Good fun, but not Oscar material

Rating: 7/10 (3 February 2018)

"Get out" is a well-crafted little thriller, with just the right balance between dead pan humor, poking fun at stereotypes - like "blacks stalking whites in bad neighborhoods" being reversed, "TSA is less competent than police" being reversed, and so forth. There's even some mild horror action at the end.
The premise is well-designed, as black dude Chris and his all-too-perfect white girlfriend meet her mom and dad, who show a little too much concern for his health. Little does Chris know that among the party guests at the parent's secluded estate, the one old blind guy who seems like an OK chap has designs on Chris' body and eyes. Chris is increasingly clued in that something very fishy is going on, with mom hypnotizing him, dad a weird brain surgeon, and the black groundskeeper, the black maid and a black party guest behaving oddly like white folks.
Never mind that Chris' buddy, who works for the TSA, is smelling the roses when they chat on the cell phone, and tells Chris to get the hell outta there. It's too late when Chris finally discovers a shoebox with photos of his girlfriend and a string of previous black suitors, all gone missing.
From this point on, the horror chapter of the script ensues, and it dips into the usual pitfalls of horror flicks, making "Get Out" not even remotely worthy of Oscar consideration. Why for example would Chris' girlfriend string him along when he finally tries to "Get Out," instead of mom just immediately invoking her well-established hypnotic control over him? They needlessly endanger the good health of Chris' body, and they do want it in good health! But the scriptwriters wanted the "nice character who seemingly supports the hero and goes 'bad' on him last" horror clichÃ© in the film. There are many such class-B horror movie artifices towards the end.
The films lacks the cleverness of Hitchcock thrillers, the outrageousness of a Peter Jackson horror flick, but it has humor, and is well-staged to the bitter end, despite being fairly predictable about two-thirds of the way through. Thus it deserves a good chuckle, and provides a satisfying one-time view with some good surprises - That's worth a 7/10.