TSPDT

Key Production Countries: USA, Japan
Key Genres: Horror, Thriller, Science Fiction, Supernatural Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi Horror
Key Collaborators: Michael Abels (Composer), Daniel Kaluuya (Leading Actor), Sean McKittrick (Producer), Jason Blum (Producer), Ian Cooper (Producer), Nicholas Monsour (Editor), Ruth De Jong (Production Designer)

"Peele didn’t invent the wheel of sociopolitical horror, but he updated the specs. From the beginning, his influences have been clear: Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, and most of all, Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone—classics that used sci-fi and horror as a tool to explain the world through metaphor. Peele brought this approach into the modern era, and it proved to be a device perfectly crafted for this moment in American life, in which nostalgia and intellectual genre tinge all popular art, and everything is politics. His blend of thought-provoking horror took off, and spurred many imitators over the past few years." - Abe Beame, (GQ, 2022)

"Since the release of Get Out in 2017, Peele — previously best known as one-half of Comedy Central’s sketch series Key & Peele — has become one of the most acclaimed active directors in Hollywood. Get Out, a satirical horror film about racism, won Peele the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and was ranked at No. 95 on Sight & Sound’s 2022 list of the greatest films of all time. Us and Nope gained similar critical acclaim, and all of his films have been consistently successful at the box office." - Wilson Chapman (IndieWire, 2023)

"Jordan Peele has solidified his status as the most prominent horror filmmaker in the contemporary landscape of cinema. Peele’s transition from comedy to horror has been seamless, with many fans claiming that his background in comedy elevates his understanding of horror cinema. The director of modern gems like Get Out and Us has been transparent about his horror influences from the beginning of his directorial career. Citing the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Roman Polanski, Peele is well-versed in the language of horror used by 20th-century pioneers, but he is also interested in contemporaries like Jonathan Glazer." - Swapnil Dhruv Bose (Far Out Magazine, 2022)

"Just three movies into his directing career, Peele has become the rarest of Hollywood anomalies: a filmmaker whose byline alone puts asses in seats… There are plenty of directors who qualify as household names, recognizable to the average moviegoer. But in contemporary Hollywood, how many of them are treated like the actual draw of a project, more crucial to its appeal than the stars, the IP, or the premise? Even Steven Spielberg, probably the most famous filmmaker alive, isn’t assumed to be an attendance magnet. (And for good reason, apparently; his involvement wasn’t enough to make West Side Story a smash.) Peele, on the other hand, has become his own brand to the point where the details of each new movie are almost irrelevant from a marketing standpoint. What they’re selling is him. And so far, audiences are buying." - A.A. Dowd (The Ringer, 2022)

"The Blaxploitation era saw a few Black vampire and voodoo-themed films, but the next few decades saw many of the few Black characters in mainstream horror die quickly and unceremoniously (with a few exceptions like the original Candyman and Spike Lee’s Tales from the Hood) to the point of becoming a trope and a running (horror) joke. It wasn’t until comedian Jordan Peele rewired the horror genre that we saw the psychological effects of generational, systematic, and environmental racism — translated as horror — in every movie theater across America." - Kimberly Reyes (Golden Globe Awards, 2022)

"I don’t want people to think that I’m trying to make 'elevated’ films. I think that’s a trap that I don’t quite appreciate because I like making fucked-up films. I like making weird movies that I’m really just not supposed to make—and sometimes challenge people on the other side of things as well." - Jordan Peele (The Root, 2022)