When a young man goes to meet his girlfriend's family, it's only a matter of time before tensions run high, right? Add some of the smartest social satire in years, throw in a dash of classism, sprinkle on some fanciful psychology, and then pour all that onto the main course: a blistering indictment of casual racism in America. It's a bombshell of a film, one that sparkles with wit before it lances your sensibilities. Apparently taking its inspiration from The Stepford Wives and Rosemary's Baby, but by no means a simple re-imagining, Get Out is a masterwork, and its writer and director, Jordan Peele, has never helmed a feature film before.
Structuring classic horror tropes and thrilling plot devices isn't what makes Peele's achievement here. It's his obviously passionate awareness of everyday interactions and people's "good intentions", his vivid recollection of historical racism and how it affects us today, and his talent for disarming humor that ignites the film. From the very first scene -- a lone black man (LaKeith Stanfield) trying to find his way through a suburb at night is followed and attacked, and if you don't immediately think about Trayvon Martin you're part of the problem -- Peele forces us to confront the racism so ingrained in our culture that we scarcely recognize it.
What might be called the most savvy element to Peele's satire is his risky, not-quite-veiled assault on mainstream white liberalism, whose proud "colorblind" and superficially anti-racist remarks belie true motivations that are both engendered by and pursuing racist agendas. The wealthy white parents (played to perfection by Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) are aware that having black servants working around the house looks bad, but they happily explain it away in terms of "family". They flaunt their approval of President Obama and "Tiger" and appropriate jargon and slang, seemingly proving their postracial bona fides. Their wealthy white friends touch the young black man's muscles without asking, ask his girlfriend about his sexual prowess, and objectify his every feature. It's not a comfortable sequence to watch, and Peele seems intent on forcing his white audience to be as hyperaware of race as we often accuse black people of being.
It's a gamble, of course, lashing out at comfortable liberalism and wealthy whiteness, not because we don't deserve it, but because it's not as funny or familiar as caricatures of conservatives and poor racists. Seemingly sweet and apparently harmless, it's the white liberal sensibility -- petrified of being perceived as racist -- that can create spaces of whitewashed colorblindness, structured by racist history and allowing rank oppression to grow beneath the linoleum. In fact, early in the film, the white father declares offhandedly that their basement has been sealed up, a result of rampant "black mold".
While the final act reveal is neither as unpredictable nor as realistic as some might prefer, it deserves a few comments as well. Outlandish as the idea may be (I'm trying really hard not to spoil it for you, but know that it involves an unholy mix of neuroscience and hypnosis), it is little more than a modern incarnation of eugenics. The villains' previous discussions of cultural appropriation and racial objectification come to a vicious head in the climax. Afterward, of course, there is little else for the film to do but follow through to its bloody, brutal denouement. Peele even here avoids genre pitfalls, keeping our awareness of race heightened as bodies drop one by one. Even when cop car lights show up at the end, it's not necessarily a sense of relief, as we fear that even more racial profiling will undermine the hopes we have in our young hero.
PS: The best performance in the film belongs firmly to Daniel Kaluuya, our leading man, whose relaxed, nuanced, and grounded delivery is relentlessly believable. The other showstopper, however, would be Betty Gabriel, who plays the maid Georgina. Her electrifying presence on screen reaches a screaming climax about halfway through, when she meets the protagonist in his bedroom. I want to see more of her!
IMDb: Get Out
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