Lovecraft Country Trailer: A Black Man Faces Racist Cops and Supernatural Monsters in Jordan Peele's HBO Drama

Dave Nemetz
·2 min read

Jordan Peele’s new HBO drama Lovecraft Country features burning crosses and racist cops… and those are just the human monsters.

HBO has released a new trailer for the series — set to debut in August — with Jonathan Majors (The Last Black Man in San Francisco) starring as Atticus, a Black man in 1950s America who’s searching for his missing father, played by The Wire‘s Michael Kenneth Williams. He’s joined by his uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) and his friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett), hoping to reclaim what his dad called his “birthright”: Lovecraft Country.

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As he travels the country, Atticus runs into a blockade of unfriendly cops — “they don’t like outsiders at all,” he’s warned — and we see shots of burning crosses as George says he’s heard about “travelers being attacked in the surrounding woods.” But maybe the attackers weren’t human: We see the trio in the woods as some sort of subterranean beast burrows towards them at a furious pace. This is Jordan Peele, after all. (Peele serves as an executive producer, along with J.J. Abrams and Underground‘s Misha Green, who’s also the showrunner.)

Before we know it, Atticus, George and Letitia are fighting for their lives, both against hostile humans and unseen spooky forces. It all culminates with a huge, Gothic-style house collapsing to the ground as Atticus sprints away in terror. His search for his father “begins a struggle to survive and overcome both the racist terrors of white America and the terrifying monsters that could be ripped from a Lovecraft paperback,” per the official description.

Press PLAY above for a sneak peek, and then tell us in the comments: Will you be visiting Lovecraft Country?

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