Every Jordan Peele Movie, In Order
Despite having only three movies as a writer and director to his name, Jordan Peele is already rightly considered to be one of the greatest American directors of the century so far. As we patiently wait to hear more about his long in-development fourth project, get up to date with Peele's singular filmography with our definitive streaming guide below.
It might seem blasé to even mention this in the age of Zach Cregger (Weapons), Curry Barker (Obsession) and Danny and Michael Philippou (Talk to Me) — all of whom started their careers as short-form comedy stars — but Peele’s shift from creating the Key & Peele show to becoming an Oscar-winning writer and director with Get Out (one of the most talked about horror movies of the age) really did leave people agog — and rightfully so.
Since then, Peele has only grown more daring and creative with each passing project while also taking the time to shine a light on other up-and-coming filmmakers (like Dev Patel) with his production company Monkey Paw. It might still be a minute until his next one, but t’s never a bad time to dip back into Peele's modestly sized but hugely influential back catalogue.
Premiering to enormous acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2017, less than a fortnight before Donald Trump’s first inauguration at the White House, Jordan Peele’s directorial debut Get Out could hardly have timed its cinematic assault on sleepy liberalism any better — but you sense the movie would have been an absolute smash regardless.
Borrowing a Meet the Parents style setup — boy meets girl, girl introduces parents, parents turn out to be adding a whole new meaning to the term "cultural appropriation" — and the twists and turns of movies like The Stepford Wives, Peele's incredible first feature still delivers as a haunting and hilarious satire; a movie that's aged as well as anything in the John Carpenter canon.
We all knew exactly who the movie was talking about when Bradley Whitford uttered his immortal “I’d have voted for Obama for a third term, if I could” line; and the remarkable visual idea of the "sunken place" has understandably became Peele’s directorial calling card. Along with Lady Bird, it was probably the greatest American debut of the decade.
When your debut movie earns back 60 times its budget and lands an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay while leaving a considerable cultural footprint in the process, that’s naturally a very hard act to follow. Peele’s solution, understandably, was to take an even bigger swing with Us, another horror fable about social structures in America that bit off a little more than it could chew but with enough style and ambition that we gladly give it the benefit of the doubt.
That the movie still works is a testament to the phenomenal dual performances of Lupita Nyong'o, who really did deserve an Oscar nomination for bringing both the protagonist and antagonist (you can decide which is which) of Us to life — both as Adelaide, the matriarch of a family who become the target of a group called the “Tethered”, and as Red, her scissors-wielding doppelgänger.
Granted, not everything that Peele was trying to say with his sophomore feature clicked as cleanly into place as it did in Get Out, but in terms of ideas, performances and style (notes of Shyamalan and Hitchcock) it was a worthy second act.
Is Nope Peele’s masterpiece? It's certainly an idea worth considering, and even if you don't agree, there's no denying the brilliance of its images or the breadth of its scope.
If Get Out was Peele’s take on the socially-minded horrors of the 1950s and Us was his love letter to the home invasion subgenre, Nope saw Peele take everything he’d learned from sci-fi cinema and Steven Spielberg and turn it into something dazzlingly new.
Nope stars Daniel Kaluuya as the inheritor and proprietor of one of the oldest movie horse ranches in Hollywood — a setup that allows Peele to both pay homage to and critique the history of the industry, and without ever forgetting that he has a terrifying UFO story to tell.
The only downside of this one is that we’ve had to wait four years (and counting) to find out what Peele is doing next.
