Stick To The Script: 'Sorry To Bother You' Revisited

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Radical market swings … wage inequality … the deterioration of the middle class … conversations about capitalism have only become more fraught in the five years since Sorry To Bother You first premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Firebrand social activist/first-time filmmaker Boots Riley sidestepped the modesty of most directorial debuts and burst onto the scene with a bold, defiant satire that amplified a wide range of social criticisms that have become more ubiquitous in modern culture.

The film introduces us to Cassius “Cash” Green (Lakeith Stanfield), an existentially-minded young black man from Oakland struggling to afford rent and find a sustainable means of income. After landing a gig as a telemarketer, he’s thrust into a bizarre web of conspiracy as he climbs the corporate ladder. Playful in nature, the film’s flamboyant edge has a funhouse mirror-like quality that distorts reality while calling attention to the flaws inherent in the way infrastructures decide how power is allocated in America.

Since 2018, these unfortunate truths have spilled deeper into our national discourse, shedding light on the uneven distribution of wealth in American society, especially with respect to marginalized communities. It’s resulted in an increased awareness around institutionalized racism, gentrification, and predatory work ethics — all recurring motifs that are targeted in Boots Riley’s Sorry To Bother You, an absurdist comedy with alarming relevance in 2023.

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“In trying to avoid cliché, I realized that if I bent the reality of the world, it actually drew attention to that parallel point in our actual reality.”

Boots Riley | TIME

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The madcap odyssey begins at the threshold of RegalView, a crusty marketing firm with a small office ambiance set by dull aesthetic composition: walls coated in a revolting shade of blue, whiteboard scrawled with daily metrics and bad motivational quotes, and an antiquated coffee dispenser — pay per cup, of course. During work hours, the energy buzzes around columns of cramped cubicles populated by a swarm of entry-level staffers. They grind out forty hours a week, cold-calling prospects to sell an assortment of solutions supplied by a controversial labor-for-housing enterprise known as WorryFree.

To fully grasp the scope of their profession, one must learn the implicit understandings embedded in the culture of telemarketing. When your paycheck depends on an unwelcomed phone call, you need to forge a vocal identity that sometimes demands certain aspects of your individualism be suppressed, or risk facing the cold sting of rejection. Especially so in such disproportionately non-diverse environments, in accordance to a 2021 study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics which shows that 78% of sales professionals are white, compared to the nominal 18% who are Latinx, 13% black, and 5% Asian.

After Cash settles in and struggles to find his groove, he embellishes an overly cheerful white accent (voiced by David Cross) at the suggestion of an older co-worker played by Danny Glover. This proves highly profitable for Cash; but by suppressing a strand of his own identity, he unwittingly surrenders the rights to his own humanity, an illustration of the film’s foundational thesis that argues the existence of a rapidly dissolving line that separates commerce and slavery.

This provocative idea comes to fruition in a shocking third-act revelation when our protagonist is invited to a mansion party hosted by WorryFree’s coke-addled CEO, played by Armie Hammer. While searching for the bathroom, Cash descends into a mysterious laboratory only to find workers that have been subjected to cruel experimentation, turning them into equisapiens, or human-horse hybrids. Although a little on-the-nose, this gonzo distortion of realism bends our perspectives around the oppressive nature of capitalism, especially with regard to disenfranchised classes.

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While Sorry To Bother You is best described as an absurdist comedy, the equisapiens are tragic figures that are reminiscent of “body horror”, a subgenre that explores sympathetic creatures with grotesque features. Often examining people who enter a downward spiral after suffering hideous physical transformations, the subgenre’s imagery functions as an allegory for the fear of unintended ways that circumstances can mis-shape us.

Despite its playful energy, the film has deeper intentions rooted in this pairing of genres. Consider the equisapiens; after being forced to undergo cruel operations by an employer that promised housing in exchange for grunt labor, they become caricatures of real-life victims in the fight for equality in the workplace, a symbol for the working class. This amplifies the core tension of Sorry To Bother You between the few in charge and the rest whose lives depend on a steady income. The latter is represented cinematically by supporting character Squeeze (Steven Yeun), a pro-union reformist.

After befriending Cash at RegalView, Squeeze sparks a revolution by organizing a group to advocate for wage increases and benefits packages for everyone on the payroll. This movement echoes with relevance in today’s society amid greater awareness surrounding the steeper-than-ever costs of living and the companies who fail to pay their workers accordingly. In taking such an aggressive stance against corporate toxicity, Riley injected Sorry To Bother You with an intense desire to reimagine the working class experience and frame it within the context of his work.

