Get Out
Directed by: Jordan Peele
Written by: Jordan Peele
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Betty Gabriel, Caleb Landry Jones, Milton “Lil Rel” Howery, Stephen Root, Lakeith Stanfield, Marcus Henderson, Erika Alexander
Comedy/Horror/Mystery - 103 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 22 Feb 2017
Written by: Jordan Peele
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Betty Gabriel, Caleb Landry Jones, Milton “Lil Rel” Howery, Stephen Root, Lakeith Stanfield, Marcus Henderson, Erika Alexander
Comedy/Horror/Mystery - 103 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 22 Feb 2017
Comedy Central’s “Key & Peele” first went viral when they played slaves on the auction block in the antebellum south. As time went on and they were not sold while older and weaker slaves were purchased, they started exclaiming just how effective slaves they could be. Jordan Peele, directing his first feature film, hews close to what he knows. He takes contemporary racial perceptions, a touchy subject full of pitfalls and dead ends at the best of times, and weaves them into a satiric narrative, part suspenseful horror and part black comedy. Get Out had the audience clapping, cheering, and hollering in excitement all together. No matter our race, Jordan Peele put us on the same team surprising everyone with a top-tier horror film from one of the funniest guy’s in show business.
While nervously packing for a weekend getaway to meet his girlfriend’s parents for the first time, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), asks if the parents know he his black. Rose (Allison Williams) lifts her eyebrows in surprise, does that matter? Yes. America just experienced eight years of Barack Obama and plenty of people, including the liberal elite, preach a post-racial society, but Chris knows better. Talking on the phone with his best friend, TSA agent Rod Williams (Milton “Lil Rel” Howery), on the drive to the secluded McMansion, Rod is the audience’s voice, “Don’t go to a white girl’s parents' house!” Once red flags start going off and Chris gets the funny feeling something ain’t right here, Rod is always a phone call away to yell, “Get out of there! Are you nuts!”
While nervously packing for a weekend getaway to meet his girlfriend’s parents for the first time, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), asks if the parents know he his black. Rose (Allison Williams) lifts her eyebrows in surprise, does that matter? Yes. America just experienced eight years of Barack Obama and plenty of people, including the liberal elite, preach a post-racial society, but Chris knows better. Talking on the phone with his best friend, TSA agent Rod Williams (Milton “Lil Rel” Howery), on the drive to the secluded McMansion, Rod is the audience’s voice, “Don’t go to a white girl’s parents' house!” Once red flags start going off and Chris gets the funny feeling something ain’t right here, Rod is always a phone call away to yell, “Get out of there! Are you nuts!”
How often do you want to scream those two lines at the screen during horror movies? Jordan Peele, an accomplished writer from his time on "MadTV", "Key & Peele", and Keanu, holds the story tight to reality. If too many strange and off the wall things happen at once, Chris would lose credibility and the audience’s belief in his rationality if he stuck around any longer. Therefore, Peele goes slow. The parents, Dean and Missy (Bradley Whitford (Saving Mr. Banks) and Catherine Keener (Captain Phillips)), quickly allude to Chris how non-racist they are. Dean avows he would vote for Obama for a third term, he recognizes the privileges traveling abroad brings him because he can experience other cultures first hand, and his grandfather lost to Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics. See? No racism here.
But, something is wrong here. First off, there is something baffling about Georgina the housekeeper (Betty Gabriel) and Walter the groundskeeper (Marcus Henderson, Pete's Dragon). They are both black, but they act and speak in the most stunted and borderline non-human behavior. Later on, Chris meets the family’s friends during an annual celebration of Rose’s deceased grandfather. The friends take turns admiring Chris’s strong physique, pepper him with questions on whether or not he feels it’s advantageous to be black in today’s world, and they make confounding comments that black is so ‘in’ right now. The capstone freakout is a young, black man named Logan (Lakeith Stanfield, Miles Ahead) who is unaware what a fist bump is and is married to a white woman twice his age.
That’s it; Chris has seen enough and he is out of here. Yet, any further plot discussion is cheating and a disservice to you. Just know I wrote down a note about The Stepford Wives and 2005’s The Skeleton Key on my notepad. Peele might not present the most original idea for a horror film, but he nails the surrounding social commentary ensuring audiences will talk about Get Out long after the end credits. Take the opening scene for example of how Peele turns our racial expectations on their head. A jittery man shuffles lost through an unfamiliar neighborhood hoping nobody notices him until he finds his destination. The man is black and he can’t find his way through an affluent, leafy suburb where all the streets look exactly alike. He’s on the lookout for white people who may cause him trouble. That could easily be the premise of a “Key & Peele” skit.
Jordan Peele is clearly a fan of the horror genre because he plugs in the requisite jump scares to ping our adrenaline. As Chris creeps through the house at night, a silhouette of another person passing by a window is accompanied by a single, piercing piano key which will jerk a knot in your spine. But the cheers are real. When Chris takes action and confronts the familiar horror tropes at the end, the audience cannot get enough of it. Peele strikes deep employing sly comedic satire at the notion of a race blind world. We only know as much as Chris knows; therefore, the audience can also feel he is not just being paranoid; there is skullduggery afoot in this house. Get yourself to the theater to find out what it is, and more important, relish the unique vision of comedy’s newest horror director.
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