Jordan Peele is a well-known comedian, actor, and filmmaker in Hollywood. First making his appearance on Mad TV, Peele made a name for himself as a comedian alongside his key collaborator Keegan Michael Key on their own sketch show Key & Peele. The two have worked together as a duo on many things, including their joint film Keanu and their joint appearance in Toy Story 4, but they have also worked on their solo careers. In 2017, Peele made his directorial debut with Get Out for which he was also a writer and a producer, launching his career as a filmmaker into the spotlight. Following Get Out, Peele directed Us and the upcoming Nope, a trilogy of horror movies.

Get Out tells the story of Black photographer Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) who goes to meet his white girlfriend Rose’s (Alison Williams) parents (Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford). When he arrives, her family seems nice enough, but there is something far more sinister going on as Chris realizes that the people surrounding him are not what they seem. Get Out is most known for "The Sunken Place,” which Chris is brought into during a session of hypnotherapy with Rose’s mother Missy. The film won a number of awards, including the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Jordan Peele and a Black Reel Award for Outstanding Film. It's a complete reversal in genre, so here’s what inspired Jordan Peele to make Get Out.

Related: Jordan Peele's Nope Finally Drops First Trailer Straight From the Sky

What Movies Inspired Get Out

Get Out is a modern horror film and while it may not have the gore of a slasher, that doesn’t make it any less scary. There are plenty of movies that influenced Peele’s filmmaking style, but more stand out. Stanley Kubrick's The Shining has been mentioned as inspiration for Get Out in terms of subtlety and attention to detail when it came to creating an unsettling atmosphere. The Silence of the Lambs is yet another film Peele drew from, stating that Chris’ interactions with Missy during the hypnotherapy sessions were drawn from the film, recreating the way that Hannibal gets into Clarice’s head. Probably the most influential film for Peele was the classic Rosemary’s Baby as it provided both an entertaining story and a critical message about society. While Rosemary’s Baby revolves around gender and the roles women are meant to play, Get Out makes the same point about race.

What Get Out's Message Was

Get Out magnifies racism on a very deep level. While Rose’s family seems to be accepting on the outside, it’s revealed that they are hiding what they really are. While the white people that surround Chris seem to be in admiration of Black people, they in fact are using Black people’s bodies as a means to remain immortal. This is an extreme recreation of performative allyship. When people, businesses, and governments claim equality for all, their behavior often says otherwise. It also draws attention to systemic racism that is so deeply ingrained in the workings of society that it’s believed it to be normal treatment when in fact it is not. For example: the way BIPOC individuals are treated in the legal system is heavily skewed as Black males account for 34% of the prison population. In Get Out, this is proven when Rose’s family proceeds to bring in victim after victim without having any form of remorse for what they are doing, it has become normal to them, so they see nothing wrong with it.

The Sunken Place Metaphor, Explained

The Sunken Place is where Chris goes when he is placed under hypnosis, and it is also revealed that the consciousnesses of the people whose bodies Rose's family takes are tossed into the Sunken Place forever, where they will never be seen or heard from again. The Sunken Place is meant to represent what Peele refers to as re-marginalization — that no matter how hard Black people kick and scream for their plight to be heard, they remain silenced by the system. This rings true for while the Black Lives Matter movement has been around since 2013, the incidences of police brutality against the Black community have not dwindled. This can also be proven from the amount of police that were present at Black Lives Matter protests where over 43,000 troops were deployed nationally when not nearly as many were deployed during the insurrection of the United States Capitol on January 06, 2021. The overall message of The Sunken Place is to express how the Black community feels silenced.

Related: Here Are Some of the Best Black Horror Movies Ever Made

The Impact of Get Out

Shortly after its release, Get Out was met with a great deal of praise for the direction, writing, acting, and the social critiques on modern anti-Black racism. The film was also a commercial success and made it in Time Magazine as one of the top ten films of 2017. Get Out has been referenced and parodied in many TV shows, including a Netflix show that Peele has worked on called Big Mouth proving that it has made enough of an impact to be parodied. As of 2021, the Writers Guild of America chose the screenplay as the greatest script of the 21st century thus far, an impressive accolade for Peele to add to his resume.