Get Out (2017)

This may be the first horror movie of my lifetime that my parents saw before I did. Friends had recommended it to them, and they recommended it to me. They also thought I should expect a wait on it from Netflix, which is why I put it at the top of my queue for October, but it came on time. Truth be told, I had held off on it not just because it wasn't the right month for my horror viewing but because it sounded very iffy for my taste.

The main auteur is Jordan Peele of Key & Peele fame, so I rightly suspected a racial focus. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) goes to meet the parents (Katherine Keener and Bradley Whitford, who looks nothing like Josh Lyman anymore) of his girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams), who assures him they'd have nothing against her dating a Black man. Ooh, but there'd been some inadequate communication: This is the day of an annual family/friend reunion, so he'll meet far more than them. He's not exactly surprised at a lot of the awkwardness from people who try to be polite yet don't seem to know any Blacks personally besides servants, but things start to seem worryingly awry, especially the Stepford-like behavior of the few other Blacks around....

When I first read the title, I thought it evoked an open racist making Chris feel unwelcome. But that's not very amenable to outright horror, so I then thought it more of a sympathetic warning: "...while you have the chance!" The latter was correct. That said, it isn't obvious what exactly is going on until the third act, tho there are hints in retrospect. It's not as weird as my parents made it sound, just...different.

Perhaps the most effective thing about the film is the same as in so many classics: the buildup. The first scene shows a Black man attacked by a masked stranger, evidently because he was in the wrong suburb. It's a while before we learn more about that; in the meantime, Chris knows nothing of it. His first jolt is a deer collision, which has nothing directly to do with the rest of the story but appears to provide a symbolic running theme. Once his nerves calm down from that, it's just a matter of becoming gradually less able to laugh off the actions of others and occasionally calling his friend in the TSA, Rod (Lil Rel Howery) -- on a low-battery phone that keeps coming unplugged, of course.

The early attack and collision are the only violence you'll see before Act 3. In between, there's hardly even a sense of that kind of danger. It's almost like Invasion of the Body Snatchers that way. And partly for that reason, I felt no certainty of what would happen in the end. (There's an alternate ending on the Blu-Ray disc, which I didn't get.) When the violence does return, it's a little gruesome, but nothing you're unlikely to have seen on screen before.

This being largely the work of Peele, you might expect comedic aspects. Well, you won't find comedy listed among the genres; apart from some choice lines by Rod, there's not much to laugh at. But comedy and horror do share a knack for irony, exaggeration, and sardonic social commentary, so it makes sense for Peele to do well at both.

GO isn't likely to give me nightmares tonight. I found it more perturbing than scary. Maybe it's scarier if you belong to the targeted demographic. Regardless, it's good storytelling, so I give it pretty high marks.