Get Out. Released:
Feb. 2017. Runtime: 103 mins. MPAA Rating: R for violence, bloody images, and
language including sexual references.
Over the years a number of films have attempted to mix
horror and humor. The truly successful attempts have been relatively few.
Writer/director Jordan Poole’s first film, Get
Out, is one of those few.
The success by Poole, a biracial comedic performer noted for
his impression of President Obama, stems from two facts. The first is that the
humorous approach he has chosen is sharp social satire about racial stereotypes
rather than the more usual slapstick or gross-out approaches. The second fact
is that Poole has, so to speak, largely segregated the humor into the first
half of the film and the horror into the second half, thus intensifying the
unique effects of each type of material.
The movie involves the visit of Chris
Washington (Daniel Kaluuya), a young African-American photographer, and his
white girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams), to Rose’s parents’ secluded
estate. There they are welcomed by Rose’s father, Dean (Bradley Whitford), a
neurosurgeon, and her mother, Missy (Catherine Keener), a hypnotherapist.
There are also two black workers on the estate,
groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) and housekeeper Georgina (Betty
Gabriel). The somewhat Stepfordian submissiveness and stilted speaking style of
Walter and Georgina strike Chris as quite odd.
Rose’s brother, Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones), joins Chris,
Rose and the parents for dinner that evening and proves to be quite obnoxious.
After dinner Chris and Rose go to bed, but Chris awakens in the middle of the
night and goes outside for a smoke. A strange encounter with Walter and
Georgina, and an even stranger one with Missy, follows. In the morning Chris
has difficulty recalling what actually happened.
Dean and Missy have invited many of their friends to the
estate for a party. The friends are all older white people, except for one
young black man, Logan (Lakeith Stanfield), who is married to one of the older
white women. Like that of Walter and Georgina, Logan’s behavior strikes Chris
as odd.
During the party the white folks make cringeworthy comments
about the putative superiority of blacks in such areas as athletics, sexuality
and the arts. Chris’ photography is even praised by a blind art dealer (Stephen
Root)!
Chris shares his increasing uneasiness in telephone calls
with his friend Rod (LilRel Howery), who works as a TSA agent at an airport.
Rod is obsessed with the Jeffrey Dahmer sexual slavery/cannibal killings case
and says that white people might be trying to do this to Chris.
Chris shrugs off Rod’s comments but tells him that he is
going to end his visit earlier than planned. But when Chris doesn’t show up
back at his home and can’t be reached by phone, Rod goes to the police with his
theory. But black officers laugh it off and do nothing.
We are now in the horror half of the movie, and Chris is
discovering frightening truths about the Armitages, their help and their
guests. Poole’s writing/directing skills and the acting skills of his cast give
us true Schadenfreude (“pleasurable
fright”) as we, like Chris, get caught up in the discoveries. Poole has called
his work a “social thriller” and “Guess
Who’s Coming to Dinner as a horror story”. May we have more such!
“Footnote” to the
film: In 2014 Time magazine named
Jordan Poole and his performing partner, Keegan-Michael Key, “One of the 100
Most Influential People in the World.”
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