Get Out (2016)

With the recent home video release of Jordan Peele’s Nope, I’ve decided that the time is ripe to go back and take a closer look at his entire filmography, beginning with the film that first announced the arrival of one of horror’s most unique and interesting voices: 2016’s Get Out.

When Chris is asked by his girlfriend Rose to come spend the weekend with her family, he agrees reluctantly, worried about what their reaction to their white daughter dating a black man might be. For her part, Rose reassures him that they won’t mind, and so Chris goes along without resistance. When the two of them arrive at the Armitage’s lavish home, however, things quickly get uncomfortable, with Rose’s brother making odd comments to Chris about his ‘genetic makeup’ and her mother, a hypnotist, insisting that Chris let her put him under so that she can ‘cure’ his nicotine addiction. Her father seems like he means well, but his attempts to seem hip and liberal just come across as strange. Chris believes all of this to be a result of the normal sort of culture clash that results from interracial relationships, but little does he know that the true reason for all of this is decidedly more nightmarish than he ever could have imagined...

Now, by this point, I’d assume that most of you out there have already seen this film and probably don’t need me telling you how incredible it is, but I’m going to give it the old college try anyway. You see, Get Out as a horror film is balanced between so many extremes: it’s uproariously funny yet disturbing, fiercely intelligent yet shlocky and violent, and artful yet crowd-pleasing. It’s something so unlike anything else in the genre, and so besides the fact that it’s been analyzed to death and back already, it’s kind of hard to put any one finger on exactly makes it so special in the first place. But enough preface already!

"A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

Let’s take the first point. Get Out achieves what seems on the surface, to be impossible: it tells an intelligent story, full of social commentary, allegory, and painful autobiography, while somehow managing to be the B-movie spectacular of the season. In the hands of another director, I have no doubt that the balancing of these polar opposite approaches would have sunk things, but Peele manages to hold it all together in a way that gets you seriously invested in the characters and the premise just before the film makes its final turn into grisly horror filmmaking. In fact, maybe my only criticism of the entire film is that Chris, a strong character who would never hurt a fly, ends up doing a lot of wanton slaughtering at the end of the film in a way that feels too easy from a writing perspective, and too shlocky and absurd from the perspective of anyone who knows anything about human psychology. Self-defense is one thing (see The House of the Devil’s climax for that particular take) but he’s more or less picking them off before they even know he’s there (except with the women, of course) which is a bit of a lurch. Even then, however, you could argue such catharsis is earned by that point, and at least he never gives over completely to bloodlust. 

And it’s not just the way the distinctly postmodern way it balances intelligence and humanity with silly horror tropes, no sir; Get Out is one of the few horror-comedies out there that could genuinely count as either/or. It can make you belly laugh one moment, before pulling the rug out from under you just a moment later, leaving you chilled to the bone. The humor initially works as something of a safety blanket for the audience to hide behind, but as the horror ramps up it begins to come off as cruel, only furthering the feeling of being trapped inside a nightmare you can’t wake up from. Rod, Chris’s friend and he of TSA fame, is one of the greatest audience surrogate characters of all time and a reliable source of comedy, especially early on. However, once he has to take matters into his own hands, he gets serious, only those around him don’t take him all that seriously. Don’t worry though; he sneaks his funniest line in at the very, very end of the film, and it’s a doozy. The point being: Peele knows exactly what he is doing. The horror and the comedy don’t just careen all over the place, crashing into each other and themselves willy-nilly; each leaves space for the other, and the presence of both in tandem only makes them stronger individually.

*spoilers*

And have I made it clear yet that this film is fucking scary? Its central horrific concept is one that has always been effective, but which is usually only explored in voodoo horror films. Here, it’s used simply because it most resembles the sort of indoctrination that Peele wanted to write about, but boy did he know how to put it to good use and do it justice all the same. The thing is, though, that the reveal and all its horrors comprise a tiny portion of the film; the bulk of it is spent watching Chris interact awkwardly with the Armitages and their rich and wealthy guests from all over the world, and those scenes are filled with tension, of both the social and Hitchcockian kinds. I love the soft ‘reveal,’ just for the audience, that the entire party is up to no good when Chris goes upstairs to check and see if his phone is charged, whereupon the entire procession becomes dead silent, follows the sounds of his footfalls above them with their steely gazes, and just… listens. And sure enough, when he picks up his phone, Chris discovers it’s been unplugged… again. 

