"Now you're in the Sunken Place."

Rating: 8/10 (5 February 2018)

I've read a handful of the reviews here on IMDb for this picture and see that quite a few folks consider that the film was racist in it's treatment of Blacks. Let me try to take a stab at this from a different direction. My feeling is that the Armitage family was targeting Blacks not because they were racist, but because they recognized the superiority of their chosen victims. We get our first hint of that when Jeremy's (Caleb Landry Jones) dinner conversation turns to acknowledging Chris's (Daniel Kaluuya) athletic looking physique and commenting that he (Chris) would have been a 'beast' if he took up martial arts. When the black maid Georgina (Betty Gabriel) apologizes to Chris for unplugging his cell phone, she makes it a point to mention that she's treated like 'one of the family'. The thing is, she WAS one of the family; it was her body that was used to accept transfer of the brain of Rose's grandmother. Walter, the groundskeeper (Marcus Henderson), was the receptacle for the brain of the Dean Armitage's (Bradley Whitford) father; the guy looked like a world class sprinter when he buzzed by Chris during that night time, fresh air walk. So I ask, was the Armitage family racist? They could just as easily have procured white victims for their life extending pursuits, but apparently they saw something in Blacks that resonated beyond color.
Be that as it may, I thought this film did quite the one hundred eighty degree U-turn from a racially tolerant set-up to the dark, horror filled picture it turned into. And the way it was balanced with humor was quite the scream. Chris's buddy Rod (LilRel Howery) was hilarious expounding on his 'sex slave' theory, and when he showed up at the finale to make the save, you could see his pride in representing TSA agents everywhere. I thought Allison Williams did a fine job as well, arcing her character from a supportive fiance to a diabolical participant in the Armitage plot. In the lead role, Daniel Kaluuya was also superb; my first look at him as an actor was just a while ago in the Black Mirror episode 'Fifteen Million Merits'. With this picture, I think he's well on his way to a fine career.