Review: GET OUT

GET OUT
★★★1/2
(HORROR/MYSTERY-THRILLER) 
Directed by Jordan Peele
Written by Jordan Peele
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel, Lakeith Standfield, Stephen Root, LilRel Howery, Erika Alexander
Rated R for violence, bloody images, and language including sexual references.
103 minutes
Verdict: Clever, tightly wound and unexpectedly well directed, comedian Jordan Peele has an unexpectedly mastered hand for horror in his directorial debut.
YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN GET OUT IF YOU LIKED:
THE STEPFORD WIVES  (1975)
THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE  (1975)
THEY LIVE  (1989)
THE CABIN IN THE WOODS  (2012)
KEANU  (2016)
 
The new horror-thriller GET OUT makes great use of social criticisms and satire, but it isn't necessarily so much a pointed allegory or think piece as it just is a really solid, handsomely made horror movie, which is particularly surprising since it comes from the mind of comedian Jordan Peele, best known for his collaborations with Keegan-Michael Key on the Comedy Central series Key & Peele.  It shouldn't actually be that surprising, considering the close relationship between the horror and comedy genres, which both rely heavily on pacing, reveals and surprises to elicit a visceral response from the viewer.  GET OUT is pretty funny at times, but it's more funny in the ways smart horror movies like Tobe Hooper's THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE or Drew Goddard's THE CABIN IN THE WOODS were, as opposed to a true horror-comedy or even things like Sam Raimi's "splatstick" style of silly horror thrills.  The comparison between GET OUT and the 1975 horror classic THE STEPFORD WIVES is most obvious, but it's also in a vein similar to the original TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE from the same year.  If you haven't seen that film or haven't seen it recently, the comparison may seem off-putting, but the original 1975 TEXAS CHAIN SAW was a very clever, uncomfortably and slyly funny and definitely scary movie that used the social reality of rural blue collar workers alienated and left behind by capitalism and an industrialized civilization as an opportunity for suspense, culture clash and turning ideas about family and the consumption of meat on their heads.  GET OUT, although made on a very small $4.5 million budget, is a much more professional and pristine-looking film that takes the realities of modern "benevolent racism" and uses those for uncomfortable laughs, commenting on cultural differences and subverting some expectations, but mostly, it's just a good solid fright show.

Daniel Kaluuya (of SICARIO) stars as Chris Washington, a young black photographer dreading his coming introduction to his white girlfriend Rose Armitage's (Allison Williams, daughter of former news anchor Brian Williams and from HBO's Girls) parents.  She insists he has nothing to worry about because they would have "voted for Barack Obama for a third term if they could" (to be fair, even President Trump, the "least racist person" any of us has ever seen, wouldn't have done that), but when they arrive in the affluent suburbs where Rose's parents reside, things are just a little bit off.  Dean (Bradley Whitford), Rose's father, is a neurosurgeon who can't wait to dominate the conversation with how tolerant and liberal he is, but with a weird undercurrent of terseness, while Missy (Catherine Keener), Rose's mother, is quieter, a psychiatrist who's deeply disturbed by Chris's smoking habit and can't wait to get him on her hypnosis couch.  Then there's the Armitage's maid Georgina (Betty Gabriel) and their handyman Walter (Marcus Henderson), both black and both bizarrely, almost mechanically submissive.  The longer Chris stays, the weirder things get.
Peele's script deals with racial issues on a fundamental level and to varying degrees between the overcompensating Dean, the more openly hostile Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones of X-MEN: FIRST CLASS), Rose's grotesque brother, and the mostly older and white residents of the town who seem to like black people as long as they're "useful" to them.  These thematic issues are used more as an opportunity than as part of a point, although they're still real-world relevant and offer food for thought.  In addition to writing, Peele directed the film as his first directorial feature, and his well-polished aptitude for classic-style horror is remarkable, but looking at the always comic but tonally and aesthetically widely varied material of Key & Peele, it shouldn't be that surprising.  But also, it's really good.  His comedy is there, but much more grounded, and non-intrusive.  I wouldn't call it a horror-comedy, but it's a horror movie that has some comic elements, with the more obvious laughs constrained to a single character and his subplot, and subtler, cringe-based laughs scattered throughout the main body of the story.  Most of the movie is very foreboding however, tensely building toward a deliriously bloody climax that runs like clockwork.

Universal Pictures