US director Jordan Peele accepts his award for best director at the 33rd Film Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday. Photo: IC

Jordan Peele's satirical horror flick Get Out triumphed Saturday at the Spirit Awards - the latest in a string of honors the film has picked up.

Generating rave reviews from experts and audiences alike, Peele's feature directorial debut - which cost under $5 million to produce - has raked in $255 million at theaters worldwide.

The film - a dark send-up of the African American experience and of suburban white guilt over racial inequality - follows a young black man, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), who is so nervous about meeting the family of his white girlfriend (Allison Williams) that he fails to realize the menace lurking within their mansion.

"This project didn't start as a statement. It began as me wanting to make a film in my favorite genre," said Peele, who also bagged best director honors in addition to best feature film.

"I sat down and I would smoke a little bit of weed and try to make a mind-bending horror film... and I realized there were a lot of people locked up for smoking less weed than I was smoking when I made the movie."

The Film Independent Spirit Awards is an annual celebration of low-budget cinema that takes place on Santa Monica beach just outside Los Angeles.

The prize for best actor went to US-French rising star Timothee Chalamet, whose acclaimed performance as a lovelorn teen in the film Call Me By Your Name has seen him win numerous awards.

Frances McDormand won best actress, her third Spirit Award, for her searing performance as a rage-filled grieving mother in Martin McDonagh's black comedy Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

"I continue to be amazed that you let me get to the microphone. Are you crazy? One thing I know is that we are allowed to swear," joked McDormand, a mainstay on this year's awards circuit.

"Do you know how hard it has been not to swear for the last couple of months?" she asked, before cursing a blue streak.

Sam Rockwell won best supporting actor for Three Billboards, in which he plays opposite McDormand as a racist, violent police officer.

The best supporting actress prize went to Allison Janney, for playing figure skater Tonya Harding's cold, brutal mother LaVona in Craig Gillespie's acclaimed biopic I, Tonya.

"I play a lot of confused and complicated women, but not anyone this dark. I don't think people think of me that way," Janney said backstage.

"I guess I have to play more dark characters - that's in my future."