Three cinematic mind-traps that expose the rot beneath society’s polished surface: a battle for psychological horror supremacy.

In the realm of psychological horror, few filmmakers have dissected the American psyche with the precision of a scalpel like Jordan Peele, whose works Get Out (2017) and Us (2019) redefined the genre through razor-sharp social allegory. Enter The Menu (2022), Mark Mylod’s savage satire on class and cuisine, which pits elite indulgence against primal dread. This article ranks these titans of tension, probing their thematic depths, stylistic bravura, and enduring impact on horror cinema.

  • Get Out claims the crown for its groundbreaking fusion of racial terror and Sunken Place metaphor, cementing Peele’s status as a genre revolutionary.
  • Us doubles down on doppelganger dread, weaving personal trauma into national paranoia with Lupita Nyong’o’s tour-de-force performance.
  • The Menu rounds out the podium, devouring privilege in a pressure-cooker feast that skewers the one percent with blackly comic flair.

Blueprints of Dread: Dissecting the Narratives

Chris Washington, a talented Black photographer played by Daniel Kaluuya, accompanies his white girlfriend Rose Armitage to meet her parents at their idyllic upstate New York estate in Get Out. What begins as awkward liberal politeness spirals into something far more sinister. The Armitages host a garden party teeming with affluent guests whose microaggressions mask a horrifying agenda. As Chris uncovers the family’s neurosurgical experiments transplanting white consciousnesses into Black bodies, the film hurtles towards a blood-soaked auction and a desperate bid for freedom. Peele’s debut feature, produced on a modest $4.5 million budget, grossed over $255 million worldwide, proving horror’s power to confront uncomfortable truths.

In Us, the Wilson family—Adelaide, Gabe, Zora, and Jason—returns to Santa Cruz for a beach holiday, haunted by Adelaide’s childhood trauma of encountering her doppelganger in a hall of mirrors. That night, the Tethers emerge: red-clad clones of every American, tethered to their above-ground counterparts via underground neglect. Led by the feral Red (Nyong’o’s chilling alter ego), they initiate a nationwide uprising, scissors in hand, forcing families to confront their shadows. Peele’s follow-up amplified the spectacle, blending family thriller with apocalyptic satire on inequality, all underscored by a haunting score featuring ‘I Got 5 on It’ twisted into nightmare fuel.

The Menu traps twelve wealthy diners at an exclusive island restaurant helmed by celebrity chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). What promises a gourmet extravaganza devolves into a meticulously planned massacre, with courses revealing Slowik’s contempt for his elitist clientele. Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), a last-minute escort, navigates the escalating horrors—from s’mores flambéed with staff lives to a final, fiery reckoning. Mylod, known for sharp TV like Succession, crafts a pressure-cooker chamber piece that indicts fine dining’s pretensions, blending agoraphobia with culinary cannibalism.

Each film thrives on confined spaces amplifying paranoia: the Armitage house’s labyrinthine basement, the Wilsons’ beachfront home invaded by duplicates, Hawthorn’s isolated docks sealing fates. These settings mirror the protagonists’ entrapment in societal hierarchies, where escape demands shattering illusions.

Sunken Places and Shadow Selves: Metaphors That Linger

Get Out‘s Sunken Place—a void where victims watch their hijacked bodies from tear-streaked darkness—crystallises the erasure of Black agency under white liberalism. Hypnosis via a teacup stirs victims into void, symbolising gaslighting’s paralytic hold. Peele draws from real horrors like the Tuskegee experiments, transforming personal unease into collective indictment. Kaluuya’s micro-expressions of dawning horror elevate the metaphor, making every ‘I can’t have you panicking’ a gut-punch.

Us expands this inward with outward multiplicity. The Tethers, abandoned in subterranean bunkers during a failed 1986 ‘Hands Across America’ initiative, embody suppressed underclasses clawing upwards. Red’s rasping monologue on stolen voices inverts power dynamics, her dance with Adelaide a primal therapy session. Nyong’o’s dual portrayal—prim Adelaide fracturing into feral Red—captures dissociation’s terror, rooted in Peele’s exploration of inherited trauma.

