Jordan Peele's 'Us' Was Inspired By A 'Twilight Zone' Episode
Jordan Peele is in charge of the upcoming Twilight Zone reboot for CBS All Access, but his Zone connections don't end there. The filmmaker has revealed that his impending horror film Us is also inspired by a Twilight Zone episode called "Mirror Image". At this point, I think it's safe to assume Jordan Peele is a Twilight Zone fan. Just a hunch.
The trailer for Us, the latest tale of terror from Jordan Peele in which a family encounters what appears to be their doppelgängers, throws off some serious Twilight Zone vibes. And that's apparently intentional, because according to Peele himself, the film is inspired by a classic Zone episode. Speaking with Rolling Stone, Peele dropped some info on the provenience of his highly anticipated new film:
Its initial inspiration, appropriately enough, was the old Twilight Zone episode "Mirror Image," which he saw as a kid. In it, a woman encounters her duplicate in a bus station and becomes convinced it arrived from a parallel universe, bent on replacing her. "It's terrifying, beautiful, really elegant storytelling," Peele says, "and it opens up a world. It opens up your imagination." He spent six months breaking down his script in his head and another six writing – a substantially shorter gestation period than Get Out.
"Mirror Image" was an episode from season 1 of The Twilight Zone, written by Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling himself, and starring Vera Miles. It's a fairly creepy episode in which a woman waiting at a bus depot becomes convinced her exact double is lurking around, trying to take her place. Serling got the idea for the episode from a real-life event, in which he spotted a man at an airport wearing the same clothes and carrying the same exact type of luggage. Spooky!
Mirror Image
The Twilight Zone is one of the best television shows in history, and I love that Peele draws so much inspiration from it. I'm dying to see what he does with the show itself when his reboot arrives later this year. As for Us, the film is one of our most anticipated movies of 2019, and will have its premiere at SXSW in March before opening everywhere March 22, 2019.
Us
Accompanied by her husband, son and daughter, Adelaide Wilson returns to the beachfront home where she grew up as a child. Haunted by a traumatic experience from the past, Adelaide grows increasingly concerned that something bad is going to happen to her family. Her worst fears soon become a reality when four masked strangers descend upon the house, forcing the Wilsons into a fight for survival. When the masks come off, each stranger takes the appearance of a different family member.