Movies
‘Get Out’ Inspires Its Own College Course, “The Sunken Place”
Jordan Peele’s debut feature may not have won a Golden Globe this past weekend, but one thing is for certain: awards or not, Get Out is one horror film we’ll all be talking about until the end of time. It’s unquestionably one of the most important horror movies ever made, so I suppose it should come as no surprise that it has spawned… a college course?!
Mashable reports, “A college course on black horror films, through the lens of 2017’s box office shattering film Get Out, will be kicking off at UCLA this week. However, if you’re not a student there, you can still get in on the same lectures that Jordan Peele himself snuck into last year and learn a whole lot more about the critically acclaimed film and the overlooked genre of black horror.”
The class is being taught by best-selling, award-winning authors Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes, and it’s fittingly titled The Sunken Place. It’s being described as “an amazing six-week workshop,” which will include lectures, guest speakers (including Candyman star Tony Todd!), interactive social media and more.
“You know…horror, to me, is a subset of Afrofuturism, in that fantasy is a subset of Afrofuturism,” Due explained the course. “So, I decided, instead of doing the broader course, why not just break open black horror? Because Get Out is not the first black-made horror film, but it’s definitely the most successful. And I think it definitely has the ability to be culture-changing, let’s say.”
“The Sunken Place” will begin Saturday, January 13. If you’re not a UCLA student, you can take the non-credit, online version of the course: six lectures on your own schedule.
Visit “The Sunken Place” website to register and learn more.
Universal has been having a hell of a time getting their Universal Monsters brand back on a better path in the wake of the Dark Universe collapsing, with four movies thus far released in the years since The Mummy attempted to get that interconnected universe off the ground.
First was Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, to date the only post-Mummy hit for the Universal Monsters, followed by The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Renfield, and now Abigail. The latter three films have attempted to bring Dracula back to the screen in fresh ways, but both Demeter and Renfield severely underperformed at the box office. And while Abigail is a far better vampire movie than those two, it’s unfortunately also struggling to turn a profit.
Where does the Universal Monsters brand go from here? The good news is that Universal and Blumhouse have once again enlisted the help of Leigh Whannell for their upcoming Wolf Man reboot, which is howling its way into theaters in January 2025. This is good news, of course, because Whannell’s Invisible Man was the best – and certainly most profitable – of the post-Dark Universe movies that Universal has been able to conjure up. The film ended its worldwide run with $144 million back in 2020, a massive win considering the $7 million budget.
Given the film was such a success, you may wondering why The Invisible Man 2 hasn’t come along in these past four years. But the wait for that sequel may be coming to an end.
Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, The Invisible Man star Elisabeth Moss notes that she feels “very good” about the sequel’s development at this point in time.
“Blumhouse and my production company [Love & Squalor Pictures]… we are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” Moss updates this week. “And I feel very good about it.”
She adds, “We are very much intent on continuing that story.”
At the end of the 2020 movie, Elisabeth Moss’s heroine Cecilia Kass uses her stalker’s high-tech invisibility suit to kill him, now in possession of the technology that ruined her life.
Stay tuned for more on The Invisible Man 2 as we learn it.
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