Not what it first appears to be -- and an instant classic!

Rating: 9/10 (8 March 2018)

It was my second viewing of Jordan Peele's independent little film, "Get Out", that grabbed me. On my first viewing I was lulled into complacency while lazily taking in the first half of the film, the kind of complacency the film ultimately squelches. I had conveniently forgotten the short pre-credit sequence of a casual black man walking through a white suburb at night being struck and abducted into the trunk of a car. Everybody does, and when it catches up with you, you know it. Previously a comedian, this is writer/director/producer Peele's directorial debut, and he gives us the African-American nastiness of a Hitchcock, palming his aces to play in the last half hour of the film with the relish of the Master. The set up: a young black man is pressured by his white girlfriend into meeting her parents by spending a weekend at their secluded estate in the woods. What follows is a gradual descent into nightmare as he intermingles with upper class white liberals who bring out the paranoia in him - or do they have their own agenda? (Remember even paranoids have real enemies.)
Watching this film might enlighten white liberals like myself by forcing us to experience what black people have felt for years in our company (let alone among white conservative racists!), but the film goes much further than one might imagine, even taking the form of a horror fable encompassing not just racial themes but also serving as an uncompromisingly astute societal dissection. Shot in a mere 23 days, Jordan Peele has done something really special here: an engrossing thriller that also bravely delves into important issues, issues that Peele himself has had to deal with personally: e.g., the marginalizing of African-Americans ("No matter how hard we scream, the system silences us," Peele says). But don't get me wrong: This is a work of entertainment, not a 'message' film -- and that's all to the good.