For most in the film business, marketing is simply a tool, a way to let potential customers know about a product being sold. There are a few filmmakers, however, who have control over their marketing materials and, rather than just use them as advertising, make them an extension of the experience of the movie. <\/span><\/p>\n One such filmmaker is Jordan Peele, whose runaway success with Get Out<\/i> (2017) earned him the clout necessary to control how his next film was sold. That movie, Us<\/i>, has been advertised primarily on the strength of Peele\u2019s name, putting him with the likes of William Castle and Alfred Hitchcock, horror movie moguls who were known just as well on camera as they were off. Peele is also the host of the new \u201cTwilight Zone,\u201d reminiscent of Hitchcock making new films while hosting his own genre anthology show, \u201cAlfred Hitchcock Presents.\u201d With all this recognition and creative power, Peele did a very clever thing in advertising Us<\/i>, in that he not only hinted at the film\u2019s major themes and ideas, but he also hid the movie\u2019s major rug-pulling twist in plain sight. <\/span><\/p>\n Us<\/i>\u2019s guessing game with the audience started 10 months before the film was released, and Peele used each new ad to build anticipation as well as speculation, challenging fans to decode what the film might be about. Horror movies have a long history of ambiguous advertising (what\u2019s scarier than the unknown, after all), and to be sure, the ads for Get Out<\/i> weren\u2019t exactly straightforward. Yet as those marketing materials continued, the basic premise of Get Out<\/i> became clearer, setting up anticipation of what was going to happen to the protagonist rather than raising questions about what was going on, full stop. <\/span><\/p>\n In retrospect, it\u2019s obvious that the image represents the concept of doubles, of the humans and their Tethered counterparts from the movie. Without that context, however, the image is very ambiguous, and even resembles a Rorschach blot from psychiatry exercises, implying that the meaning of the image is up to the viewer \u2014 which is one of the major themes in Us<\/i> itself. <\/span><\/p>\n Additionally, there\u2019s an intriguing callback to the first teaser poster, as the shape of the top of the scissors recalls the shape of the two heads in that image. This connects with statements Peele has made about the use of scissors in the film, explaining<\/a> that \u201cthere\u2019s a duality to scissors \u2014 a whole made up of two parts but also they lie in this territory between the mundane and the absolutely terrifying.\u201d Thus, the duality of scissors connects with the duality of the humans and Tethered within the film, a theme furthered by the new treatment of the title on the poster. Whereas the title on the teaser poster was in a fairly average font, here the \u201cUs\u201d has strands coming off of it, almost like it\u2019s becoming untethered \u2014 which is, of course, exactly what happens in the film.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/us-189x300.jpg\")
When Peele first tweeted about Us<\/i> on May 8, 2018, the tweet consisted solely of a teaser poster featuring a small image in the center on a dirty white background. With this poster, Peele was implying that the film was to be more ambiguous than Get Out<\/i> was \u2014 the tagline merely said that the movie was \u201ca new nightmare from the mind of Academy Award winner Jordan Peele,\u201d and the image was of two people \u2014 or perhaps the same person, doubled \u2014 side by side. The only clarifying statement Peele made at the time was that the film was a \u201csocial thriller.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/us_ver2-192x300.jpg\")
The next poster for the film more directly teased what the movie would look like and who the antagonist(s) would be, yet it still managed to hint further at the themes and subtext at play. This time, the image was a photograph of the torso of a person (the gender is unclear) wearing a red cloak and a single brown leather glove, brandishing a menacing-looking pair of golden scissors. The implication of the weapon being front and center does the poster\u2019s job of signifying \u201chorror film\u201d to the public (reminiscent of the knife being featured on the key art of John Carpenter\u2019s Halloween<\/i>), and the \u201cnew nightmare\u201d tagline strengthens that horror connection. (Combined with the leather glove, the tagline also draws an allusion to Freddy Krueger.) <\/span><\/p>\n