Although well directed and acted, that doesn't matter if the

Rating: 3/10 (22 December 2017)

Reveal isn't solid. And it wasn't.
(I should preface this with me being a white man in his 50, albeit a ultra liberal.)
And with this, it's all about just waiting around for the reveal. It was paced and acted well but pedestrian in the writing and character development.
And why? Why all this front-end crap for something that could have been done with a simple kidnapping? It was just an extended creepfest without the slightest sense of purpose in the end (except the very vague "auction").
You know. A kidnapping. Like they had at the beginning of the film. Why was it so important to string out the middle act if that was a clear and very easy option?
And in that, it made no sense. Not even economic sense. If there were so many potential "customers" at the party, why not just kidnap and make more money?
Why would the daughter Rose go through what was apparently four months of a relationship with the lead Chris just to have him as fodder for the psychotic white doctor and, conveniently, the psychotic family members? Kidnapping would have done the same. It was the height of sociopathic for the whole family being that she was constantly having sex with men she didn't care for.
And the other glaring omission. Why him? He was a good guy, sure. But like the other example of someone taking over a young man's body, the character of the person being invaded made no difference. It was never defined (nor attempted) why Chris was "special." And if it did, why would anyone choose to take over the body of a smoker?
Additionally, the mechanics of Rose having all these relationships would call for her to have contact with men that lived a safe distance from each other to avoid detection. Thus, more reason to just kidnap.
The element of social media would greatly increase leaving evidence behind in the form of photos of the men with Rose.
I finally realized that the day party to observe Chris was an auction for his body. Not like it could have been more vague. But even still the whole procedure was about transferring conscious and nothing about the character of the victim. Even the desire to have Chris' "eyes" made no sense as his eyes would not have given the recipient any creative advantage. Just rhetoric that sounded good.
It was about youth and vitality, which played into the fears of the perspective black audience, but I didn't buy that old whites would want to be transferred into such (without explanation that a film did not have latitude for). There were too many societal and personal blocks to white people consistently wanting to take over the bodies of blacks.
Grandma's and grampa's "act" was vastly played up as a cheap device to create suspicion and likely bore no relevance to the characters displayed in the "holding cell" video. The one instance we saw grampa in the video in the end was no explanation of their erratic behavior. Quite the opposite.
Chris' cell phone cut out when talking with his best friend. Was suggested that it was just the battery, but nothing suggested the battery was low.
And the elements of the finale were just plain dumb:
So Chris' attention is unavoidably directed toward a small closet with the door open. He HAD TO LOOK INSIDE! (Suggesting that it was left there to be found.) In it, there is a red box with all the photos of the other black men that Rose had lured to their demise. Looked great but...why was it there other than to quickly clarify a story element? None. Absolutely none.
I don't think you could hook up video to such an old television in the "holding cell."
The cotton in the ears was clever but why did he remove such other than to clarify the cotton was there? That's to say they didn't have continual video surveillance (although with the intercom that was stated), being that they started the videos when Chris woke up.
The operating room was the most unsanitary one in recent film memory. A box full of medical knives in a red felt-lined box looks good, but hardly realistic.
What was the procedure? Was there a device in the white patient's head that collected the conscious, which then was transferred into the black person's brain? Very vague and never defined. Not even cursory.
Seems very premature for Chris to kill the father other than the opportunity of violence.
Despite the many deleted scenes on the DVD extras, they never explained how the best friend found Chris. But probably something very simple related to his cell phone that the "bad guys" didn't think about.
And what was made of Chris' smoking? Zero. Zilch.
But in the end, they did extremely well vs. the budget, which negates anything I have to say. But for me it failed creatively and analytically in the execution.