Get Out thrills and delights

Rating: 8/10 (15 March 2017)

Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) have been dating for five months and it's time for Chris to meet the parents. He's a bit tentative about the weekend because he's black, she's white, and Rose hasn't told her parents. Chris' best friend Rod (LilRey Howery) advises him not to go to their secluded mansion in the woods, but Rose is able to convince him that it's going to be fine. Chris meets her parents Dean (Bradley Whitford) and Missy (Catherine Keener). Dean is a neurosurgeon and Missy is a psychologist skilled in the science of hypnotherapy. At first, they seem like an awkwardly cute, sweet couple trying too hard to be accommodating to their daughter's first black boyfriend, but things turn more than just awkward quickly.
Chris meets Georgina (Betty Gabriel) the maid and Walter (Marcus Henderson) the groundskeeper. They are both black. Dean reassures Chris that despite how it looks (white family with black help), Georgina and Walter were brought on to help with his sick parents and they were invited to stay on after their passing, but there is something off about them. They are blank, vacant, almost like the Stepford wives. Their first night there, Chris steps outside for a cigarette and witnesses both Georgina and Walter behaving quite strangely in the middle of the night. He goes back inside to see Missy waiting for him. Rose and her parents are not thrilled with Chris' smoking and Missy has offered her services to hypnotize him to cure him of his addiction. Despite his opposition to the procedure, Missy is very good at what she does. Chris ends up in "the sunken place" and awakes the next morning in bed, apparently rid of any desires to smoke.
Over the weekend, that has turned into a large get together, Chris meets another black man who is a guest at the party. He introduces himself to Logan (Lakeith Stanfield). At first, Chris is relieved to see another black man at the party, someone who isn't employed at the estate, but his relief quickly fades as he finds out that Logan is just like Georgina and Walter: present, but not all there. Chris snaps a picture of Logan and the flash triggers something in him. He charges at Chris warning him to get out. Rod, who also works for the TSA, also warns him to get out when he finds out that black people have gone missing in that area.
Chris and Rose go on a walk and eventually Rose agrees that it's an awful weekend. She is embarrassed by her family and friends and the experience Chris is having and agrees they should leave. While packing, Chris finds a hidden box of photos revealing he is not Rose's first black boyfriend. In fact, he recognizes her with Georgina and Walter in the pictures. That's when Chris realizes he was invited for the weekend, but he was never meant to leave.
Get Out was written and directed by Jordan Peele of the comedy team Key and Peele. The preview looked completely creepy, a scary thriller with a bit of humor thrown in. I was concerned that it looked like it also might have quite a few of the clichéd "gotcha" moments. Those are scenes where something is inherently unnerving or unsettling, mildly startling, but you are forced to react more severely because of a sharp music tone, a jarring sound effect, or a sudden camera movement. Personally, I don't care much for the forced jumps in scary movies. I'd rather just let the action or lack of action itself be what is scary on its own. Fortunately, there were only two of those "gotcha" moments and they did exactly what they were meant to do by shocking the audience. We all immediately laughed at ourselves for falling victim to the ploy.
Peele has written for MadTV and Key and Peele and also co-wrote the movie Keanu, a movie about a lost cat that didn't really live up to the hype. Get Out is Peele's second feature film he's written and his directorial debut. It's definitely quite a different genre than Keanu, but I went in to this one with low expectations and only gave it a 2.5 Star Prediction. To my delight, it was much better than I thought. It mixed elements of the creepiness of Deliverance, the Stepford Wives, and the Shining; the music of Jeepers Creepers, Nightmare on Elm Street 2 and Halloween 2; the humor of Django Unchained, Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland; and the triumph of 10 Cloverfield Lane, Alien, and 1408. I thought it was worth the money in the theatres and would recommend watching it with a crowd of at least 30 other people in the theatre who are there to be entertained and you can all experience this film together and out loud. You will laugh, squeal, cringe, gasp and cheer for Get Out. I'm bumping up my rating to 3.5 Stars as not only did I enjoy it in the theatres, I'm heavily inclined to watch it again and might even add this one to my home collection. marksmoviemind.blogspot.com