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“You’re not going to change any of this by yourself. You’re not going to change it by making a cute art statement, you’re not going to change it by just figuring out how to be there, to do something that gives you more power on your own. You have to join with other people and make a movement.”

Boots Riley | Vox

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As a protagonist, Cash has his own share of shortcomings. By appeasing his corporate executives and climbing the proverbial ladder, he reaps the benefits of “Power Caller” status despite urges from friends and colleagues to help them make a difference at RegalView. Regardless, the film takes measures to depict him as a figure worth your sympathy, a man caught in the crossfire between two conflicting ideologies.

Cash’s guide to recognizing this harsh truth is his girlfriend Detroit, played by Tessa Thompson, who during a contentious argument, points out the uncharacteristic traits he’s exhibited since becoming a Power Caller. Being a performance artist herself, Detroit is no stranger to betraying core principles for money; in a moment of weakness, Cash belittles her creative pursuits as “selling art to rich people”, an allegation that comes full circle at her latest showcase.

Entitled The New Fuck You, Detroit’s interactive art piece finds her onstage half-naked, reciting movie dialogue in a posh British accent while spectators throw blood balloons at her. While it pokes fun at the pretentiousness of modern art, it also spotlights the prevalence of sell-out culture in modern America. While society hurtles toward a future that prioritizes money over morals, Cash and Detroit are two flipsides of the same coin who do what they must in order to get by. By abstracting this cultural observation and fitting it to a world with exaggerated features, it allows us to see the nexus point in our own illogical timeline.

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Toggling between surrealist humor and thought-provoking insight, Sorry To Bother You is a satire whose skewed realism has proven itself ahead of its time. Surveying the landscape of movies in 2023, the heightened sense of real-world panic has given way to a rise of escapist entertainment that ascends the boundaries of our own reality. From Jordan Peele’s Nope to the Academy Award-nominated Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, we live in a time where art reflects an existential worry masked with the boundless comforts of imagination.

In the footsteps of fellow Sundance filmmakers who came before him, Boots Riley blazed a path in a unilateral industry by pledging himself to unwavering originality. Over the span of five years, Sorry To Bother You has amassed a cult following and a renewed interest in the ways it dissected the landscape of American work culture. With a punk rock demeanor, it’s a supersonic rejection of norms and hierarchy that urges viewers to think more critically about the systems in place.

The Hits & Misses Of 2022: A Year-End Review

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For movie enthusiasts, 2022 was a grab-bag of scattered highlights. From tentpole blockbusters to finespun festival darlings to the long-awaited return of our favorite band of jackasses, this year has produced a multitude of cinematic expressions ranging from the highest calibers of art to the lowest brows imaginable.

As the instant streaming model continues to disrupt theatrical rollout strategies, diminishing COVID fears and mounting resentment over the monopolization of VOD platforms has helped stage a pushback in the opposing direction. Sales from domestic ticket revenue have risen over the last year, projecting $7.4 billion in domestic returns, with much credit to massive franchise players like Top Gun: Maverick, Jurassic World: Dominion, and a few surprise hits.

There’s a long road ahead in repairing what was lost in the pandemic, but this year gave us hope we can cling to and highlights that far eclipse the lowlights. Since I wasn’t able to write about everything I’ve seen this year, here’s a postmortem of the highs and lows on my 2022 long list.

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Hit:
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinnochio

As a visionary who interprets the harshest truths of the real world through a dazzling kaleidoscope of myth and fairy tale fable, Guillermo Del Toro approaches Pinocchio as a dark, handcrafted fantasy that chronicles Italy during the First Great War and the rise of fascism.

Inspired by Walt Disney’s benchmark of 1940s animation, Del Toro’s iteration tells the story of an aging Geppetto and his wooden boy, whose naive tendencies often find him in precarious situations. With the world on the brink of global conflict, Pinocchio must make the ultimate sacrifice to find out what it means to have a heart.

Coming just one year after his Oscar-nominated noir thriller Nightmare Alley, Guillermo Del Toro delivers an immaculate experience with Pinocchio. Given free reign over his passion project by Netflix, this stop-motion animated feature evokes shades of his 2006 classic Pan’s Labyrinth in how it explores the grim realities of fascism through the wonderous lens of a fairy tale.

