Highly entertaining bit of 'wokesploitation' with some questionable subtexts

Rating: 7/10 (17 March 2019)

As a latecomer to this movie I had heard many things, mostly good. And in general those positive reviews were confirmed. But I found the film's sub-textual commentary on race-relations was deeply pessimistic in a way that seemed to exploit, rather than contribute to, the present resurgence of popular awareness and debate around the issue.
The plot, as one expects even of the best horror flicks, is fairly perfunctory and predictable. How would you imagine it might turn out? Everyone who at a glance seems sweet and harmless turn out to be cartoonishly evil murderers.
Some people seem to blame the writer/director Jordan Peele for the fact that all the said awful evil-doers are white, while the only two fully human characters are black. Personally I see nothing implicitly wrong with that. I mean, it is a horror version of Meet the Parents, so what do you expect?
What I do question is the use of the device, repeated several times in the course of the film, of setting up one of the white characters as a real person who might actually have some genuine sympathy for our black protagonist, only to reveal that in fact this ostensible 'white saviour' is just as bad - worse in fact - than the worst of the obviously racist and evil antagonists.
First we have the family, who present as progressive middle-class liberals who just happen to have some black staff. This one is a no-brainer: the genre demand that they be secretly evil.
Then there is the girlfriend, who is presented as a more genuinely open mind who clearly (if belatedly) sees the racial prejudices lurking beneath the surface of her parents' enlightened facade. Again her eventual flip is genre-appropriate and indeed quite central to the plot. But the subtext here is decidedly more questionable than in the parents' case.
Finally there is the blind photography expert (yes you read that right). Here is someone who is literally colourblind, and who, when we first see him, expresses admiration for the protagonist not because of his "genetic makeup" or any other dodgy post-imperial concept, but simply because he respects him as a photographer. Yet when we next see this character, he is literally buying the body of the protagonist whose mind he so admires. Ostensibly he wants the hero's 'eye', in the sense of ability to spot a good photo, but given that the procedure involves a full frontal lobotomy one would think that there would be some legitimate questions to ask about which part of the brain photographic genius actually resides in.
But ultimately such questions do not matter, they are not the point. As in any standard-issue horror flick, these characters' ostensible personal qualities are just shallow facades setting up the later scary twist. But... using complicated and sensitive racial issues to set up crude and violent thrills is... well... exploitation. That is, to be more precise, (and I'm going to credit myself with coining this term,) wokesploitation.
So in conclusion, this movie is funny, entertaining, well directed and acted. But it also exploits difficult topics that demand sensitive and intelligent treatment for crass thrills. Whether this is justified or not is open to question. Personally I enjoyed this, just like I enjoyed the movie Shaft. But in both cases I only enjoyed them if they were kept firmly in the box marked "light entertainment", because when you start reflecting too deeply on the subtext, it starts to feel a little bit wrong.