The Get Out legacy
The 2020 horrors that highlight the continuing ripple effect of Jordan Peele’s landmark social horror
HORROR AND SOCIO-POLITICAL commentary have gone hand-in-hand for decades. Way back in 1968, George A. Romero’s classic Night Of The Living Dead was a racially charged satire — with zombies. But Jordan Peele’s game-changing 2017 horror Get Out (which cited Night Of The Living Dead as an influence) seems to have left an indelible mark on the genre. Get Out showed that there are still untapped demographics of horror-loving audiences, waiting to see themselves reflected in the terror on screen; it’s hard not to look at this upcoming crop of horrors and see the explosive influence of the Sunken Place in them.
THE INVISIBLE MAN FEBRUARY
Leigh Whannell’s reboot of the H.G. Wells character arrives next month (see page 60), refashioning a classic Universal monster into a Blumhouse social thriller by serving up a helping of domestic abuse and gaslighting. After Universal’s Dark Universe crashed and burned, the low-budget satirical chiller route is now seen as a far more viable option — using genre thrills to tell a dark, important story.
ANTEBELLUM APRIL
Starring Janelle Monáe, this mind-bending and mysterious original film marks the feature debut of directors Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz (whose CVS are stacked with socially driven work such as the anti-police-brutality short Against The Wall). The title refers to the pre-civil War era in the US, and the Southern Gothic setting glimpsed in trailer suggests an uncompromising exploration of African-american history in a genre-bending mould. (No surprise that it shares producers with Get Out.)
CANDYMAN JUNE
Peele himself will be producing and co-writing Candyman, a spiritual sequel to the 1992 film, directed here by Nia Dacosta. Bernard Rose’s original steeped its eponymous boogeyman’s origin story in racism-induced tragedy, using socio-political undertones to fuel the urban slasher. Expect that thread to continue in the new film. But Peele a proven horror rebel, has a new target in mind: toxic fandom. “I think my issue with fandom is that it’s really problematic,” Peele’s co-producer and production company partner Ian Cooper told Deadline. “It is probably the most problematic thing facing the genre”.