Russel Wilson - hybrid.

Rating: 6/10 (27 May 2017)

Get Out is at its best when it is busy tightening the screws around its audience, who are shifting uncomfortably around in their seats as black protagonist Chris Washington is assaulted by a barrage of micro-aggressions from his girlfriend's family. She's Allison Williams as the courageous Rose Armitage, treading through racial boundaries and taboos to find love. She also constantly finds herself apologising for the way in her parents and sibling welcome Chris into the family, fetishising his race and proudly brandishing their token Armitage minority like a shiny black trophy. Rose isn't just looking past skin colour, but actively calling out these incidents on behalf of her boyfriend, defending his man while flashing a smile so dazzling she must have stepped straight out of a Colgate commercial. A little too perfect.
Scarier than the expected spikes in the soundtrack and the blank smiles of the black servants are the trenches that Chris must navigate in his introduction to the Armitage estate. Peele closely tiptoes the line between satire and reality here, accompanied by the sheer ease in which Daniel Kaluuya slips into a role that he seems to have lived his entire lifetime; expected sighs, a narrowing of the eyes at every other inappropriate comment, a shake of the head after the moment is briefly disarmed. This constant unease and discomfort is more alarming than the film's clichéd 'gotcha' horror scares, especially coming from the well-worn performances of Whitford and Keener, who do a better job of hiding their sinister intentions than the help, and a ratty brother who looks Chris up and down like a specimen in a lab. Even when these are obviously signposted ("I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could") they retain their sharpness like a gut punch; it's racial prejudice rebranded as simpering patronisation.
The villains of the film aren't right-wing Nazis or hardcore racists, but white liberals who think themselves gracious by welcoming minorities into their household, patting them on the back and calling them "my man" once too many times. Peele is taking aim at a uniquely intriguing clique here, painting a sleek, pristine portrait of a dreamy, post-racial America that is conveniently situated within an upper-class mansion, tucked away in some quiet, idyllic forest. His intentions are fascinating and sobering all at once, but the overall message is wrapped up in a rather clumsy, obvious metaphor that uses tired horror conventions to ramp up anxiety levels. Peele came from skit comedy, and it shows; the film's premise could be one of his older five minute sketches, of white liberals so obsessed with overcompensating for the past that they are literally snatching up the bodies of these fine black specimens and immortalising themselves within them. They worship their newfound vessel, parade his physical talents for all to see, slap the cigarette out of his hands, and arrive in an ominous procession to bid for the rights to claim him.
While Peele establishes a valid target in the first half of the movie, the second veers into a sort of cheap, exploitation territory where we are actively cheering for each posh cult member Chris offs in his bid for freedom. It grafts deeper dichotomies through scenes such as where the white-robed Rose sips milk and googles (sorry, bings) top NCCA prospects with a blank stare, or through the character of Rod, the polar opposite of the genteel black boyfriend in Chris, a loudmouth caricature of a ghetto TSA agent who does the digging into the Armitage conspiracy (he's no longer the target of 'random' spot checks, but rather on the other side of them, exposing lies). These characterisations are low-hanging fruit disguised as complex attitudes, and although we applaud as Rod steps out of the car to save the day, what do we really learn from this? That his concerns were correct all along, and that black men should stay away from dating white women altogether? There's more alarming authenticity packed into that split second of dread that Chris and the entire audience register as the sirens roll up to the scene of a black man strangling a white woman than there is in the rest of the film. To actually have a cop (or, if he was really subtle about it, the same cop from the deer encounter) emerge from the car and clasp Chris in handcuffs would be bludgeoning the point in, yet prove a whole lot more. But Rod takes us back to square one. His fears have been validated.