“I want to see a black family on the beach, goddammit!” he said with a bit of a laugh. “I want to see a black family buy a boat. That happens. And we’ve never seen it.”

It’s a sentiment that Duke—whose hapless American dad, Gabe, is a far cry from M’Baku, his herculean character from Black Panther—was happy to help depict. “It’s really interesting and beautiful to define what the all-American family looks like, and what it should look like when it comes through representation,” the actor said. “They could both be terrifying and something to aspire to.”

Unbridled terror comes through in many ways in Us—but no one in the film is scarier than Nyong’o herself, who had trouble articulating how she views her two characters. She could, however, easily describe how she embodied them. Playing two versions of the same woman—one graceful and maternal, the other guttural and rabid—the Oscar-winning actress navigated her duality by taking dance classes and then making that elegance look monstrous.

“With the red character, Jordan used two words: queen and cockroach,” said Nyong’o. “They were such dissonant ideas, but there’s a stillness to both. Queens are often very regal, and they rule with just their energy. With cockroaches, there’s always an element of surprise.”

“And they are both survivors,” added Peele, before launching into praise for his leading lady.

“When I was watching this [with the audience], I was stricken,” he said. “Lupita does Ripley [Alien], she does Clarice Starling, and she does Hannibal Lecter [both from Silence of the Lambs] in one movie. It’s crazy.”

Nyong’o also plays off her Black Panther co-star and former Yale classmate Duke with an ease that gives a grateful audience a moment to breathe, while Duke brings much-needed levity.

“[At that screening,] Winston got more laughs than I’ve ever gotten in my professional career in comedy. This is not fair. It’s not fair,” said Peele. “There was a rhythm between the two that allowed the other one to sing and go even further. Lupita is constantly cranking up the tension in this movie. Whether it’s in the Adelaide role or the Red role, she is cranking the audience up. Winston’s the release valve to that. And both of them are needed.”

Following the screening Friday night, Peele expanded on the heavier thematic elements to the film in an audience-led Q&A: “We are in a time where we fear the other, whether it’s the mysterious invader who might kill us or take our jobs, or the faction that doesn’t live near us that votes differently than we did. Maybe the evil is us. Maybe the monster that we’re looking at has our face.”

It’s a sentiment Peele examines from different angles in Us. There is a Hands Across America motif that recurs throughout the film, serving as another reminder of the duality Peele is examining via his heroes and villains: “Hands Across America was this idea of American optimism and hope, and Ronald Reagan-style-we-can-get-things-done-if-we-just-hold-hands,” he said of the 1986 benefit event, which saw 6.5 million people link arms across the continental United States.

“It’s a great gesture—but you can’t actually cure hunger and all that,” he added, saying that the charity initiative coincided with darker images both personally and culturally. “That was when I was afraid of horror movies. That’s when the Challenger disaster happened. There are several 80s images that conjure up a feeling of both bliss and innocence, and also the darkest of the dark.”

In the end, that’s what Peele is really exploring in Us: that every good side, every positive development both in our country collectively and to us individually, comes at the expense of someone else’s suffering, whether we realize it or not. That may be a human trait—but to Peele, it’s also particularly American.