The first official trailer for Amazon Prime’s upcoming original series, Them, has drawn some comparisons to Oscar-winning filmmaker, Jordan Peele’s work. Peele won the best original screenplay Oscar for his 2017 horror-thriller, Get Out. His 2019 follow up, Us, was a critical and commercial hit. But while Get Out took a new angle on the issue of racism, Us was more of a straight forward horror film.
Peele’s immense success with Get Out proved him to be one of the most exciting new voices coming out of Hollywood and set him up for a variety of new projects – not all of which have managed to win over audiences. None the less, his third directorial effort is expected to arrive in 2022, and although nothing much is known about it, there’s a definite level of excitement hanging over the currently untitled project. The new film is rumored to reunite him with Get Out star, Daniel Kaluuya, and is said to be another return to the horror genre. And as Peele’s fans eagerly await the new film’s arrival, there’s no denying that the filmmaker’s impact on the horror genre has been significant over the past few years.
Arguably the most recent example of Peele’s creativity and style rubbing off on a project that he had nothing to do with is Amazon’s upcoming show, Them. The first trailer for the series has just arrived courtesy of the official Them Twitter account. The series follows the sadistic racist backlash that befalls a Black family in the 1950s after they move to an all-white Los Angeles neighborhood. Judging by the trailer and the attention the series is already receiving, there’s more than a few comparisons to be made to Peele’s past work. Even the name Them is suspiciously similar to Us. Check out the trailer below:
In Us, Peele set his focus on a Black family who vacation at a seaside destination only to discover that bizarre, vacant-looking doppelgängers are out to kill them. The manner in which the white characters in Them handle themselves seems to recall the terrifying mannerisms of the Us villains, and the use of Black characters finding themselves at odds with the locals is also a major focal point in Peele’s Get Out. The difference with Peele’s films, however, is that they aren’t exploiting the trauma that Black characters face as a result of racism. Get Out utilized the issue of latent racism to ask bigger questions about the nature of inclusion and to point out how frightening a world built on ignorance is. Them seems to be more interested in using racism as the focal point of the program’s scares.
It could very well be that Amazon finds success with Them, the same way Peele found success with Us. America’s racial divide continues to be a major issue and Them’s first trailer doesn’t appear to offer much beyond regurgitating well-known (and very real) racist incidents for the sake of entertainment. Hopefully, Them will prove that it has more to offer than how it currently appears, but audiences will have to wait until April 9, when the show launches to find out for certain.
Source: Them