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Miss:
Angus MacLane’s Lightyear

To admit you didn’t enjoy Lightyear is to compartmentalize your lifelong adoration for the Toy Story franchise. In the 27 years since our first meeting with the intrepid spaceman, Disney’s creative priorities have shifted away from innovations in animated storytelling. Makes sense from a business perspective; in today’s competitive climate, there’s less risk in rehashing a formula they helped pioneer rather than taking a swing at something entirely new.

In stark contrast with Pinocchio, Angus MacLane’s Lightyear is an emotionally vacant return to Pixar’s most cherished property with a revisionist take on the iconic space ranger that expands his backstory but abandons the emotional weight behind its original concept. What began as a heartwarming tale about toys finding their purpose becomes a cosmic clutter of visual effects and labored execution that leaves audiences feeling manipulated by its force-fed character development.

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Hit:
Claire Denis’ Stars At Noon

Perhaps the most spellbinding spy thriller in years, Stars At Noon trades in its golden gun for a stylish, immaculate vibe with kinetic energy and a lounge jazz score. Despite its arresting visuals, it’s deliberately written to frustrate viewers who expect it to hold any hands through its elusive storyline.

Rather than cloning the framework of James Bond, legendary French filmmaker Claire Denis interprets the 1986 novel by Denis Johnson as a sleek, sexy arthouse film driven not by a straightforward narrative, but by the sheer sensual magnetism between its co-leads Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn.

Taking place in Nicaragua during a period of civil unrest, the film’s espionage component is the free-flowing undercurrent of a budding romance between Trish and Daniel, one a journalist stranded behind enemy lines, the other an intelligence operative carrying out a deadly mission. With no plot contrivances, we’re inevitably swept up in Stars At Noon’s orbit and held firmly by Denis’ powerful direction that paints the humidity of South America with youthful radiance and seductive bewilderment.

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Miss:
Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling

Cheap shots and media headlines aside, Don’t Worry Darling was postured for potential greatness. All the pieces were in place: Olivia Wilde gave us reason to anticipate her follow-up to Booksmart, Florence Pugh’s cumulative track record was pristine, and pop icon Harry Styles did a good job occupying the limited space he was given in Dunkirk.

Although there are some highlights to mention, specifically Chris Pine’s subtle intensity as the film’s antagonist and the post-war era production design by Katie Byron, Don’t Worry Darling’s fatal flaw is in the structural integrity. Rather than its protagonist Alice, the script is only in service to its shakey third-act twist that suffers from deathly self-seriousness. Without proper context and clear motivations, audiences are unable to get a clear understanding of its heroine or her struggle against the shadowy order at the helm of its sun-bleached dystopian setting.

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Hit:
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

With culture approaching a stalemate in the ongoing saga of live-action superhero movies, this cult sensation restored our faith in the multiverse as a sprawling playground of imagination when paired with the right choreography, detailed character development, original humor, cultural resonance, and well-rendered sentimentality.

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once is an eccentric sci-fi action adventure that follows a struggling Chinese matriarch (Michelle Yeoh) on a collision course with destiny as she confronts her financial woes, a failing marriage, and a strained relationship with her daughter all while on a daring journey through the multiverse.

Striking perfect harmony in the margins between action, heart, and absurdity, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s film finds elasticity in the framework of genre and obliterates all expectations for what a multiverse movie still can do. With a total devotion to creativity, Everything, Everywhere, All At Once attempts to reclaim and redefine a subgenre whose tropes we’ve grown desensitized to.

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Miss:
Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness

Heading into the new year, Disney’s Marvel Studios continues to rank among the highest-earning production companies, despite the massive dip in critical approval. The studio also found itself embroiled in controversy after numerous visual effects artists have come forward with their stories about worsening labor conditions and the churn-and-burn mentality that Disney has imposed for their cash cow franchise.

Among them is the sequel to Doctor Strange which finds horror legend Sam Raimi back in the director’s chair. While he displays a mastery of skill at creating set pieces that remind us of his roots, the scope of the story’s ambition ditches the organically scrappy vision that made Spider-Man 2 such a fun and campy superhero romp. Instead, his style becomes sidelined and eventually derailed by the contrivances of the studio’s multiversal plot element.

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Hit:
Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees Of Inisherin

Finding humor in dark places is a lifelong project for the playwright-turned-filmmaker Martin McDonagh. Re-teaming with his leads from In Bruges, McDonagh weaves this masterful folk tale about two best friends in a rustic lake town who abandon their long-standing alliance to enter a grisly and unexpected blood feud during the Irish Civil War.