Get Out also distinguishes itself from most modern horror fare by its little touches of artistry that you wouldn’t see in too many other Blumhouse horror films (read: any other Blumhouse horror films.) Yes, there’s the wonderful sequence where Chris is sent into the starry void known as the “Sunken Place,” which has become something of an iconic image in and of itself, but I’m talking more about the way that the story itself is conceived and told. Specifically, I’m talking about the film’s detailed use of animal symbolism, itself a staple, and how it adds up to something of an allegory within an allegory. First, a deer leaps out in front of our couple’s car, and Chris is shown to be heavily affected when he follows it into the woods and finds it heavily injured and dying slowly and horribly. Huh, that’s weird. Maybe just a bit of ominous foreshadowing? But no, it’s actually more complicated than that. We find out later that his mother was killed in a hit-and-run accident when Chris was just a child, something which has haunted him ever since. So it’s then understood that the deer represented his mother, something which causes a bit of concern when the patriarch of the Armitage family confides in Chris that he hates deer and views them as little more than vermin. There’s also no denying that, as the events of the film get into gear, the image of that poor defenseless deer, unable to move but clearly in tremendous pain, is a perfect representation of our Chris himself, and why he will become little more than fodder for those that wish him harm. And when he’s finally kidnapped and restrained by the Armitages and awakens strapped to a cozy chair in an enclosed ‘viewing’ room, what’s the first thing he sees? A mounted and stuffed deer head, complete with an operatic musical sting. And who could forget; when it comes time for Chris to stand up and fight back against his oppressors, what does he weaponize against them? That very same stuffed deer head, and in particular, its antlers. Name me one other Blumhouse film that does anything ever remotely as intelligent as any of that? No? Plus, all of this also sets up a late moment when Chris just can’t let himself drive away when one of the villains is violently thrown from a car that he’s driving, and the moment shortly after whereupon he’s unable to finish off the most evil of all the Armitages with his bare hands. Needless to say, it’s no wonder the WGA considers this the greatest screenplay of the twenty-first century.

"Black is in fashion!"

But there’s one thing I haven’t touched on too much so far, and that’s the social commentary of the film, something which is generally the most talked-about aspect of it. I must stress that this isn’t something I can speak to with any sort of authority, but I figured I might as well go through and share some of the things that I observed while watching (on this, my third-ever viewing of the film.)

I love the opening scene. It’s iconoclastic, funny, and urgently relevant. It plays on the horror of a black man having to walk through a white suburb at night, especially when he believes that someone may be scoping him out. I love, love, love the premise; the idea that Chris interprets all of the oddities in the family dynamic as a result of culture clash or discomfort, when the reality is actually something far more absurd and Frankenstein-esque. I also love all the little moments that come across as the intelligent screenwriter’s version of those “white be like/black people be like” jokes, usually centered around the body-swapped black housekeepers who all talk and act so white it’s positively disarming and honestly pretty creepy. And who couldn’t love the moment when Chris becomes so suffocated by the whiteness of the Armitage's family get-together that the moment he notices a black man, even from behind, he immediately marches right up to him in the hopes of being able to speak to someone, anyone who he can relate to, only to be cruelly rebuffed yet again when he makes it there.

And then there’s the Sunken Place and its ties to the film’s central allegory: that white people, the media, ‘the system,’ and just about everyone else are complicit in a system that exploits black people’s fears, vulnerabilities, trauma, and pain in order to make them into naught but automatons to be used for the benefit of others. Essentially, anyway. Obviously, it's not the most leakproof thesis there’s ever been, but that’s the thing: this is a horror film, it doesn’t have to be anything but nightmarish, and nightmarish it most certainly is. To what degree you buy into its social critiques is almost irrelevant because the point is that it gets you thinking about them at all. This is a personal sort of nightmare that I imagined meant a lot to Jordan Peele, and like the best art, it has a way of putting you squarely in his frame of mind as you watch the horrific events of the plot unfold, to a degree that it’s kind of hard to deny that he’s onto to something here, one way or the other.

