In honour of spooky season, I decided to do a little movie marathon of scary films by the recent horror-meister, Jordan Peele. Part of the comedy duo, Key & Peele, more recently Peele split his career down a very different path, becoming a celebrated writer-director of successful horror movies. When I heard positive reviews of Get Out in 2017, Us in 2019, and Nope just last year, I really did want to watch them. However, not only was I not making much time for movies beyond the hugest blockbusters, I have a tentative relationship with horror cinema–since I am a big wimp. I do like the tension and suspense of certain films (mainly ones that most barely consider “horror”, such as the works of Alfred Hitchcock, or M. Night Shyamalan) but I don’t like the really horrific stuff full of blood, gore, demonic stuff, really psycho stuff, or gross body horror (even the crunchy mangling of bodies in Netflix’s Stranger Things was a bit much for me). That’s where Peele comes in (though I am trying to gloss over my glossing over of his recent reboot of the Candyman horror franchise in 2021, since I did not have any interest in that one). I was pretty sure that his scary films were more likely to make you widen your eyes in surprise than cover your eyes in fear. I found that all three films were enjoyable in that vein, and definitely each one was better than the last.

Get Out (2017)

British actor Daniel Kaluuya has been a regular on Peele movies, having been the lead in two of the three I mentioned. In Get Out, he plays Chris, a Black photographer who drives upstate for the weekend to meet his White girlfriend’s wealthy family. Rose’s parents are accepting and accommodating of their daughter’s interracial relationship, but Chris quickly finds many things unsettling and suspicious, including the very odd behaviour of the family’s two Black servants. This movie has got a few pretty excellent and creepy performances, including Catherine Keener as Rose’s mother, Missy, a psychologist who has a way of getting inside someone’s mind — invited or not. For first half of the movie I was pretty much on the edge of my seat, anticipating the big turn (I knew something bad was going to happen so I kept waiting for it) and the tension actually made me stop the movie at the midpoint (at the pivotal teacup scene). Unfortunately, I found the second half of the movie to be more of a letdown. Once more clues started bubbling up, suddenly there were too many, and I felt that (despite its intended twists) the rest of the plot was somewhat predictable. It was like Peele was so satisfied with the cleverness of the clue, that it didn’t matter that it was giving away too much. As a result, the second half of the movie felt a bit campy and a bit cliche. There were a number of plot gaps that seemed to be glossed over, but didn’t stand up to much scrutiny. There was the inclusion of Chris’s best friend Rod, whose storyline of trying to help Chris from the outside (back in the city) was mostly a waste of time. It felt as if Peele had spent the languid first half just building up the creepy characters and atmosphere only to realize, at the second half, that he didn’t have enough runtime left and rushed to escalate the story to its revelatory conclusion. So Get Out was a good effort. Creepiness great (how Kaluuya could cry with his eyes wide open, I’ll never know); pacing and plotting, meh.

Us (2019)

To me, this was easily the scariest of these three movies. Headlining the film is Lupita Nyong’o (who I love) as Adelaide. The character starts the movie as a young girl in 1986, who gets away from her parents at the Santa Cruz Beach boardwalk and wanders into a funhouse where, among her mirror reflections, she encounters her eerie doppelgänger — I know! Quiet kids are creepy enough, but when one looks just like you, chills. Cut to the present when she and her husband, played by fellow Black Panther alum Winston Duke, come back to Santa Cruz with their two kids for a vacation. Everything seems fine until Adelaide starts to notice some clues that remind her of that incident in 1986 (which, incidentally, left her so traumatized that she didn’t speak for a while). After a day of vacation fun, things escalate quickly when a family of doppelgängers appears standing in their driveway — yikes! That scene still creeps me out. What follows is more classic horror stuff as the bizarro family expectedly don’t have the best intentions. The movie hits a bit hard on the “fighting oneself” theme, but these alternate copies are truly scary. Plus, Adelaide’s doppelgänger has a bizarre way of talking that is incredibly unsettling. While I was genuinely caught up in the fear and anxiety of trying to escape from the bizarro family, that also distracted me most of the movie from wondering what they were and why they existed. No one in the movie seems to wonder, either. It’s just something that they accept and it doesn’t break their brains — which I guess makes sense since they best be prioritizing: survival first, questions later. Kudos to all the actors for portraying both the yin and yang versions of their characters so well (Maybe not Duke as his was just kind of a lumbering moron). Unfortunately, when we do get the explanations, and the plot reaches a climax, I found the strange story to be too far-fetched and inadequate to explain everything. The over-arching ending did not feel satisfying — not to mention an additional sub-twist to the ending which really felt unsatisfying because it was such a cliche thing to do that it made me cringe and roll my eyes.

Nope (2022)

More of a sci-fi than a typical horror, I really liked this movie — best of the three. I had almost no idea what this movie was about going in, and that made it more fun to experience. At first I was very confused by the prologue of the movie which starts with the audio from what sounds like an 80s sitcom but then leads to some chaos and what appears to be a monkey actor (that’s an actual monkey) on set with apparent blood on its hands and mouth, next to the body of someone who does not appear to be conscious anymore. I was expecting to have a redo of Planet of the Apes but we quickly cut to our main character: Daniel Kaluuya as OJ, the son of Otis Haywood Sr., who runs a ranch in the California hills which trains horses for film productions. Peele again spends the first half of the movie introducing characters and setting the mood. I think that really works well in this film as we meet not only the taciturn OJ, but also his chatty sister, Em (played by Keke Palmer), the owner of the neighbouring Western theme park, Jupe (played by Steven Yeun), and Angel (played by Brandon Perea), a saleperson and techsupport worker from the local Fry’s Electronics. While they were all pretty distinct characters (not your average folks), Peele and the cast did a great job adding depth to each of them and really helping us know them before the crazy plot elements took over in the second half of the movie. When OJ notices what looks like a UFO in the sky, that’s when things start to get strange. Em and Angel want to capture video footage of the UFO and the story goes in a direction that is very unexpected. While the first half had me wondering how everything was connected, the second half not only pulled everything together, it was also quite a visually exciting ride, with some cool special effects, gorgeous scenery and cinematography as well. It’s far from your typical UFO story, despite a few times where you think it might go that way. This movie is refreshingly unique and yet a very rewarding viewing experience (and hardly spooky at all).

All in all, I had a great time with Jordan Peele’s oeuvre for spooky season. I think his movies are really well done, and only getting better. I would rate them a 3.5, a 4, and a 4.5 out of 5 respectively. Between the three films there was just enough fear, anxiety, suspense, tension, imagination, and intrigue that I will definitely watch the next one (which is scheduled for next year).