A roller-coaster ride of dizzying proportions

Rating: 10/10 (27 March 2017)

When Donald Trump asked blacks during the campaign, 'What do you have to lose?' he didn't exactly have in mind the circumstances envisioned in Jordan Peele's highly original breakout film Get Out. If you think that the story of a white girl bringing her young black boyfriend home to meet her parents in an idyllic rural setting is going to be a romantic comedy, think again. Influenced by such horror films as Rosemary's Baby and Stepford Wives, Get Out has some romance in it and some comedy but they are all wrapped in a twilight zone basket of social satire, horror, and science fiction that adds up to a roller-coaster ride of dizzying proportions.
Peele, a former comedy star whose show Key and Peele was an Emmy Award-winning series on Comedy Central, has said that he would consider his film to be a "social thriller," a genre he describes as one in which "the horror is embedded in the way people interact, the way people think, the way people categorize." More directly, he has fashioned a look at the unconscious racism that may lie beneath the outward appearance of polite society. The film opens with a black man (Lakeith Stanfield) walking alone on a suburban street in a white neighborhood who is assaulted and thrown into the trunk of a car by a masked assailant, a reminder of the recent murder of Trayvon Martin.
The scene then shifts to New York where Chris Washington, a young African-American photographer superbly performed by British actor Daniel Kaluuya, is planning to travel with his white girlfriend Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) to upstate New York to meet Rose's parents. Though Rose admits that she has not told her parents that Chris is black, she reassures him that they are open-minded and supporters of President Barack Obama who would vote again for him if he could run. Chris and Rose have terrific chemistry together and appear to be on the same wavelength in their outlook on life.
Their trip proceeds without incident until it is interrupted when they hit a deer crossing the road and have an encounter with a police. In what looks like racial profiling, the officer asks to see Chris' ID even though he wasn't the driver but Rose forcefully intervenes in his behalf, a shadowy portent of later events. Chris feels welcome in the home of Rose's parents, bearded physician Dean (Bradley Whitford) and psychiatrist and hypnotist Missy Armitage (Catherine Keener) who both say the right things even though somewhat awkwardly. Dean tells Chris about his father losing an Olympic qualifying race to Jesse Owens and Missy invites Chris to let her cure his smoking habit with hypnotism but he senses that all is not right.
His antennas go up further when Rose's brother, a martial arts enthusiast (Caleb Landry Jones), returns home and immediately challenges Chris to a jujitsu contest. Things take an even more strange turn when he encounters the Armitage's zombie-like black groundskeeper, Walter (Marcus Henderson), and housekeeper Georgina (Betty Gabriel). When elderly friends of the grandparents arrive at the Armitage's for an afternoon garden party, all white except for an older Japanese man and a younger black man (Stanfield), Chris is taken aback by embarrassing comments about Chris' physique and sexual powers and the only black guest suddenly becomes aggressive and threatening.
Feeling stressed by the unfolding situation, Chris calls his best friend Rod (LilRel Howery), a TSA officer who offers some needed humor but also has an unerring insight into what is taking place at the Armitages. The reveal in the last part of the film is too delicious to give away but it is recommended that you fasten your seat belts for a wild ride. Get Out is a highly entertaining thriller that will keep you enthralled right up until the last minute. While it does have some social implications that is up to each viewer to sort out, according to Peele, "the film isn't meant to alienate white viewers so much as let them see this experience that we've (black people) been living through." Although perhaps the rich white liberals in the film are an easy target and depicted as caricatures, Peele says that he "wanted the movie to reflect the racism that exists in all of us." This reflection is also a mirror of the fears that exist in the hearts of black people who must carefully navigate the racial divide every single day of their lives.