraid to admit that she has something to learn. And that quality is something that I seek to emulate — to be able to be comfortable in the discomfort of not knowing, or the feeling that you’re unprepared.”

“Us” is only Nyong’o’s fourth live-action appearance in a film since her debut, and as a lead actress, she is still learning how and where she wants to apply herself. Many in her position would accept as much work as their schedules would bear, fearing the laws of gravity that can bring Hollywood prodigies abruptly back to earth. But here, too, Nyong’o has defied expectations. She believes her creativity is a finite resource and doesn’t offer it easily.

“I’m not creative all the time, I’m just not,” she said. “Each role depletes me in some way, and I know that I do my best work when I’ve had time to remain fallow.”

Being selective has meant saying no to star vehicles that other actresses would relish. After she won her Oscar, Nyong’o was approached to headline the American remake of the Mexican action thriller “Miss Bala,” but ultimately decided not to move forward with the project. (The film was released last month starring Gina Rodriguez.)

“I just realized that whatever I’m interested in didn’t fit into the story, so I chose to bow out,” Nyong’o said. “I didn’t feel like I had the right perspective for it.”
Nyong’o credits her mother for her self-confidence: “She’s dignified in the things she knows, and she’s dignified in the things she doesn’t.”

Nyong’o credits her mother for her self-confidence: “She’s dignified in the things she knows, and she’s dignified in the things she doesn’t.”CreditRoger Kisby for The New York Times


Her awareness that few historical models exist for female movie stars of color, particularly those with dark skin, has made her especially mindful of the example she is setting.

With “Black Panther,” Nyong’o was part of a seismic shift away from whiteness as the unquestioned default in American popular cinema. “Us,” in which the race of the central characters — though affirmatively black — is never depicted as remarkable, gave her a chance to take that shift a step further.

“It’s really not exceptional to be black, or to be African, and I think that’s a powerful statement in and of itself,” she said. “We can be seen and perceived as part and parcel of the global experience, because that is the truth.”

In Austin, where the sun had finally emerged, we left the lake behind and turned toward downtown, where Nyong’o was due at her hotel to get dressed for the “Us” premiere later that night.

Before we arrived, she told me a story about a time when she still felt beholden to the expectations of others. It was by way of explaining her excitement over another creative coup, as both producer and star of a coming mini-series adaptation of the novel “Americanah,” by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

As a young, Kenyan-Mexican actress living and working in America, Nyong’o said she had made a habit of suppressing her accent, a natural composite of the places she’s lived.


“I was only speaking in the American accent, because my feeling, and the feeling that was communicated to me in school, was that having an African accent would limit your possibilities,” she said.

After she wrapped “12 Years a Slave,” newly facing the prospect of a public life, the inauthenticity of her voice became a source of anxiety. Encouragement came from a novel Nyong’o was reading at the time, “Americanah,” in which the main character, Ifemelu, is a Nigerian immigrant who also attends an Ivy League school and also has given up her natural tongue.

Burdened eventually with shame and regret, longing to be seen — and heard — as her ordinarily extraordinary self, Ifemelu giddily repents.

“I remember I was on the subway when I was reading that,” Nyong’o said. “I just wept.”

A version of this article appears in print on March 24, 2019, on Page AR1 of the New York edition with the headline: Lupita Nyong’o Isn’t Like the Rest. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Bummer. Cause I dug it. And it was fun...buuuut...yeah.

It's creepy, with a really disturbing atmosphere. GREAT performance by Lupita N'yongo on par with Toni Collette in Hereditary.

There is a subtext to this movie that is amazing and way, waaay more complex than Get Out. I would say that if you are black and have a good understanding of black history, you most likely will get it by the time the credits roll. I'm serious, this movie will be taught in classes and papers will be written on the rich ass subtext here. Even still, I think it mostly works on the surface as a good, scary horror film.

And it is more of a horror film than Get Out.

You will be cheering when the kids stop running.

I laughed at the humor but the movie is NOT campy or a comedy. At all.

One slight fail is that I guessed the twist about halfway into the movie and you probably will too.

Some would say that M'Baku is weak here, but I thought it was a perfect contrast to Black Panther and him being a shitty protector for his family is good for comic value AND lets Lupita shine even more.

It might lose some people in the third act, especially when the curtain is pulled back, but it worked for me. And I really like horror movies where you are fully invested in the characters, making it even more frightening because you genuinely have no idea who will survive and who will die. The man of the house is such a chump that you feel like no one is safe.

This was a four star movie, y'all. Hereditary was the #1 horror flick of last year, and this will be the #1 for 2019, I'm sure of it.

Duke was inexplicably ineffectual. The father in the flashback scene was also inexplicably irresponsible, completely failing to watch for his daughter at all. The back story of the “planning” by the detethered wasn’t explained at all (how did they get all the uniforms, for example? The implements they used as weapons?). There is no explanation regarding how the rabbits were fed that they used as a food source. There were endless holes in the plot like that. Get Out was far more tightly written.

you think that one black dad in a movie makes black men look bad.

but somehow you think being a hopelessly dumb motherfucker in real life doesn't.

"how'd they get the outfits?" PLOT HOLE.

hey smarty art motherfucker: how'd they get *any* of the clothes?


www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

I saw this as a horror movie, not a movie with a message. Meaning I went in to see a popcorn flick, not to use my secret decoder ring.

