Why Jordan Peele Is the New Master of Suspense
The ending of Us is twisty, unsettling, and oddly shaped. I won’t spoil the surprise, though it demands that viewers retrace and reconsider the film’s narrative structure. Like any worthy brain-bender, it insists upon a rewatch. It’s an audacious choice with clear influences: a Twilight Zone conclusion—an Aha! followed instantly by a Wait, what?—mixed with the despairing and morbidly clever finish of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. If Jordan Peele’s first film, Get Out, signaled the arrival of a singular new voice in genre-driven social satire, his new movie Us declares him something more straightforward: a master of suspense. He makes movies that feel modern, persistent, and wracked with unease—movies that are of a time, and that we will one day use to describe that time. Peele isn’t the first to claim this mantle. Hitchock was the originator, but Rod Serling, John Carpenter, Brian De Palma, Wes Craven, Guillermo del Toro, and M. Night Shyamalan have staked a claim to the title in the past. It’s a vital but burdensome role in the popular imagination. On the one hand, every new release is an event. On the other hand, every new release has to be an event.
Us is the most compelling and singular major studio release of the year so far—and it’s effective as both disquieting horror and subversive comedy. Whether it works as a grand statement about life in this country is more likely to stoke debate. One thing the film cannot do is offer the surprise of Get Out. When it was released in February 2017, Peele was known primarily as a sketch comedy writer and performer. The phenomenon of Get Out was utterly unpredictable—$255 million at the box office on a $5 million budget, to go with the instantaneous induction of several ideas into the pop cultural phrasebook: The Sunken Place. No, no, no, no, no, no. The spoon and the teacup. Rose, gimme those keys! It became idiomatic—a movie with a living history.
Us, however, is larded with expectations. You can feel it reckoning with the anxiety that’s built into following up a beloved debut. Peele’s intentionality feels both wider and more opaque. “It’s a bit more of a Rorschach than my last picture,” Peele told me last week after the film’s premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival. “It really is about looking within.” I love that Peele encourages viewers to seek out greater meaning in the movies he makes. He’s not a difficult artist or a mysterious Oz pulling levers behind a curtain. Like Hitchcock or Serling, he’s a showman. “I wanted to offer a fun starting point for racial conversation,” Peele told me about Get Out in 2017, “maybe some new touchstones in how we discuss race.” He’s Spielberg for the Reddit set—a populist with a twisted sense of humanity. (...)
For decades, Alfred Hitchcock was held in contempt by certain critics as a one-note trickster, more interested in the gimmickry of cinema—a fright peddler—than the epic, dramatic storytelling that was valorized in his time. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director five times, but never won, often losing to humanists like William Wyler. In the latter stages of his career, thanks to critical reevaluations in Europe and America, his ingenuity and influence came to the fore. He was worshipped and diminished at the same time. But eventually, seven of his films were added to the National Film Registry and four were named among the American Film Institute’s 100 best films of all time. Sight and Sound has named his Vertigo the greatest film ever made. He is now remembered as one of the three or four most important popular filmmakers of the 20th century.
Peele has grabbed hold of Hitchcock’s legacy by imitating some of his cleverest tactics. Both men are crowd-pleasing, coyly comic, and incisively strategic filmmakers working primarily in terror. Both are deeply self-conscious about style. Peele used the word “brand” when describing his work to me earlier this month. But that was unselfconscious. Like Hitchcock, Peele knows that marketing and message are synonyms.
“My creative drive automatically goes toward where I think the audience expectations are, and when I can pinpoint that, I can take them another way,” he says. “I can use that momentum against the audience.” (...)