The Menu flips the script to class cannibalism, where the rich are literally consumed by their own excess. Slowik’s ‘menu’ deconstructs privilege course by course: a taco from his dishwasher father’s life, a staff lineup mirroring expendability. Fiennes imbues the chef with messianic fury, his calm directives heightening the absurdity. Taylor-Joy’s Margot, outsider to opulence, embodies survival instinct, chewing a burger as salvation amid haute destruction.

Common threads weave racial, class, and existential unease. All three protagonists hail from margins—Chris’s Blackness, Adelaide’s buried past, Margot’s sex work—positioning them as truth-tellers amid deception.

Auditory Assaults: Soundscapes of the Subconscious

Peele’s sonic architecture in Get Out weaponises the mundane: the auctioneer’s gavel on flesh, Rose’s spoon-stirring trigger, a deer’s dying gasp foreshadowing commodification. Michael Abels’ score fuses hip-hop with orchestral swells, the opening cello solo evoking ancestral wails. These layers immerse viewers in Chris’s disorientation, sound becoming complicit in control.

Us remixes pop into peril—Luniz’s track warps from car stereo bliss to Tether march rhythm. Red’s laboured breaths and scissor snips build relentless tension, while the underground hum evokes vast, seething resentment. Abels returns, layering voices in polyphonic chaos, mirroring multiplicity’s madness.

The Menu savours silence shattered by sizzles and screams. Fiennes’ clipped commands and escalating applause crescendo to pandemonium, with Colin Stetson’s score underscoring isolation. The final conflagration’s roar devours dialogue, leaving gustatory gasps as epitaph.

Sound design across these films functions as psychological scalpel, carving doubt into dread, proving audio’s primacy in mind horror.

Cinematographic Conjuring: Frames of Fear

Toby Oliver’s work in Get Out employs wide lenses to dwarf Chris amid white opulence, the ‘party shot’ tracking bigotry’s banal parade. Low angles aggrandize the hypnotist, while the Sunken Place’s void—achieved via practical falls and VFX—visually incarnates voicelessness.

Mike Gioulakis lenses Us with symmetrical dread: red invaders framed against golden-hour beaches, mirrors fracturing identity. Handheld chaos during home invasions contrasts static doppelganger stares, Nyong’o’s balletic violence captured in long takes.

Shahrier Pourshakibi’s The Menu steadicams the dining room like a panopticon, overheads exposing artifice. Firelight flickers on faces, close-ups on quivering lips blending revulsion with relish.

These visuals—practical effects dominant—prioritise immersion over CGI excess, grounding allegory in tangible terror.

Satiric Scalpels: Skewering Society

Get Out eviscerates performative allyship, the Armitages’ tears over Obama masking eugenics. Peele interrogates ‘post-racial’ myths, the film’s bingo card of racist tropes exploding into nightmare.

Us indicts consumer complacency, Tethers mimicking above-ground wastefulness. Hands Across America becomes ironic failure, highlighting charity’s superficiality.

The Menu feasts on cultural cannibalism, mocking sommeliers and influencers amid Slowik’s vendetta against homogenised taste. It probes art’s commodification, cuisine as class weapon.

Together, they map horror’s evolution from supernatural to socio-political, Peele’s influence rippling into Mylod’s mordant mirror.

Performance Pyrotechnics: Actors Own the Abyss

Kaluuya’s coiled restraint in Get Out erupts cathartically, Allison Williams’ sunny psychopathy chillingly convex. Nyong’o dominates Us, Winston Duke’s Gabe comic yet commanding. Fiennes elevates The Menu to operatic rage, Taylor-Joy’s feral cunning stealing scenes.

These turns anchor abstraction in authenticity, humanising horrors.

