I'm the writer, producer, and director of the movie “Us.'”

“There's a family in our driveway.”

“So here we have the scene where the tethered family

arrives at the Wilson house for the first time.

Jason, of course, says “there's a family

in our driveway.”

A line designed, giddily, to attempt

to be an iconic line, like “they're

here” from the “Poltergeist” movie and sort of help

congeal this sense of an Amblin-esque predicament

with a black family in the center of it.”

- [heavy breathing]

“What?”

“Zora, give me your phone.”

“I'm not on it.”

“Zora!”

“This is the point in the movie where

I want the terror to really kick

into a new gear for the audience.

One of the techniques that I utilized to get that terror

was that all of a sudden we go into real time.

The movie before this has been going from some time dashes

here and there.

When we get into this moment where the four family

members are standing holding hands outside,

then we go into this sort of fluid —

we use a lot of the Steadicam with very few edits.

Really trying to subliminally signal to the audience

that this sort of relentless, real time event has begun

and is taking place.”

“Wait, wait, wait, just one sec —

Gabe.”

“So we see Gabe leave.

He goes out.

He's the dad, he's got to deal with it.

This is kind of like — probably

pulled from my own anxieties of being

a father and realizing, yeah, you got to man up sometimes.”

“Hi.

Can I help you?”

“One of the things in this scene

that really inspired me was the scene in “Halloween”

where Michael Myers has the ghost sheet over him.

And no matter how many questions he's asked,

he just doesn't respond.

The less response you get, the more impending and physical,

I think, the threat gets.

Probably after the second time someone doesn't respond,

you know one of you's got to go down.

[laughing]

“A'ight, I asked you nice.

Now I need y'all to get off my property.”

“One of the pieces of this scene that works really

well is we've got Winston to this spot where

he's code switching.

You know, he goes back to some of his roots,

as it were, to try and intimidate

this mysterious family out there.

That maybe if sort of reasoning with them

doesn't work, a good old fashioned low

register, throwing some bass into his voice,

coming out with a little swagger and a bat

might work.”

“O.K., let's call the cops.”

“Winston is just remarkable in this scene,

and the audience really I think

is in this tug of war between feeling the tension

ratcheting up and the fear of what's to come

and the little bit of a comic relief of watching

this kind of goofy dad who's in over his head.”

“Gabe.”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

All right.”

“Gabe!”

“I got this.”