Lovecraft Country is an arresting new ten-episode HBO series that continues Jordan Peele’s inspired project of conveying the black American experience through the conventions of the horror film. Get Out, written and directed by Peele in 2017, was his directorial debut. It showed us from its first memorable scene how perfectly and explosively the new subgenre could work: a black man (played by the wonderful Lakeith Stanfield, who ought to be a big star by now) is lost in an affluent white neighborhood after sunset and is trying to get out of there before the cops or some paranoid locals come after him. Soon he’s stalked by somebody driving slowly behind him in an expensive convertible with tinted windows, through which blares a creepy WWII-era British song with the upbeat, scary refrain “Run, Rabbit, Run.” Once he’s snatched off the street by the unknown assailant, we’re engulfed in the mystery of what is happening to the area’s black male “disappeared.”

Since Get Out, Peele has extended the project by writing and directing Us, and by serving as a cocreator (with showrunner Misha Green) and executive producer on Lovecraft Country, which also begins with a mysteriously “disappeared” black American.