Continuing with that same allegory though, there’s Stephen Root’s character Jim Hudson, who is one of my favorite characters in the whole film. First off, I love him because he’s a villainous character with depth: he doesn’t seem very concerned with race at all (in fact, he’s blind) and he actually seems like a very down-to-earth guy who’s been cursed by random chance. You see, not only is he blind, he’s a blind art dealer who owns a prestigious gallery. Chris warms up to him quickly, as he himself is something of a promising photographer, and at one point Hudson even seems to suggest that there may be room for him at one of his galleries in the near future. Only thing is, that’s all BS, because Hudson is really feeling Chris out to see if he ought to bid on him later on in the film. Hudson wants Chris’s body so that he can see again, but he specifically wants Chris’s photographic eye and the way that he sees the world. Leaving aside the fact that all of this makes him a far more interesting villain than the Armitages, with clear good and bad present in his interactions, there’s also that his character and the relationship he has with Chris are quite similar to all those stories we hear of black artists being stripped for parts and tossed out with the garbage by wealthy ‘stewards’ of the arts. 

I also find it interesting to speculate as to exactly what Peele was trying to say with Rose’s character. Is he saying something about, as that one college course insinuated, “the coveting of black bodies?” Specifically, in the romantic sense? I’m not entirely sure, but it’s certainly worth discussing and digging into, even if I don’t think I’m really the one to do it. What I will say about Rose though is that that last scene of her, sitting in a bedroom that is not befitting of someone who’s implied to be pushing thirty, googling “top NCAA prospects,” and eating dry cereal before washing it down with a sip of milk, all while surrounded by the mounted trophies of past lovers, marks her out as something of an iconic horror movie villain. If she's not necessarily the most terrifying, she’s certainly one of the most infinitely hate-able out there.

All of this provocation continues until the very end. The villains are down; all but Rose, who’s currently bleeding out while Chris straddles her, trying to get up the strength to finish her off as she deserves. Suddenly, sirens and police lights appear, and Rose begins to shout for help like the dirty little coward she is. Chris freezes, and puts his hands up, preparing to be either shot down like a dog or locked away for good. But lo and behold, who should it be but none other than Chris’s best friend Rod, just in the nick of time? Peele said that he initially planned this to go down about like everyone expected, but was eventually convinced to go with a less bleak ending, something that I think was probably the right move. As it stands, Get Out is able to leave us with a good feeling without ever diminishing the all-too-real horror that lies at its core.

*end of spoilers*

"Behold, the Coagula."

And so what else is there to say? Well, I could mention the film’s wealth of wonderful performances, such as those by Caleb Landry Jones (probably his definitive performance) or his onscreen mother Catherine Keener (loved her in Synecdoche, New York.) And of course, there's Daniel Kaluuya… god, what is there to say about his performance that hasn’t been said already? The man is utterly convincing in an extremely demanding role and if this was the only work he'd ever done, he'd still have a spot in the history books. And that’s the thing really; I can sit here and list out all the people I was happy to see, and I can cite a few standout moments, like Betty Gabriel’s big scene acting opposite Kaluuya where it genuinely seems that the black woman buried deep inside her is trying her best to get out, but all of that just seems pointless when the truth is that everyone, from front-to-back and no matter how small the part, is turning in quality work that puts the acting in many more 'serious' films to shame. 

And of course, the technical aspects of the film are nothing to sneeze at either: Peele’s direction feels mature and surefooted, with each element, whether visual, aural, narrative, or performance, working perfectly in tandem with everything else. I love the film’s rustic visuals a lot, but the aspects that stood out the most to me were the musical ones: the creepy chanting, the ultra-sparse string score, and the smart use of well-suited licensed music, all of which would become trademarks on all future Peele projects, the rest of which I’ll be covering in the coming weeks. 

So, to summarize, Get Out is a titanic film not because it’s “woke,” not because it’s simply “topical,” or even because of its representative qualities. It’s because, first and foremost, this is a great film, and it takes the basic language of visual storytelling every bit as seriously as its groundbreaking script, itself taking old horror standbys and transforming them into something brand new; a horror film in the spirit of the bleak seventies, but which would never have gotten made then. Peele knew that in order to subvert the system, he had to learn to play by its rules first, and the result is simultaneously one of the great crowd-pleasing horror films and one of the most provocative pieces of popular art ever assembled.