Three years after his sophomore release, Us, made red jumpsuits exponentially more insidious, writer/director/actor, Jordan Peele, is set to return to the horror discourse with Nope. Landing on July 22, 2022, Nope marks an otherworldly shift away from Peele's homebound horror stories.

Peele's foray into horror was revelatory. Get Out wasn't just scary; it was a razor-sharp subversion of the tokenism Black horror fans have endured for a century. As James Wan did with Saw, Peele wove a small budget into a pop culture shifting cornerstone. With a secretive plot and visual cues ranging from the vibrance of Pixar's Up to the malevolence of Skinwalker Ranch, Nope's impending release is laden with curiosities. Although answers are still months away, clues and inspiration lie within its genre predecessors.

Overlord (2018)

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Overlord parachutes into the horrors of a pre-D-Day mission and rides full speed off the rails into undead Nazi pulp. The lone Black soldier in his troop, Overlord follows Boyce (Jovan Adepo, The Stand) as he crosses enemy lines and traverses the racial tension coming from his own troopmates.

Related: 5 Best Zombie Movies Set During World War 2

Peele masterfully peered into the white gaze in Get Out, similarly sinking Daniel Kaluuya's (Judas and the Black Messiah) Chris Washington into a wholly white nightmare. Though atmospherically different, both films aptly tackle how hidden judgment/intent continues to haunt Black men simply for being Black.

Monsters (2010)

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Andrew and Samantha in a jungle in Monsters.

Written and directed by Gareth Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), Monsters juxtaposes its two leads traversing "Infected Zones" back to lives neither wants to return to against the backdrop of an ongoing Cthulhuesque invasion. The blueprint for 2014's Godzilla, also by Edwards, Monsters' narrative pendulum swings from horror to romance as its leads find purpose in impossibility.

Centering on Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer's (Alice) isolated horse trainers, Nope broaches the importance of introspection amongst the chaos of impossibility. As Kaluuya's character gives an exasperated "great" in response to Palmer's on-camera spiel, his exhaustion is radiant. Questioning his purpose—and potentially losing his other half to the sky—it's likely this terrible event will serve as a magnifying glass to what he's taken for granted. And since the movie was shot on 65mm IMAX film, it feels like Peele is leapfrogging Monsters and going right to his Godzilla.

Super 8 (2011)

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The kids in Super 8 filming the train crash.

J.J. Abrams' (Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker) love letter to Spielberg, Super 8 is a family-friendly, coming-of-age tale about a group of kids making a horror movie who soon become intrenched in one of their own.

Though Nope certainly won't be a warm and fuzzy homage, there's a moment of singularity in the trailer where man meets beast by way of fist bump. If there's kindred intent between the two films, it centers on the fact that celestial curiosity doesn't make a creature villainous.

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)

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10 Cloverfield Lane

After being blindsided in her car in the middle of the night, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kate) finds herself injured and chained to a wall in a bunker. 10 Cloverfield Lane is a claustrophobic thriller that opens up into something much stranger as it approaches the finish line.

As Get Out is about more than the tensions of interracial relationships and Us is much more than a home invasion movie, Nope certainly won't be a straightforward invasion flick. As the third entry into Peele's social thriller archives, the intrigue lies not only in what's coming from above, but what they have to say.

Arrival (2016)

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After 12 alien vessels appear in different locations worldwide, it's up to linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams, Dear Evan Hansen) to interpret/dissect the communications being sent out by these lifeforms before a global war is launched in the name of humanity.

Arrival dances with the concepts of time, purpose, and the possibility that the only way to save the planet is to look elsewhere. Though Nope's details are scarce, time and trajectory loom with importance. Knowing that Palmer's character gets abducted going in, it feels less like an ending and more like the beginning of a humanity dependent relationship.

The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

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The Day The Earth Stood Still

Robert Wise's (A Storm In Summer) The Day The Earth Stood Still is a cornerstone of the genre. Set in Cold War era U.S.A., a spaceship lands in Washington, D.C. with a humanoid, a robot, and a warning. After an exchange is mistaken for an aggression, the very fabric of existence is left hanging in the balance.

The Day The Earth Stood Still narrates how the biggest threat to humanity is humanity under the guise of an invasion. Peele has clear reverence for the forefathers of the genre, right down to dressing in full Jack Torrance gear at the press junket for Us.  With this being his take on extraterrestrial related horror, drawing inspiration from the movie that shrewdly criticized warmongering and catapulted the genre in the process would prove invaluable.

They Live (1988)

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They Live 1988

John Carpenter's (The Ward) They Live has influenced everything from cinema to streetwear. After drifter, Nada (Roddy Piper, The Chair), finds a pair of sunglasses that show him aliens are hiding under human skin, it becomes his mission to stop the invasion and destroy the frequencies enslaving humanity to obedience.

Related: Every John Carpenter Sci-Fi Movie Ranked

They Live takes on suppression and unrestrained capitalism under the veil of alien mind control. With Get Out, Peele took on the white fetishizing of Black bodies through hypnosis and brought immediate critical acclaim to the horror scene. If Nope goes on an upwardly adjacent trajectory, and with Peele being no stranger to genre reinvention himself, an unbound ride through propagandized fear and the mental handcuffs it creates just may await.

The Thing (1982)

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MacReady with a flamethrower in The Thing 1982

Also by Carpenter, The Thing follows a group of researchers in Antarctica that uncover a shape-shifting alien parasite. Battling the cold, the parasite, and the ongoing distrust of one another, The Thing layers grotesque practical effects atop hopeless isolation to relentless success.

With Peele's mission statement for Nope being to draw out those vocally visceral responses synonymous with predominantly Black crowds from the most pleated of khakis, there may be no better blueprint. Though taking place in the exact opposite of conditions, it would be apropos of Nope to use climate extremes to exacerbate the already unfathomable. The visual of Keke Palmer being sucked into the desert sky is immediately unforgettable and leads on that Peele is well aware of the power of his backdrop.

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977)

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Steven Spielberg's (West Side Story) Close Encounters not only changed cinema but shifted popular culture. It inspired a generation of moviegoers to look into the sky and then look past it. The film's use of a five-note motif transfixed a generation, transporting anyone singing, playing, or hearing it to the precipice of the mothership.

Related: 8 Ways Close Encounters Of The Third Kind Holds Up Today

Jordan Peele is acutely aware of the importance of musical cues. His usage of Luniz's "I Got 5 On It" in Us (both in its original form, and orchestral reprise) is not only inherently tied to the film's impact but the overall legacy of the song in its own right. With this being Peele's extraterrestrial opus, he would be remiss not to tether his big "nope" moment to its sonic parallel.

Attack The Block (2011)

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Moses leading his friends in Attack The Block.

As far as modern, Black-led alien fare goes, Attack The Block stands on its own. Joe Cornish's (The Kid Who Would Be King) 2011 invasion horror comedy not only kickstarted John Boyega's (892) career, but also drew from his own personal experiences to tell a distinctly original story determined to divert cinematic stereotyping.

Jordan Peele knows Attack The Block. It's funny. It's violent. It aggressively subverts stereotypes. And yet, in some regards, it was written from the outside looking in. The medium is ripe for representation. Nope isn't going to be Will Smith cracking jokes after punching an alien in the face, or John Boyega attempting to sell an alien corpse to a drug dealer. With one of the most gifted cinematographers in all of film, Hoyte Van Hoytema, in tow, Peele's "new pop nightmare" is not just poised to draw those screams he wants, but motivate a new generation and oft relegated community to tell the stories of the skies.

Next: 10 Most Influential Modern Horror Directors