Peele has repeatedly said that “Us” is not about race, shattering any expectations of fans prepping for a “Get Out” sequel, or a film that exists in a similar universe. White audiences may have found it awkward to talk about race, but it certainly was not awkward to talk about “Get Out.” But audiences of all shades were more than ready for what was effectively “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” for a new generation of black viewers. “Race film” images of a black man gruesomely slaughtering almost an entire white family - no matter how justified - were still radical. On paper, this might not have been the most obvious outcome. “I thought, ‘What if white people don’t want to come see the movie because they’re afraid of being villainized with black people in the crowd?'”īut white audiences did come, in droves. “Using the darkness of my imagination, there were so many ways this movie could go wrong,” Peele recalled. The concern was whether white audiences would be able to identify with a movie in which every white character was evil. Released a few months after the 2016 election, “Get Out” took on a new level of urgency and, for black audiences, the film’s insights were pure catharsis. “Get Out” was a bold racial provocation, right down to the unorthodox Grand Guignol finale. Alternatively, “Us” would more likely fall under “Blacks in horror” films, in that there isn’t an explicit added narrative focus on racial identity. “Get Out” is a “Black horror” film - an extension of “race films” with narratives that call attention to racial identity, specifically blackness, and are told from the POV of a black protagonist. Means delineates between movies that are “Black horror” versus “Blacks in horror” - a difference Peele embodies in his first two films. In “Horror Noire,” professor and author Robin R. Despite the film’s more-familiar elements, this gives the movie a unique quality that expands Peele’s ability to have a dramatic impact on the way America views its challenges with race. Instead of assailing the myth of a post-racial America, Peele envisions a world in which that exists.

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