Director: Jordan Peele
Writer: Jordan Peele (Screenplay)
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Marcus Henderson
Plot: A young African-American man visits his Caucasian girlfriend’s mysterious family estate.
There may be spoilers the rest of the review
Verdict: Intensely Tense Thriller
Story: Get Out starts as Chris Washington (Kaluuya) a black photographer from Brooklyn agrees to go meet his white girlfriend Rose’s (Williams) parents. Travelling to this quiet country town Missy (Keener) and Dean (Whitford) along with Brother Jeremy (Jones) brings the family meeting together.
Chris is put on edge when he learns the only other black people he meets are the help, in the gardener and maid, after a haunting dream the paranoia continues to grow until he gets a stark warning from the only other black guest he meets at a party. I don’t want to get into much more but we are left wondering just what is going on and why from early on within the film.
Thoughts on Get Out
Characters/Performance – Chris is a man with a disturbing past, growing up without a parental figure, he is a self-made man with his photography and also understands that there is still casual racism in the world, not wanting to get into any arguments over someone trying to be accepting. Rose is the girlfriend who assure Chris there is no problem with his skin color to his family. Missy and Dean are the parents trying their own way to get to know Chris both well-educated and falling into the embarrassing style of parent. Rod is the best friend of Chris and clearly is the most interesting, funny and audience feeling character, everything he says is what we are feeling about the situation.
Performance wise, Kaluuya is great in the leading role throughout the whole film, Williams, Keener and Whitford are also all great and I must say just how entertaining LilRey Howery was through the whole film.
Story – The story is filled with racial motivation in how the characters are treated, Chris is just how you could imagine a black man in the world now, accepted by a large part of the world but still having another group trying to be nice by saying things wrong, casual racist who have no hate in their actions. While that is just the surface of the story it does have twists and turns along the way with most you know coming. I do have my own theory that this is a racial twist on Stepford Wives but the final reasoning does come off slightly farfetched in places but works for the horror when you think about it.
Horror/Mystery – The horror is very much an idea that when you think about it, it will stick with you because it is shockingly disturbing what is going on here, I did like the mystery about what was going on too because we are left to work it out and even have a character give us wild guesses too.
Settings – Most of the film is in the small country town where we see how the white residents still only have black people as the help and haven’t adapted to the free world completely.
Special Effects – We only have a few special effects here and each one adds to the bigger horror involved in the film.
Final Thoughts – This is a horror that will stick with you, make you never want to meet the in-laws but also has enough comedy not to be clouding over the big story too.
Overall: This is a major contender for the horror film of the year.
Rating