Suspense is still the primary vehicle for his work, and it ought to be. His knack for tension is astonishing. Us drags you by the eye sockets, leaving you wondering where it’s all heading for two hours. Is this going to be peak Hitchcock or mid-period Shymalan?, I found myself thinking. And then Peele finally tells you what he means. He gives us the information we need. Perhaps too much.
by Sean Fennessey, The Ringer | Read more:
Image: AP Images/Ringer illustration
The ending of Us is twisty, unsettling, and oddly shaped. I won’t spoil the surprise, though it demands that viewers retrace and reconsider the film’s narrative structure. Like any worthy brain-bender, it insists upon a rewatch. It’s an audacious choice with clear influences: a Twilight Zone conclusion—an Aha! followed instantly by a Wait, what?—mixed with the despairing and morbidly clever finish of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. If Jordan Peele’s first film, Get Out, signaled the arrival of a singular new voice in genre-driven social satire, his new movie Us declares him something more straightforward: a master of suspense. He makes movies that feel modern, persistent, and wracked with unease—movies that are of a time, and that we will one day use to describe that time. Peele isn’t the first to claim this mantle. Hitchock was the originator, but Rod Serling, John Carpenter, Brian De Palma, Wes Craven, Guillermo del Toro, and M. Night Shyamalan have staked a claim to the title in the past. It’s a vital but burdensome role in the popular imagination. On the one hand, every new release is an event. On the other hand, every new release has to be an event.
Us is the most compelling and singular major studio release of the year so far—and it’s effective as both disquieting horror and subversive comedy. Whether it works as a grand statement about life in this country is more likely to stoke debate. One thing the film cannot do is offer the surprise of Get Out. When it was released in February 2017, Peele was known primarily as a sketch comedy writer and performer. The phenomenon of Get Out was utterly unpredictable—$255 million at the box office on a $5 million budget, to go with the instantaneous induction of several ideas into the pop cultural phrasebook: The Sunken Place. No, no, no, no, no, no. The spoon and the teacup. Rose, gimme those keys! It became idiomatic—a movie with a living history.Us, however, is larded with expectations. You can feel it reckoning with the anxiety that’s built into following up a beloved debut. Peele’s intentionality feels both wider and more opaque. “It’s a bit more of a Rorschach than my last picture,” Peele told me last week after the film’s premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival. “It really is about looking within.” I love that Peele encourages viewers to seek out greater meaning in the movies he makes. He’s not a difficult artist or a mysterious Oz pulling levers behind a curtain. Like Hitchcock or Serling, he’s a showman. “I wanted to offer a fun starting point for racial conversation,” Peele told me about Get Out in 2017, “maybe some new touchstones in how we discuss race.” He’s Spielberg for the Reddit set—a populist with a twisted sense of humanity. (...)
For decades, Alfred Hitchcock was held in contempt by certain critics as a one-note trickster, more interested in the gimmickry of cinema—a fright peddler—than the epic, dramatic storytelling that was valorized in his time. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director five times, but never won, often losing to humanists like William Wyler. In the latter stages of his career, thanks to critical reevaluations in Europe and America, his ingenuity and influence came to the fore. He was worshipped and diminished at the same time. But eventually, seven of his films were added to the National Film Registry and four were named among the American Film Institute’s 100 best films of all time. Sight and Sound has named his Vertigo the greatest film ever made. He is now remembered as one of the three or four most important popular filmmakers of the 20th century.
Peele has grabbed hold of Hitchcock’s legacy by imitating some of his cleverest tactics. Both men are crowd-pleasing, coyly comic, and incisively strategic filmmakers working primarily in terror. Both are deeply self-conscious about style. Peele used the word “brand” when describing his work to me earlier this month. But that was unselfconscious. Like Hitchcock, Peele knows that marketing and message are synonyms.
“My creative drive automatically goes toward where I think the audience expectations are, and when I can pinpoint that, I can take them another way,” he says. “I can use that momentum against the audience.” (...)
Suspense is still the primary vehicle for his work, and it ought to be. His knack for tension is astonishing. Us drags you by the eye sockets, leaving you wondering where it’s all heading for two hours. Is this going to be peak Hitchcock or mid-period Shymalan?, I found myself thinking. And then Peele finally tells you what he means. He gives us the information we need. Perhaps too much.
by Sean Fennessey, The Ringer | Read more:
Image: AP Images/Ringer illustration