Banshees Of Inisherin is a tightly coiled dramedy that makes the most of its lead performances from Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, one being the lovable dimwit, the other a tortured artist who finds himself at a crossroads. By dealing out shock and wit in equal but contrary measures, McDonagh provides sobering reflections on the irresolvability of conflict and the impermanence of legacy.

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Miss:
Robert Eggers’ The Northman

Following the acclaim of his first two feature films, Robert Eggers has earned his place as one of the most talented young voices in cinema today. The Witch and The Lighthouse floored audiences with the degree of historical texture he applies to genre filmmaking. Though he’s an expert in authenticity, he gets lost in the weeds of a perplexing script with his Viking revenge epic The Northman.

The mud-and-bloodsoaked action movie tracks the fearless odyssey of a Norse warrior (Alexander Skarsgard) on a relentless quest to get revenge on the uncle (Claes Bang) who murdered his father and usurped his throne many years ago. With an unassailable premise, The Northman overcomplicates things by swerving into a mystifying realm of spiritual psychedelia. Perhaps expectations just didn’t align, but Eggers’ latest was a surprising letdown that feels like Hamlet on bath salts.

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Hit:
David Cronenberg’s Crimes Of The Future

Advancements in biotechnology and human evolution are the dueling forces at play in this mind-bending sci-fi trip from David Cronenberg, the ruling monarch of body horror. Returning to the subgenre he helped establish, Crimes Of The Future is one of the most disturbing moviegoing experiences of 2022.

The film picks up in a timeline where mankind is forced to adapt to the omnipresence of microplastics by miraculously growing new organs. Seen through a performance artist’s (Viggo Mortensen) morbid act of showcasing his own live surgeries, the artist’s death-defying act will attempt to bridge the gap between art and empirical science in an age where “surgery is the new sex”.

From Scanners to Eastern Promises, David Cronenberg is one of the last surviving pioneers of dangerous cinema. This stylized neo-noir isn’t without its imperfections, but its cinematic value lies in Cronenberg’s uniquely calibrated eye for peerless production design. Its aesthetic is futuristic but unmistakably body horror, all constructed practically, which pushes the boundaries of the medium to a gold standard he himself set over 40 years prior.

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Miss:
Alex Garland’s Men

There are very few filmmakers with such a high ceiling for greatness, they’re granted “hall passes” by disciples of their work. Like writer-director Alex Garland, who has amassed a fiercely loyal fanbase after his involvement in such contemporary sci-fi classics as 28 Days Later, Dredd, Ex Machina, and Annihilation. In spite of his outstanding track record, his latest film Men was a fumbling psychological puzzle whose pieces don’t ultimately align.

Starring Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear in a pair of key roles, Men is a hallucinatory thriller about a woman who embarks on a remote getaway after enduring tragedy, only to find a strange local man who harbors a dreadful secret. Using equal parts melodrama and psychological horror, the total sum of Men delivers flashes of impressive filmmaking but ultimately fails to set up an appropriate sense of resolution. Even its powerful, unsettling atmosphere can’t rectify Garland’s inane script that explores the inherent oneness of toxic masculinity, but trips itself up with its own lofty ambition.

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Hit:
James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way Of Water

The long-awaited sequel to James Cameron’s epic plunges you into the deep blue oceans of Pandora, a dazzling world that broke ground in its technical sophistication and total box office gross over 13 years ago. But what sets this installment apart isn’t just its robust visuals, but the bracing reminder of Cameron’s roots as an action movie director. And a damn good one, at that.

The Way Of Water finds the fully assimilated Sullivan clan seeking refuge in the oceanic realms of Pandora with an aquatic race of Na’vi, where a dangerous confrontation brews against a merciless fleet of Space Marines. It parallels Titanic, a movie that runs long in stretches but pays off with a barn-burner third act, whose jaw-dropping set pieces fill the big screen with lush bursts of color and fury and chaos.

As he’s known to do, Cameron also expands the horizons within the universe of Pandora, teeming with life both big and small. From darting schools of minnow fish to massive, sentient whale-like creatures, Avatar: The Way Of Water is a showcase in world-building whose recent crossing of $1 billion at the global box office is a proud vindication of Cameron’s seismic contributions to the history of breathtaking cinema.

