DIRECTOR: Jordan Peele STARRING: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Catherine Keener, Caleb Landry Jones, Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel, Lakeith Stanfield, Stephen Root, LilRel Howery, Ashley LeConte Campbell, John Wilmot, Caren L. Larkey, Julie Ann Doan, Rutherford Cravens, Geraldine Singer, Yasuhiko Oyama, Richard Herd, Erika Alexander, Jeronimo Spinx, Ian Casselberry USA 2017
9
Twisted and rich with invention, Get Out is one of the most brilliant horror-satire statements in today’s independent cinema, orchestrating a creepy and beautifully horrifying cinematic experience.
Jordan Peele (of Comedy Central’s Key and Peele) makes his directing debut with one of the brightest and sharply funny examinations of racism in contemporary America through his social analysis. Get Out is remarkable in many aspects. An artful blend of tension, meticulous weirdness, top notch acting, incredibly deep and with a layered analysis of what racial paranoia, slavery and exploitation is all about.
When you first start watching the movie you will unavoidably start drawing comparisons to films like Meet Your Parents or even Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner as the initial setting is fairly similar. Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya), a young African-American photographer, is experiencing the stress of someone who’s about to meet his white girlfriend’s (Allison Williams) parents (wonderfully played by Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) for the first time during a trip by visiting their country estate. However, in no time everything goes from awkwardness to creepiness while there’s this sense of political correctness surrounding the impeccable and pseudo progressive white family that totally clashes with their liberal values. Starting with their “black” help, their groundskeeper, Walter (Marcus Henderson), housekeeper Georgina (Betty Gabriel) and their odd behavior, or even black sex slave Logan (Lakeith Stanfield), the only other black guest at the weekend party.
If we think about movies like 12 Years A Slave or even Django Unchained, we get this immediate and straight in your face slavery and all the racial shame that America is still struggling with. But what you get here is a perfect satire of what today’s America really stands for, fake political correctness, social and cultures clashes, the perfect portrait of the world we live in. Let’s call it progressive slavery but this time around there’s no shame whatsoever about it and people don’t appear to be too bothered to even think about that. With references of Tiger Woods or Barack Obama, or with sentences like, “My dad would’ve voted for Obama a third time if he could’ve,” “They are not racist,” or even “Did they know I’m black?”, this movie screams that America, Hollywood and social media have been failing to discuss: the real issues, the real problems. Get Out really makes you think the absurd and nightmarish future ahead of us.
Somewhere between Rosemary’s Baby, Night Of The Living Dead, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner and The Stepford Wives, Jordan Peele’s social thriller brings a new and more realistic approach to filmmaking, paying homage to Martin Luther King, Hitchcock, Romero and even Carpenter. All this is enriched with sharp and brave social commentary and a modern twist regarding the complexity of societal issues.