Troy Harwood

It’s easy to forget that it has only been only six years since Jordan Peele’s directorial début. Get Out (2017) was both a strikingly confident addition to the horror genre and a remarkably influential step-forward for black representation on film, instantly making Peele a household name. Now, his third and latest picture, Nope, is backed by a $60 million budget. This makes it his biggest project yet, costing more than three times as much as his previous film, Us (2019). Unsurprisingly, he delivers a spectacle that would make even Steven Spielberg proud.

If you were to pluck a tenth-century Norse Viking from their firelit longhouse and drop them into the twenty-first century so that they could create a film accurate about their life and culture, you would probably end up with something not far off from Robert Eggers’ The Northman, and not just because of the film’s graphic violence, fanatical religious ceremonies, and historically faithful aesthetics. The Northman also successfully depicts the way in which Northerners may well have perceived and spiritually understood the world around them.