The following contains spoilers.
Get Out presents itself as a horror film with a twist—it also contains powerful racial and social commentary.
Seeing as it is directed, produced, and written by Jordan Peele of sketch comedy show Key and Peele, this is not surprising. The film contains the same dark and unapologetic humour found in Peele’s sketch comedy, while still managing to be a compelling thriller.
What’s great is the film avoids a lot of horror film tropes like “Black guy dies first” and “character doing stupid things like investigating the scary creaking sound upstairs.”
The soundtrack was all around solid too, especially with music from Childish Gambino’s latest album, which was a stand out.
I didn’t find Get Out particularly scary. Although there are a few intense moments, the film doesn’t rely on jump scares or gore to create tension. The film, instead, covers a variety of topics ranging from the stigma surrounding interracial relationships, to eugenics and racial profiling.
The story begins with young couple Chris Washington and Rose Armitage preparing for a road trip to visit her parents for the first time.
Initially, Chris is nervous about meeting her parents because they don’t know he is Black, but Rose’s parents are extremely friendly and welcoming towards him. Her father, Dean, is a neurosurgeon and her mother, Missy, is a psychiatrist. Her father loves Obama, and makes a point of telling Chris that.
All of this is important to note because these are not the people you are expecting to be racists. They are rich, educated, white liberals who love Obama, not poor, ignorant, KKK members living in the Deep South.
During a party the Armitages put on, Chris starts getting weird vibes from the other guests and goes to call his best friend, TSA agent Rodney Williams.
While Chris gets most of the screen time, Rod is the real hero in this story. Rod’s character is important both as Shakespearean comic relief, and an everyman detective who says exactly what the audience is thinking. His character moves the plot along by solving the mystery of what the Armitages are really up to.
Rod also appears to have been written for Peele himself and is reminiscent of characters he has played in his sketch comedy.
Despite the extremely dark plot, the film manages to end on a somewhat happy note.
The ending flows well and relates to events that occur earlier in the film. There is a lot of foreshadowing and symbolism throughout the film that ties up the ending nicely. This makes the viewer feel as though it ended exactly how it should have.
The happy ending breaks away from the current horror film trend of unhappy or ominous endings.
In films like The Collector, Paranormal Activity, and It Follows, nothing is truly resolved and the bad guy gets away.
Overall the film was incredibly good. It touched on such a variety of topics while still being kind of funny and a compelling horror film, which is not an easy thing to do.
