Film Review : Get Out by Jordan Peele

Film Review :  Get Out by Jordan Peele

Horror-Comedy hits all the right notes and is a surprisingly  effective allegory of slavery and the African - American experience.

image courtesy of Blumhouse Productions and QC Entertainment

'Vague' Spoilers ahead.

Yes, 'Get Out' is as good as they say. 

Daniel  Kaluuya plays Chris, a young black man in America about to go through the awkwardness of meeting his white girlfriends parents for the first time.  The pair ( Alison Williams plays the girlfriend Rose ) are heading out of the city to visit the folks in an isolated rural area. Chris is already nervous about the coming weekend, and has been warned by his cousin, ( the comic relief played by Lil Rel Howery ) who only seems to be half-joking about the dangers of  being at the mercy of white folks in the middle of nowhere.  Though the initial meeting goes okay ( Rose's Dad proclaims he was a huge Obama fan and seems eager to put Chris at his ease ), Rose's mom and brother seem weirdly intense. Worse, ' the help' at the large country home are black, and seem either cowed or mentally disturbed. Chris will find no allies here. Then it turns out the entire white family is converging on the country-estate for some sort of anniversary weekend in honour of passed on Granddad.  Chris finds himself slowly confronted with a horrible truth in stages, as awkwardness turns to fear. At the end of Saturday's party, when Rose's brother ( complete with horrendous wispy hilly-billy moustache ) starts playing a banjo on the porch, to some sort of Deliverance-like tune, you know this ain't turning out good.

Throughout, Peele masterfully builds the tension with awkward humour and jarring shocks. Lead  Kaluuya is one of those gifted actors who can convey a range of emotions in a subtle shift of facial expression. We feel with him his increasing isolation as his girlfriend Rose seems only half clued in to what is going on. Why does Rose's Mom insist so on hypnotising Chris to help with cigarette addiction ? Why does the housekeeper unplug Chris's phone and then appear to have some sort of break-down when called on it ? Meanwhile a beacon of hope lies with Chris's cousin Rod, a TSA agent dog-sitting for Chris, who is determined to keep tabs on his friend.

Peele's genius is to have made this modern horror-comedy simultaneously a stunningly powerful allegory of the African American experience. For me, the pivotal moment of the film is actually when comic relief Rod reports his concerns to the local police station. Even though the officer is of colour, the palpable lack of concern for a missing black man is well conveyed.  Had this been a young blonde middle class girl, the choppers would have been in the air five minutes ago. But the knock-out punch comes when Rod delivers his theory of what may have happened. Earlier, we laughed it at  because it was intended to be comic relief. It was Rod, making us laugh, playing his role. But when we hear it delivered again and to police, the absurdity and the tragedy hit home : white people, abducting black people, and forcing them to be slaves ? It sounds ludicrous ; so viciously inhumane and ridiculous that it could not be real. Yet it did happen, to millions of Africans. Meanwhile as the horror unfolds on Chris, the bluntness of how Africans were literally treated like livestock is punched home more effectively than Twelve Years a Slave, precisely because it is portrayed in a modern context. When you  watch a film like Twelve Years a Slave, you can intellectually acknowledge it but perhaps not really feel it precisely because it is portrayed ( relatively far ) in the past. It's over, right ?  With Get Out, it's as raw as it gets. When a police car arrives near the end and you automatically expect Chris to get shot because he's black, you realise, it's not over. Not by a long way yet. 

Don't let the heavy undertones put you off from seeing Get Out. It's almost flawlessly written, shot, directed and acted, and there's enough laughter and suspense to make the horror bearable and even enjoyable in a Scream-like way. The final horror of what is to happen to Chris is original enough ( a la Human Centipede ) to make this a fresh take on the genre of horror-comedy, and will simultaneously leave you thinking about what slavery really meant, what it actually may have felt like. Powerful stuff, and skillful enough to be exhilarating and  entertaining.

9/10