Meet the Parents

Rating: Null/10 (6 May 2017)

Nervous about meeting his Caucasian girlfriend's parents, a young African American struggles to work out if everyone is acting strangely around him or if it is just his imagination in this unusual mystery thriller. The film is very deliberately paced with lots of malice foreshadowed but exposition only revealed in tiny chunks along the way. In fact, utterly unsettling as the pre-credits sequence is, it is hard not to wonder whether the film would have been better without it since it is the only scene for quite a while that spells out the horror slant of 'Get Out' beneath its quirky façade. That said, there are enough elements that remain elusive here that the film stays enticing until the end. The final quarter also comes off as a very clever homage to the horror movies of the 1970s, complete with appropriate furniture for the period. What really elevates the film though is its social satire. The racism agenda is a little on-the-nose, but the protagonist's anxiety at being a 'token' African American really clicks, forced to enter into awkward conversations with several houseguests at one point who have no idea how to talk to him without sounding racist. It is actually quite a universal predicament and aside from being a captivating mystery movie, 'Get Out' also pinpoints how strange it can be to interact in an environment when one is a minority, whether it be by race, religion, gender, age or other factors.