Went In with an Open Mind...

Rating: 5/10 (1 April 2018)

But it just wasn't my cup of tea. I think a lot of white liberals and progressives are lying about what they thought of the film; I say this as a white Lefty who felt compelled to lie about what I thought when I first saw the film. Here's my honest opinion:
I think the only reason the film got so much attention was because of white guilt and atonement for the Oscars' neglect of black filmmakers and artists. It's really easy for white people to go to the film and sing its praises in order to show how "woke" they are. But that's incredibly dishonest. The film is cynical and stigmatizes interracial relationships. It's super manipulative. The black characters are painted as helpless victims while the white people are all painted as evil villains. This idea that people of color in interracial relationships are being entrapped by white people into interracial relationships is intellectually lazy.
I did appreciate the satirizing of northern WASPs who "would have voted for Obama a third time if they could have." When I tell people I'm from the South, I get enough looks of pity and/or "you don't have an accent" comments to understand how insufferable these types of people can be. Jordan Peele clearly seems to have a lot of experience with these sort of elite circles (he grew up on the Upper West Side and went to Sarah Lawrence), so I can't really knock him for writing a film about what he knows.
But films should be evaluated on the strength of their writing and the acting, not because they are serving to assuage people's white guilt or as an antidote to Hollywood's overwhelming whiteness. There have been *PLENTY* of great black films, directors, actors, and actresses that are light years better than what we are presented with in "Get Out."