Get Out (2017, R)

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.