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Miss:
Joe and Anthony Russo’s The Gray Man

Don’t be fooled by the name; there’s nothing gray about this gaudy spy flick starring Ryan Gosling, Ana De Armas, and Chris Evans that made Netflix history as their most expensive project to date, clocking in a staggering budget of $200 million. Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, The Gray Man is a mediocre send-up of the espionage subgenre that, despite some visual flair, falls flat as a standalone action movie.

In the genre’s landscape post The Raid and John Wick, it’s easy to notice The Gray Man’s action sequences that are chopped together in jarring, spastic rhythms. With no sense of combat staging and action choreography, it’s hard to follow along with the visual feast the film attempts to offer its viewers. It may be pretty to look at, but the Russos’ latest comes across more like a Fast and Furious movie without an emotional investment in the characters.

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Hit:
Todd Field’s TÁR

The drama of TÁR is human in nature but massive in the scope of its questions. Todd Field’s exquisite script examines polarizing issues through the eyes of Lydia Tár, a world-renowned symphony composer who’s rocked by a scandal that threatens her prestige in the public and personal eye.

This powerfully relevant drama walks the balance beam of modern life by painting a fair depiction of her psychological erosion as the world around her begins to question the content of her character. In an ever-changing world that begs a total reconsideration over how we define the endurance of legacy, TÁR begs audiences to ponder the question: can we ever truly separate the art from the artist?

The film’s nucleus is the career-defining heel turn from Cate Blanchette as its egocentric anti-hero Lydia Tár. She plays the part to absolute perfection, with many not realizing she wasn’t actually based on a real person. With award season well underway, Blanchette is poised for overwhelming recognition.

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Miss:
Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans

From unwarranted reboots to the revival of Kate Bush, nostalgia is the primary force driving most entertainment in the 21st Century. As the streaming model puts a huge question mark on the future of cinema, a new trend has emerged that finds filmmakers recapturing the dramatic essence of their childhood.

In recent examples like Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast and Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, these cinematic period pieces explore a wide swath of emotions that feel tenderly excavated from the filmmaker’s past. Though they generally find universal acclaim, few have been bogged down by the glaring presence of hyper-melodrama like Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans.

For someone like Spielberg who has mastered the language of film, every stylistic choice that defines his signature style feels weirdly out of place in a movie so personal to his own life. Outlining an assortment of personal struggles including his Jewish American heritage and the dissolution of his parent’s marriage, the bloated melodrama undercuts some astounding performances with an exaggerated romanticization that better suits his less intimate work.

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Big Draws and Monkey Paws: The Meteoric Rise of Jordan Peele

Not too long ago, the thought of a sketch comedian writing and directing horror was inconceivable. After all, they’re completely different genres in two separate lanes with so little in common. Naturally, no one could have expected the outcome when Jordan Peele announced his move from an award-winning series into feature filmmaking. Yet here we are; five years into his creative odyssey, Peele’s work continues to excite, disrupt, and ultimately mystify.

Examining Peele’s prior work, it makes sense how his background in comedy helped shape his vision as a filmmaker. Immersing himself in a genre defined by extremity, his past work on Mad TV and Key & Peele molded his mastery at identifying archetypes and weaving them into exaggerated circumstances.

Clearly, he was really good at it; winning an Emmy for his work in sketch comedy, Peele’s prominence was elite as a writer/performer. Despite being draped in preposterous wigs, dressed in drag, or bearing false teeth, his comedy was unanimously recognized as one of the hottest commodities in the improv scene. In spite of all this, something within him remained unfulfilled; that’s when he and longtime partner Kegan Michael Key called it quits to explore their potential outside the realm of their Comedy Central series.

Two years after the split, Peele wrote and directed Get Out, a groundbreaking debut that follows Chris, a young black man (Daniel Kaluuya) who travels to meet his white girlfriend’s family, only to find their overt pleasantries hide a menacing secret. Scoring big with Oscar nominations in Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture on his very first outing, Get Out was a resolute entry for Peele that welcomed a whole new era of artistic expression.

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“The best comedy and horror feel like they take place in reality. You have a rule or two you are bending or heightening, but the world around it is real. I felt like everything I learned in comedy I could apply to this movie.”

Jordan Peele | The New York Times

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Aside from its ensemble cast, sharp humor, and nail-biting suspense, Get Out established Peele’s reputation as a storyteller with something important to say. Disguised as a puzzling psychological horror-thriller, it’s also a pressing study about racial tension at its core. Peele’s tight script and inspired direction navigate timely social issues with thoughtfulness, resulting in an expert blend of subversion and conventionality, both balanced in equal measures.

