tour de force by Peele and his troupe, who here
talkEmpirethrough the shoot and beyond.Jordan Peele (writer-director):Long beforeGet
Out, I had this nightmarish concept in my head
— when you’re falling asleep and it feels like
you’re falling for a second, and it kind of jolts
you up and wakes you up. So I thought, “Where
are you falling? If you didn’t wake up, where
would you go?” And that mysterious place
always haunted me.
Rusty Smith (production designer):Jordan had
this image of a person floating, or falling. It just
felt fresh. It was great.
Sean McKittrick (producer):It’s the scene that’s
emblematic of the entire theme of the film.
Peele:The Sunken Place actually came a little bit
later in the process than one might think.
I didn’t really know where the movie was going
for several years. And at some point I came
about the idea of this metaphorical enslavement,
being trapped inside your own body. About 30
minutes into the film, very little has happened in
terms of horror pay-off. And so at that point you
need it to be the best scare in the film. You need
to deliver on your promise right now.
Toby Oliver (cinematographer):When I first read
the script, I thought, “This is a fantastic horror
movie,” though it transcended that in many ways.
The Sunken Place scene was a really interesting
thing on the page. It was just written as a journey
into our character’s subconscious, but it wasn’t
super-clear exactly how that was going to be
realised visually.
McKittrick:Jordan first pitched me the story
over coffee. That was the first discussion of the
Sunken Place and hynotism and the themes of
racial suppression. Physically, what the SunkenPlace was evolved as the team expanded.
Oliver:It was a great concept that we had to
figure out how to realise, with all the constraints
that we had: a short schedule, and not a lot of
money. How do you make it work on screen?•••
Oliver:The hypnotising scene happened in the
house on location. We had a full day for that.
Smith:We were shooting in Mobile, Alabama,
of all places, because of tax credits and all that
stuff. The house was so critical. Jordan has called
its design “evil feng shui”. It’s WASP-y sinister,
with a very sort of upper East Coast, snotty,
wealthy, liberal, pretentious kind of vibe to it.
When I came across the house, I was like, “Oh
my God, this is the place.” It turned out there
was a fairly blue-blood, Republican person living
there. Luckily they opened the door. And Jordan
is extremely charming.
McKittrick:It was the one scene they talked
a lot about and rehearsed a lot. During the
shoot, it was very quiet. Nobody made noise on
set. Almost like you’re doing a closed-set nude
scene. “Nobody drop anything. Nobody do
anything. Just let it happen.”
Smith:The two matching leather chairs were
so hard to find. We spent weeks looking, and
finally my decorator found a pair online. Then
Catherine, the actress, comes in and says, “No,
I don’t want the matching chair.” Like any good
actor, she brings something very personal to it.
McKittrick:Catherine was very specific about
how the room would be set up. Even down to,
“My character wouldn’t have that piece of art
on the wall.” She was into it.
Smith:For the teacup, we had planned
something completely different.T W O
ACTORS IN
COMFORTABLE
ARMCHAIRS
DOESN’T
SOUND LIKE
THE STUFF
OF HORROR
LEGEND.
There are no buckets of blood, no levitating
demons, nary a chainsaw in sight. Which makes
it all the more impressive that director Jordan
Peele managed to get under the skin of the entire
world with the Sunken Place sequence in
2017’sGet Out. African-American hero Chris
Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) is visiting the
home of his girlfriend Rose’s (Allison Williams)
parents — seemingly liberal, definitely white
— and is heading back inside from a late-night
smoke when the mother, trained hypnotherapist
Missy (Catherine Keener), invites him into her
study for a little chat. A chat which turns, almost
imperceptibly, into a full-blown nightmare, as she
uses a teacup and spoon to freeze his body and
drop him into a world of inky nothingness. From
the creepy small talk to the shocking surreality
of Chris’ plummet into the Sunken Place, it’s a