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Get Out
STARRING: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford
DIRECTOR: Jordan Peele
Genre: Comedy/Horror
Rating: 15+
104 mins
Something rather strange has come over me. Despite being firmly positioned as my least favourite film genre, I’ve chosen to see horror films two weeks in a row. What’s even more peculiar is that for the second time in succession, I really enjoyed it!
Granted, last week’s Life was firmly grounded in sci-fi and atmosphere rather than the generic, haunted house jump-scare fare that litters the market, but still. Get Out works so well because, despite having some pretty dark and terrifying moments, it has some of the most wonderfully cutting satire committed to film in recent memory.
It’s frequently hilarious, and what makes it even more so is that many simply won’t get it. In the screening I attended, packed with our friends from across the causeway who have flooded over to seemingly add two hours to my daily commute this week, I often found myself awkwardly chuckling alone.
Maybe if they concentrated more on the film rather than Snapchatting every single frame, it would have been a different story. But that’s by-the-by.
The premise alone is enough to draw a giggle just from imagining the real-life scenario. Chris Washington (Kaluuya) and his girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Williams), have reached the meet-the-parents milestone of dating, and so she invites him for a weekend getaway to stay with her parents and sibling in their remote, rural and affluent community.
At first, Chris reads the family’s overly accommodating behaviour as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to deeper and darker truths.
For most of the film, you’re expecting the metaphorical pointed white hoods to come out - for the movie’s awkward social racism to transition to violent, overt racism. Or even something like an underground murderous village cult akin to Hot Fuzz. But while there is something sinister behind the Armitage family’s accepting facade, the party they throw is not a secret white power rally.
That’s definitely what you’re meant to think, whether from watching a trailer or simply paying attention to the movie’s breadcrumb trail of clues. But that’s not the way it goes, and by the end you’ll realise that Get Out excels at inverting your expectations. Like Chris, you’re being manipulated. And it works on so many levels.
It’s quite a thriller, running the gamut of horror tropes from cheesy jump scares to dead mobile phones and lost keys. More importantly, tension tugs at the edges of every scene, driven largely by your misgivings about various characters. You know something is up, but you’re not sure exactly what or who’s in on it, and that uneasy feeling never truly leaves you alone until the credits roll.
When it’s not laugh-out-loud funny or armrest-gripping terrifying, Get Out spends most of its other time capturing the uneasy experience of sitting at a family dinner while your parents ruthlessly interrogate your significant other. We’ve all been there at some point, although in my experience this is usually accompanied by a deathly stare from the father that says more words than his mouth ever could, rather than a toothy smile.
The whole thing is made stranger by the pair of servants the Armitages employ, Georgina, the housekeeper, and Walter, the groundskeeper. They’re always there in the background, Georgina adjusting her wig and Walter running full tilt across the lawn in the dead of night, both characters talking like an old white person’s racist idea of how black people talk.
Where Get Out exceeds so well is that it effectively conveys the experience of being the one black guy in the room, with everyone around you trying so hard to make you feel welcome that it goes way past full circle to teeth-gritting discomfort.
Clearly that’s not a feeling I know first-hand, but even if that life experience differs from yours, it’s hard not to relate with Chris’s plight in this movie and his conflicting desires both to fit in and to tell every single person in the room where to go.
Get Out’s whole journey, through every tense conversation crackling with subtext, masterful punchline and shocking act of violence, feels totally earned. Similarly, the conclusion is worth each uncomfortable chuckle and moment of doubt.
If you’re sat at home with a spare couple of hours free this week, do yourself a favour – get out and see this.
Showing in: Cineco, Seef II, Wadi Al Sail, Novo, Mukta A2
Rating: 5/5