On a silly note, I loved that Josh named his boat be-yachtch.

everyone is going to see something different in terms of the larger "message"..

one take away for me was that it speaks to what happens to people's minds when they're imprisioned and treated inhumanely while they are there...and what the cost is to society when they are released

there seemed to be other inferences to privilege, the role of faith in our lives, etc.

again, art is subjective.

beyond that, i think it is a stellar piece of art in a genre that isn't really my favorite..but i see how much respect and reverence he has for the genre..its all over the film in how he calls out other films..like the Shining (the white twins) and A Clockwork Orange (murder scene happening amongst happy-ish music)..even to a horror music video (Thriller)

I also don't think the film was about race, at all. There was a moment when Adelaide asked Red something (can't remember) and she said "We're Americans"...it took that as a bit of an endictment on America as a whole..as a system..etc. Which circles back to the prison industrial complex. And yes, race is baked into all that, but I didn't get the sense that this film was as focused on race as Get Out was.

Absolutely loved it and I want to see it again in the theater, without hiding behind my hands lol

d

That was my reading, at least.

Although I kind of do think it was about race. Here's why:

The family was middle-upper class by the looks of it, and they were in a nice as beach house, and STILL the cops did not show up when they called. Whereas the cops would have showed up IMMEDIATELY for the white family, only their Alexa fucked up.

Also, I think the characteristics of the family were meant to make them stand out: the way they talked, the fact that you only see their white friends, etc. Even a contrast from the family that Red came from.

Yeah I think the argument is fair that it's about the lower class starting a revolution against the other classes, but yeah like you kind of said race is implicit in that.

Not disagreeing with you, and yeah it's all subjective. But I do think race issues were a part of it, even if it wasn't as clear cut about it as Get Out was.

>That was my reading, at least.
>
>Although I kind of do think it was about race. Here's why:
>
>The family was middle-upper class by the looks of it, and they
>were in a nice as beach house, and STILL the cops did not show
>up when they called. Whereas the cops would have showed up
>IMMEDIATELY for the white family, only their Alexa fucked up.

from a meta standpoint, that could have been a joke for the audience. But in the universe of the story, the cops could have already been dead..and you can't definitely say what would have happened for the white family in the context of mass tethered killings. I mean, they even had to drive their own ambulance, from what i could remember.

>Also, I think the characteristics of the family were meant to
>make them stand out: the way they talked, the fact that you
>only see their white friends, etc. Even a contrast from the
>family that Red came from.

maybe. i didn't find anything peculiar about the way they talked. it was normal for people who are intelligent, imo. and they clearly were. i'd say be conscious of your own biases there cuz there is no one way Black people talk.

>Yeah I think the argument is fair that it's about the lower
>class starting a revolution against the other classes, but
>yeah like you kind of said race is implicit in that.

exactly. you can't separate it. but i don't think the point of the film was to separate it.

>Not disagreeing with you, and yeah it's all subjective. But I
>do think race issues were a part of it, even if it wasn't as
>clear cut about it as Get Out was.

fair enough.

d

>from a meta standpoint, that could have been a joke for the
>audience. But in the universe of the story, the cops could
>have already been dead..and you can't definitely say what
>would have happened for the white family in the context of
>mass tethered killings. I mean, they even had to drive their
>own ambulance, from what i could remember.

That could be true, sure. I tend to think Peele was more intentional than that though. But that's just my opinion.

>maybe. i didn't find anything peculiar about the way they
>talked. it was normal for people who are intelligent, imo. and
>they clearly were. i'd say be conscious of your own biases
>there cuz there is no one way Black people talk.
>
Of course there is no one way that Black people talk. Spoiler: you're talking to a black person. I'm just saying, watch this in a theater full of black folks and hear how a lot of people react to M'Baku in that role. Again, I think Peele was more intentional than that. My own bias has little to do with it.

Kind of like you said everyone has their own take on what it means. My take just leaned a little more on race and class. I though there was enough to support it, but who knows, maybe if I actually talked to Peele about it he would say nah, that is waaaay off the mark. I do think though that we agree on a lot concerning the movie though.

>Of course there is no one way that Black people talk. Spoiler:
>you're talking to a black person.

Black people can also have biases about other Black people tho :)

I'm just saying, watch this
>in a theater full of black folks and hear how a lot of people
>react to M'Baku in that role.

ugh. i hate stuff like that. he's an ACTOR. why do we need to anchor actors to one role?


>Kind of like you said everyone has their own take on what it
>means. My take just leaned a little more on race and class. I
>though there was enough to support it, but who knows, maybe if
>I actually talked to Peele about it he would say nah, that is
>waaaay off the mark. I do think though that we agree on a lot
>concerning the movie though.

yes, true

we know, because they did try to call right after and it was all busy

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

The two leads are African nationals. I thought about the double consciousness of African Americans. The underworld could be a slavery allegory. They were given terrible food to eat, etc. Underground tunnels (railroads, anyone?). Can’t place the significance of the rabbits (Alice in Wonderland? Easter/resurrection symbol? The Matrix?). Might see it again. Jeremiah 11:11 is made even more disturbing in context of this film. Orange suits seem to call back to mass incarceration. No idea what the scissors signify.

Peace,

Spirit (Alan)
http://wutangbook.com

did not enjoy it at all. I dont like horror movies anyway. So chances of me liking it were slim. But my wife hated it as well. But it was well shot, the music was on point, and the acting was great. Even the kids and i usually hate kids in movies. So yeah i just hated the story.

Peace,

Spirit (Alan)
http://wutangbook.com

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at