GET OUT MOVIE REVIEW BY JMcNaughton
Jordan Peele is well known as a comedian and a funny guy, but now he gets to stretch out his inner Hitchcock with “Get Out”. This story is written and directed by Peele, and it is a far cry from his stand-up sketch routines. He takes a story of young black man dating a white woman, and then meeting her family. They all take an instant liking to him, perhaps being a bit too friendly. This does not come nearly as well as “Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner”, or “Meet the Parents”.
Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is a talented you photographer who has met a very lovely woman named Rose Armitage (Allison Williams). They do not let any racial differences stand between them, and she even likes his friends. One friend named Rod (Lil Rel Howery) works for the TSA. He thinks Chris should date Rose, but not get involved with her family.
So that is exactly what Rose wants to do, take Chris up to the whitest of white suburbs and meet her family. After all, they would love Chris as much as she does. Her dad even wanted to vote for Obama again, so they must be all right. On the trip upstate, they have a weird encounter with a deer in the road, so things do not bode well for Chris.
Chris meets the family at their huge estate and mansion. Her mother Missy (Catherine Keener) is a hypnotherapist. I’m sure that fact will not become important. Her father Dean (Bradley Whitford) is a neurosurgeon. Bah, just a coincidence, right? Her brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) is basically just weird. He would really like to wrestle Chris and get him into a chokehold.
The Armitage family has two black live-in servants. Walter works outdoors and likes to run at full speed at night. Georgina works in the kitchen and likes to stare at herself in the mirror. Chris is very put-off by the whole scene, and he tries to sneak a cigarette one night. Missy sees him and offers to hypnotize Chris to stop his smoking habit. Chris falls into a deep sleep but wakes with a nightmare.
But the weekend is just getting started, when the family friends arrive for a party. Everyone there is acting very weird, and there are no ‘brothers’ at all. Chris sees one other black fellow, but he also seems very out-of-place. Just like the black servants, they behave like pod people, with no emotion or any recognition of being black. It’s like they have been turned into ‘The Stepford Blacks’.
Chris tries to contact his TSA friend Rod, but only some information gets through. Rod starts to think something is messed up big time, and Chris needs to high-tail it out of there. Chris convinces Rose that he needs to go, and he will leave with or without her. Rod some more research and finds out some serious details about what might be going on. Chris comes to realize that there is more to the whole family than he ever thought.
“Get Out” is a very well constructed puzzle that pulls you in the weird world of Rose Armitage and her family. Chris find outs bit and pieces of the puzzle, the same time the audience learns them. When the alarms bells start to go off and real danger lurks nearby, the final act shows how a suspense film can become a horror film. Bravo to Jordan Peele for creating a craftsman-like work. And this is his first effort, no less!
The writing is right up there with the best screenplays. The movie was made on a very tight budget, and it shows up more than a few times. The acting is very good, although Daniel Kaluuya plays Chris as too much of a laid-back slacker. Even in a very limited role as Rod, the TSA agent, Lil Rel Howery outdoes most all the cast. Of course, it does help when you get the funniest line at the end of the movie.
This movie will reach an audience that will have a great time getting caught up in the mystery. The fact that it was relatively cheap can make it very profitable. So that might make Jordan Peele a new star in Hollywood. So if that happens, we can all be happy.
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