☆☆☆☆½
There's a big, rambling house in the countryside, away from the eyesight of prying neighbors. The residents of the surrounding hamlet are, at best, eccentric. Strange things seem to happen at night. And there are far, far too many smiles.
These are the familiar elements of Jordan Peele's gleefully inventive Get Out, a movie that I've heard described as a "horror satire," but that's wrong in a couple of important ways: it's not a horror film, it's a tremendously crafted suspense-thriller; and it's less a satire than a sharp, observant view of the state of post-Obama race relations in the United States -- that country where some pretty prominent people still try to justify slavery and a movie that glorifies a time "of Master and of slave" is still considered one of the greats.
But, ho hum, who would want to see that kind of a movie? We've moved beyond race. We don't see color. But writer-director-producer Jordan Peele knows better than that -- and he also knows his movies, and he's taken careful notes of the ways in which really classic thrillers work, and the ways in which "horror" films have become cheap and lazy. Get Out is neither cheap nor lazy (except economically -- the movie cost less than $5 million to make, and you'd never know it), it's a fiendishly clever assimilation of cinematic devices and pointed, salient commentary.
The most extraordinary thing about Get Out is that it goes right up to the wall of propriety -- and smashes through it. This is a film that works on multiple levels, and the kind of film that twists and turns in on itself so enthusiastically that the very best thing you can say for it is that it only hints at its depths in the first viewing.
To describe the plot beyond the most basic setup would be going too far: Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is a black man dating Rose (Allison Williams), a white woman who takes him home to her folks in upstate New York. His best friend Rod (Lil Rey Howery) tells him not to go, and on the way in to the country one of those scary-movie things that always happens to couples on their way to the country happens to Chris and Rose.
And there are weirder things once they get there, not the least of which are the groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) and his wife Georgina (Betty Gabriel, in one of the most eerie and aware performances you're going to see on screen this year). And then things get really weird.
So, let's recap: House in the country, strange servants, creepy things afoot. These are the elements we've seen in movies since the silent era, and Peele doesn't even try to make them feel new. He wants them to feel familiar and disturbing, even funny -- and Get Out is frequently very funny, and finds its anchor in the fantastic work by Kaluuya, Williams and, mesmerizingly, Catherine Keener as Rose's mother.
There's also the disquieting sense that Chris is both way ahead of and way too far behind the plot to figure it all out, and in that respect, Get Out reminded me of Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. (That one of its less visible but more pivotal characters shares a name with one of the key characters in that film can't be a mere coincidence.)
Perhaps most satisfying and surprising about Get Out is that the first drop of non-animal blood doesn't appear on screen for nearly 90 minutes. Peele knows what so few filmmakers seem to understand today -- that it takes more than torture-porn scenes and loud noises to drive an audience into a state of suspense, and that what keeps a great thriller going is a sense of unraveling mystery.
If he couldn't deliver on making a terrific thriller, he couldn't add in the underlying commentary, which at times is wonderfully subtle One disturbingly weird scene in particular might be a head-scratcher ... until you realize what exactly is happening. If it doesn't hit you for a while, don't be ashamed, it does seem like a head-scratcher -- but, go ahead, Google exactly you saw and at that point, if you hadn't figured it out already, the whole movie will lock into place and have you spinning, like its main character does himself at one point, into an entirely different dimension.
Viewed March 11, 2017 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks
1830
These are the familiar elements of Jordan Peele's gleefully inventive Get Out, a movie that I've heard described as a "horror satire," but that's wrong in a couple of important ways: it's not a horror film, it's a tremendously crafted suspense-thriller; and it's less a satire than a sharp, observant view of the state of post-Obama race relations in the United States -- that country where some pretty prominent people still try to justify slavery and a movie that glorifies a time "of Master and of slave" is still considered one of the greats.
But, ho hum, who would want to see that kind of a movie? We've moved beyond race. We don't see color. But writer-director-producer Jordan Peele knows better than that -- and he also knows his movies, and he's taken careful notes of the ways in which really classic thrillers work, and the ways in which "horror" films have become cheap and lazy. Get Out is neither cheap nor lazy (except economically -- the movie cost less than $5 million to make, and you'd never know it), it's a fiendishly clever assimilation of cinematic devices and pointed, salient commentary.
The most extraordinary thing about Get Out is that it goes right up to the wall of propriety -- and smashes through it. This is a film that works on multiple levels, and the kind of film that twists and turns in on itself so enthusiastically that the very best thing you can say for it is that it only hints at its depths in the first viewing.
To describe the plot beyond the most basic setup would be going too far: Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is a black man dating Rose (Allison Williams), a white woman who takes him home to her folks in upstate New York. His best friend Rod (Lil Rey Howery) tells him not to go, and on the way in to the country one of those scary-movie things that always happens to couples on their way to the country happens to Chris and Rose.
And there are weirder things once they get there, not the least of which are the groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) and his wife Georgina (Betty Gabriel, in one of the most eerie and aware performances you're going to see on screen this year). And then things get really weird.
So, let's recap: House in the country, strange servants, creepy things afoot. These are the elements we've seen in movies since the silent era, and Peele doesn't even try to make them feel new. He wants them to feel familiar and disturbing, even funny -- and Get Out is frequently very funny, and finds its anchor in the fantastic work by Kaluuya, Williams and, mesmerizingly, Catherine Keener as Rose's mother.
There's also the disquieting sense that Chris is both way ahead of and way too far behind the plot to figure it all out, and in that respect, Get Out reminded me of Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. (That one of its less visible but more pivotal characters shares a name with one of the key characters in that film can't be a mere coincidence.)
Perhaps most satisfying and surprising about Get Out is that the first drop of non-animal blood doesn't appear on screen for nearly 90 minutes. Peele knows what so few filmmakers seem to understand today -- that it takes more than torture-porn scenes and loud noises to drive an audience into a state of suspense, and that what keeps a great thriller going is a sense of unraveling mystery.
If he couldn't deliver on making a terrific thriller, he couldn't add in the underlying commentary, which at times is wonderfully subtle One disturbingly weird scene in particular might be a head-scratcher ... until you realize what exactly is happening. If it doesn't hit you for a while, don't be ashamed, it does seem like a head-scratcher -- but, go ahead, Google exactly you saw and at that point, if you hadn't figured it out already, the whole movie will lock into place and have you spinning, like its main character does himself at one point, into an entirely different dimension.
Viewed March 11, 2017 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks
1830
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