In an age of horror that was overpopulated by demonic possession movies, Peele and his creative team at Monkeypaw Productions rejected the blueprint offered by the Conjuring franchise in favor of slow-burning social commentary about the black experience in America—for a fifth of its budget. Released to widespread acclaim and spirited discussion, Get Out upended expectations by bucking against the trends of its time. And with it came a new generation of ambitious visual storytelling that uses metaphor to explore the modern human condition like never before.

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Eager to keep the momentum alive, Peele set out to capitalize on his newfound success as a filmmaker of substance. His second creative venture was Us, another film that uses genre to convey a deeper message about society as a whole. Wearing the veil of a blood-curdling slasher movie, his sophomore feature explored family dynamics through the macro lens of socioeconomic status. In doing so, forced audiences to re-evaluate the blurred line between heroes and villains.

Us finds darkness beneath the sunny shorelines of Santa Cruz, where the middle-class Wilson family (Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex) are terrorized by their own vengeful doppelgängers. Modeled after an episode of The Twilight Zone, man-against-self becomes literalized in Peele’s full-blown horror film that examines the class divide between those with privilege and those without.

Earning comparable returns to Get Out though it wasn’t as well-received, the general masses seemed to have reached an agreement. While Us was a bold swing of creative ambition with a career-defining performance from Nyong’o, it was unfocused at times, which muddled the story it tried to tell. Yet still, it justified Peele’s aim as a filmmaker who boldly attempts to one-up himself with each new story. Each of them original, each significant in its own declarative right, regardless of critical consensus.

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Thrust into the jetstream of his first two films, Peele’s intrepid momentum screeches to a halt as the COVID-19 pandemic forces him into a state of re-evaluation. Can movies survive this unprecedented standstill? Emerging from that headspace, he set out to write a love letter to the great American spectacle with Nope, a cacophonous sci-fi/horror movie about a pair of siblings who come face-to-face with a strange flying object over their late father’s ranch. Employing decades of influence in the well-treaded alien subgenre, Peele implores viewers to abandon their notions of an extraterrestrial thriller by adorning Spielbergian pageantry with a sharp and pointed twist.

Led by Daniel Kaluuyaa and Keke Palmer, Nope is a daring cosmic western that makes great use of its multi-layered construction. At its most basic level, it functions as an IMAX movie with deep visual immersion and supersonic sound design. Hidden beneath, there’s a thought-provoking study of society’s toxic addiction to spectacle and how it’s fed by a need to exploit others for our own monetary gain.

From one character’s incessant urge to make money from UFO sightings to a series of grisly flashbacks depicting a trained chimpanzee’s rampage during a live studio taping, Nope is earnestly pining for larger concepts. It’s the kind of movie that rewards multiple viewings; if not for the showy pomp of its spectacle, come back for the full comprehension of what it’s really trying to say.

Though it’s seen as an improvement over his last, Nope isn’t quite flawless. Like many other movies are guilty of, the atmospheric setup can’t match how its resolution takes shape in the third act. But its relentless commitment to ambition helps cement Peele’s prestige in the realm of stories that dare to stand out. Nope defies genre while still drawing a large audience, and it contains moral complexity without bordering on preachiness. Viewers can’t help but leave the theater with a palpable sense of awe for what an original movie can be in 2022.

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“I really connect with Peele’s films: His approach to filmmaking is very much like an artist, like somebody who’s done a painting or sculptures. It’s very open-ended, but it has a direct view.”

Keke Palmer | The Washington Post

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The 43-year-old filmmaker’s belated reach expands beyond his own directorial scope, with a CV that includes co-producing credits on HBO’s Lovecraft Country and a co-writing credit on Nia DaCosta’s Candyman reboot. Both are noteworthy projects that stand beside Peele’s own, by virtue of poise and execution. His work speaks for a voiceless generation of artists whose films reframe the context of contemporary American society by way of familiar narrative templates.

Taking his place among the boldest cinematic voices of the 21st Century, the former comedian now stands as a figure whose work is more than just postmodern—it’s inevitable. Enriched and inspired by decades of film history, his platform elevates a time-honored genre to give horror more relevance in our surreal new world. Building his edifice at the intersection of progress and tradition, Peele’s work interrogates how we navigate an eruptive social climate.

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