If you don’t want to wait until March to catch Jordan Peele’s forthcoming horror hit (because y’all already know it will be a hit), you won’t have to. The New York Times reports that the folks of SXSW have decided to kick off this year’s event with a bang, premiering Us on opening night.
As noted by NYT, this is the second year in a row that the festival has opened with a much-talked about flick. Last year’s opener was A Quiet Place, which grossed $340 million worldwide and was a hot topic in the Oscar conversation.
In case you’ve yet to peep the trailer, the highly-anticipated follow-up to Peele’s Oscar-winning Get Out follows a family (played by beloved Black Panther stars Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke) that is “terrorized by what seem to be evil doppelgängers of themselves,” as NYT explains.
The trailer made its internet debut on Christmas last month, sparking excitement and speculation across social media.
“I dedicated a lot of myself to create a new horror mythology and a new monster,” Peele said. “I think that monsters and stories about monsters are one of our best ways of getting at deeper truths and facing our fears as a society.”
Social media was particularly enthralled by Peele’s choice to use a theatrical remix of Luniz’s “I Got 5 On It” in the trailer, leading many to begin unpacking the potential meaning behind the film.
“That song, it came pretty simple, I’m making a movie in Northern California, that’s a bay area hip-hop classic and I wanted to explore this very relatable journey of being a parent [and] maybe some of the songs you listened to back in the day aren’t appropriate for your kids,” Peele told Entertainment Weekly when the trailer dropped. “So that was one level, and another part was, I love songs that have a great feeling but also have a haunting element to them and I feel like the beat in that song has this inherent cryptic energy, almost reminiscent of the Nightmare on Elm Street soundtrack.”
If you missed the trailer on Christmas because you were too busy unwrapping gifts with the fam, you can check it out below. Us hits theaters on March 15.
