A 5-star production - if it's a Virtual Reality horror movie

Rating: Null/10 (8 June 2017)

Get Out is an intense, unnerving movie that keeps you on the edge of the seat --- only if you are satisfied with an adrenal rush and not looking for any depth in the characters or the story. It's a great production done with superb acting, music and visual arrangement, but as a movie about racism it just doesn't go beyond.
It starts with the romance between Rosie and Chris, the sweet white girlfriend and the talented African-American photographer, where Rosie asks Chris to spend a weekend at her posh parents' country house. It's just a weekend, but as things get awry, it escalates to be a matter of life or death. The backdrop can be easily taken as a trope for racial relations/tension in America, but contrary to what Peele the director aspired to do, this movie just couldn't provoke any discussion or shed light on the touchy issues. To have the guests "locked up" in a grandiose house with two distinct camps of the white and the black is also a scene that occurs in Tarantino's Django Unchained. While Django Unchained uses a fictional story to unveil the cruelty and injustice of black slavery, Get Out feels more like a sorcerer's tale that manages to carry the label of racism because the victim happens to be a black. The characters are diabolical and psychotic, but they are also flat and uninspiring. They might carry a secret agenda, but it just makes them look like an underground cult group who somehow has a bit of a supernatural power – it must be because some of the things they do are scientifically impossible, e.g. the surgery scene. Their persona and the things that they can physically do – hypnosis by the mother and surgeries by the father – are just not representative at all. They do not carry any association to racists or the xenophobic. In fact, they are also kind of dumb to have that kind of video conferencing set-up in the room where the victim gets to talk to the perpetrator. It works well if the movie wants to create suspense or terror by paying tribute to the horror classic Saw, but again, it doesn't add any depth to an intellectual reflection on racism.
Some people comment that the film commits dogmatic stereotypes. I think the only stereotype used here is that the black and the white are by default at war with each other. Yet, it's used more as a convenient trick to shove the audience into this them-versus-us mentality so we get as suspicious as Chris. The horror is real, the acting is fantastic and does send the chill off your spine, but it doesn't stimulate your thinking or perpetuate any racial prejudices. If this movie is played in a virtual reality movie house, it's top notch; but if it attempts to be meaningful, it is not.