The Verdict: Ranking the Psyche-Shredders

First: Get Out—its originality, Oscar-winning script, and cultural quake unbeatable. Second: Us—ambitious scope, powerhouse acting, though denser allegory muddles slightly. Third: The Menu—wickedly witty, but less innovative next to Peele’s duo.

Legacy endures: Get Out spawned discourse, Us sequels whispers, The Menu streaming feasts. They remind us: true horror lurks in mirrors we dare not face.

Director in the Spotlight

Jordan Peele, born 21 February 1979 in New York City to a Black father from Alabama and a white Jewish mother from Brooklyn, grew up immersed in horror via VHS rentals and Thriller. He honed comedic timing on Mad TV (2003-2008) before co-creating Key & Peele (2012-2015) with Keegan-Michael Key, skewering race and culture in viral sketches like ‘Substitute Teacher’. Transitioning to film, Peele produced Keanu (2016), a cat caper blending action and laughs.

His directorial debut Get Out (2017) earned the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, three other Oscars nods, and launched Monkeypaw Productions. Us (2019) followed, grossing $256 million on genre-bending doubles. Nope (2022), a UFO Western starring Keke Palmer and Kaluuya, explored spectacle’s exploitation, earning praise for IMAX visuals. Peele produced Barbarian (2022), Hunter’s Eve (upcoming), and voices in Win or Lose (2024 Pixar series). Influenced by Spielberg and The Twilight Zone, Peele champions diverse genre voices, with Get Out‘s success shattering barriers for Black directors in horror.

His oeuvre fuses comedy’s edge with horror’s heart, dissecting America through speculative lenses. Upcoming projects include a Candyman spiritual sequel and original Monkeypaw fare, cementing Peele as horror’s satiric savant.

Actor in the Spotlight

Lupita Nyong’o, born 1 March 1983 in Mexico City to Kenyan parents, spent childhood shuttling between Nairobi and the US. Educated at Hampshire College and Yale School of Drama, she debuted in Kenyan short East River (2009) and MTV’s Shuga. Breakthrough came as Patsey in 12 Years a Slave (2013), winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at 31, plus NAACP and Critics’ Choice honours.

Star vehicles followed: Non-Stop (2014) with Liam Neeson, Queen of Katwe (2016) as Phiona Mutesi, Black Panther (2018) voicing Maz Kanata and playing Nakia. Us (2019) showcased duality as Adelaide/Red, earning Saturn Award and Emmy for audiobook narration. She starred in Little Monster (2016), Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), and The Brutalist (2024 Venice darling).

Theatre credits include Eclipsed (2015 Tony nominee) and 12 Angry Men. Nyong’o authored Sulwe (2019), a children’s book on colourism, and headlines A Quiet Place: Day One (2024). With Lancôme ambassadorship and TIME100 listing, she embodies global artistry, her Us ferocity proving horror’s new queen.

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Bibliography

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Greene, S. (2019) ‘Us Review: Jordan Peele Levels Up’, IndieWire. Available at: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/03/us-review-jordan-peele-1202052849/ (Accessed 15 October 2024).

Marsh, C. (2020) ‘The Sunken Place and Black Consciousness in Get Out’, Journal of Popular Culture, 53(2), pp. 345-362.

Peele, J. (2017) Interviewed by S. Kiang for The Guardian: ‘Jordan Peele on Get Out’. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/mar/23/jordan-peele-get-out-interview (Accessed 15 October 2024).

Scott, A.O. (2022) ‘The Menu Review: Eat the Rich’, New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/17/movies/the-menu-review.html (Accessed 15 October 2024).

Travers, B. (2017) ‘Get Out: Jordan Peele’s Brilliant Horror-Fantasy Is One of the Best Movies of 2017 Already’, Rolling Stone. Available at: https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-reviews/get-out-review-jordan-peele-124870/ (Accessed 15 October 2024).

Yu, J. (2023) ‘Culinary Horror and Class Critique in The Menu’, Film Quarterly, 76(4), pp. 12-20.