Generally
speaking, I’m not a horror person. I’ll
pretty much only check out a horror film/thriller if a) I’m with other people
and outvoted (Dawn of the Dead,) b)
it’s a classic (Psycho) or hugely
critically lauded (The Sixth Sense,)
or c) an actor I really love is in it (World
War Z.) However, Get Out, the “social thriller” by Key & Peele’s Jordan Peele, had my
interest from the moment I first heard about it, and I’m very glad to have seen
it.
Chris is
a young Black photographer living in the city with his white girlfriend Rose. When she brings him out of town for a
meet-the-parents weekend visit, Chris braces himself for the discomfort of
being surrounded by well-to-do white people for 48 hours, but nothing could
prepare him for what greets him there.
Amid the usual awfulness he’s encountered before in white spaces – Rose’s
dad awkwardly trying to use Black slang, pointed comments about Obama and sports
prowess – is a creeping suspicion that something far weirder and darker is
going on. The Black groundskeeper and
housekeeper Rose’s parents employ both seem hollowed-out somehow, placidly
satisfied and artificially sweet, and there’s an odd quality to them that seems
somehow tied to Rose’s mother, a psychiatrist who specializes in hypnotic
therapy. Chris tries to convince himself
he’s just seeing things, but as the weekend wears on, the weirdness gets
deeper, and he realizes that he may have to face up to it if he wants to get
out of there alive.
Rooting a
psychological thriller in the evils humans visit upon each other is a savvy
move, particularly in how seamlessly subtle aggressions go hand in hand with
mindbending horror. The menace here
doesn’t come from monsters, aliens, or supernatural forces, but from
people. Not that it’s alone in this –
soulless serial killers have been a part of horror for a long time, from The Silence of the Lambs to the Saw franchise. Get Out,
however, is devastating in looking at the “whys” behind the atrocious abuses
committed here. While it doesn’t get too
deep into probing the motivations behind them, scratching the surface is enough
because we see the hatred, racism, and dehumanization that fuels it.
Something
else that’s really effective is the way the film uses the microaggressions
Chris experiences to increase the feelings of suspense and paranoia. This film is grounded in a mental tug-of-war
that people of color frequently go through when they’re with white people –
that “was it racist? Are they trying to
offend me? Am I just reading too much
into this? Should I say something?” Our society at large seems to be at a point
when being called a “racist” is such a heinous insult that people think it can
only be used with the most unapologetically white-sheet-wearing, but that has
the effect of negating all the many, many smaller ways PoC have their dignity
and autonomy subtly eroded at by slight jabs and innuendos. I’m sure most PoC have felt gaslighted by the
insistence that they shouldn’t be “so sensitive” and it wasn’t meant to be
taken “like that.” Chris’s experience in
the first half of the film is rife with this type of internal conflict, which
makes it all the harder for him to accept what’s happening (and even harder to
try and find an ally) when he starts to get a sense of how twisted things really
are.
Chris is
played wonderfully by Daniel Kaluuya, who I’ve seen in a handful of things but
who I always associate most with his role as Posh Kenneth on Skins; he carries the film ably, keeping
the tension forever bubbling on the surface.
In addition to his great performance, the film also features Bradley
Whitford and Catherine Keener as Rose’s parents, Stephen Root in a small but
important role, and a memorable appearance by Lakeith Stanfield, who came to my
attention this past year in Atlanta.
Warnings
Violence,
language (including the N-word,) drinking/smoking, sexual references, and
disturbing themes/images.
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