Bursting through a crowd of derivative horror movies is Jordan Peele's directorial debut Get Out, which, like the best horror movies, takes some kind of fear held by people all over the globe and taps into it to create something truly memorable and shocking. Just look at how A Nightmare On Elm Street grappled with the concept of nightmares to new heights or how The Blair Witch Project wrung so much horror out of the notion of getting lost and not being in control of your surroundings. For Get Out, it decides to base its story out of the unique everyday social problems experienced by African-American individuals as they try to engage with potentially well-meaning (though that's far from always the case) but pervasively ignorant and frequently unwittingly racist white people.
This situation arises for the lead character of the movie, Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya), whose spent four glorious months with his girlfriend Rose Armitage (Allison Williams). The duo have gotten super close, they're uber devoted to each other...but Chris is still carrying understandable concerns about meeting Rose's parents for the first time. Once he arrives, his concerns prove to be well-founded, as Rose's Mom (Catherine Keener) and Dad (Bradley Whitford) frequently engage in the condescending racial BS (the father, for instance, flaunts about how much he loves Obama) African-American individuals continuously experience in real life.
Grounding the movie in that realistic idea not only makes Get Out feel a direct kinship to some of the all-time great horror movies, it works splendidly for this particular premise, as you've already got plenty of tension to go around watching Chris try to navigate a family party filled to the brim with upper-crust white people who berate him with condescending racially uncomfortable questions delivered with a smile and a friendly demeanor. But then, slowly but surely, Chris starts to suspect some other, perhaps more sinister shenanigans may be going around here judging by the suspicious behavior of the two African-American individuals who serve as helpers for Rose's parents.
Jordan Peele's script has loads of fun watching things slowly unravel from more down-to-Earth circumstances in the first half of the movie to probing into more heightened scenarios in the second half of the tale. Yet, even as the premise here gets more and more crazy, the character-driven and racially conscious writing that made it so absorbing in the first place is kept fully intact, lending a sense of depth to everything even as the violence and story twists guaranteed to make you go "WOOOAAAHHH!!!" pile up. Let me put it this way without spoiling all the fun there is in discovering the surprises of Get Out; even in its craziest moments, Get Out never loses touch with its realistic depiction of racial relations, mainly in terms of the kind of garbage African-American people go through everyday in situations white people never face turmoil in.
That deft handling of that specific topic lends depth to the entire movie and its multitude of scares, and yes, there are plenty of scares to go around in this horror film. Much of those frights come from the way the film is shot since Jordan Peele shows a remarkable level of craftsmanship as a filmmaker in his inaugural turn as a director on any project (he hasn't even directed an episode of Key & Peele before this). This is especially true in some brief digressions into more heightened material that seem to be tipping their hat to the likes of David Lynch while cinematographer Toby Oliver brings a similar level of quality to the way certain shots are composed that allow the tension and fear in the story to mount in an exciting manner. Thanks to the way the movie is shot, one is thrust into the unpredictable and uncertain world of the protagonist, thus allowing the scares he experiences to be all the more impactful.
It doesn't hurt of course that Daniel Kaluuya is the one playing the lead character, with Kaluuya exuding a great everyman charm and presence in his performance that makes it easy to invest in him right from the get-go of the story and he handles the parts of his characters journey informed by traumatic pain in a similarly successful fashion. Rounding out the cast is Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford as Allison's uncomfortable parents, who are an absolute hoot, Stephen Root, who I didn't know was in the movie prior to seeing it but it's always great to see Stephen Root and the real scene-stealer of the entire enterprise, Lil Rel Howery as the best buddy of Chris who delivers some incredibly funny dialogue.
Get Out covers unique terrain for an American horror film and hopefully its major box office success encourages a flurry of imitators who choose to mimic its bold storytelling sensibilities and its character-driven nature because, if so, we could be in for a golden age of horror movies. Yes, Get Out does indeed more than live up to all the hype you've undoubtedly heard about at this point, one that serves as a remarkable debut venture for Jordan Peele as a director. I can't wait to see where else he goes next, but for now, Get Out is an excellent horror movie chock full of unpredictable plot points, thrilling chills and it even pervasively carries an insightful take on race. What more could you want??
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