Year: 2017
Director: Jordan Peele
This little film is so perfect, you’ll find yourself giving a standing ovation over the end credits. I hesitate to call it a horror, despite plenty of jump scares and some stomach churning gore in the last act.
But good horrors often make you doubt they are horrors at all. A young black man visits his white girlfriend’s parents in an affluent New Hampshire neighbourhood for the first time and… SOMETHING’S not right. Despite her assuring him beforehand that her family aren’t racist, everyone seems to be treating him with suspiciously veiled politeness. And the only other black faces he sees belong to servants and groundkeepers. You want him to, well, ‘get out’, but you can also see what compels him to stay and face up to whatever is actually going on.
Things get weird. And then violent. I was a bit worried for a while that it was going to be one of those films that leave matters unanswered and expect the audience to make up their own minds. I’m all for open endings, but with a mystery as compelling as this, it would just be cheating.
You want the loose ends tied up. And boy, does this tie up the loose ends ingenuously. The last twenty minutes are such a thrill-ride, you hardly even notice all the pieces falling into place, such is the quality of the action and the plotting.
A quality cast (only some of whom I recognised, including the wonderful Catherine Keener) have you constantly searching their expressions and body language for clues. And the soundtrack and cinematography are uniformly excellent.
Let’s hope justice and good taste prevail to give Get Out the word of mouth success it deserves.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Tasteful and weird horror like Don’t Look Now or Kill List.
metal mickey says
It’s high on my “to see” list, so thanks for the review and the lack of spoilers!
And there’s no need to wish the movie luck, it’s already nudging $150 million revenues at the US box office, on just a $4 million budget, so it’s made a lot of people very rich already…
Arthur Cowslip says
Wow. That’s so good to hear. The cinema was almost empty when I saw it. It really deserves the success.
Kaisfatdad says
Great review. Certainly made me want to see it.
I love it when a “small” film is a success on the strength of script and acting.
Sewer Robot says
Oh yes! A lot of films nowadays try to win favour by riffing off of familiar movies and it works against them; Get Out evokes some of the more cerebral atmospheric horror of the 70s (in particular) in a contemporary setting and thanks to the script, direction and casting the execution is spot on.
And, with apols to one of of my AW chums, I’ll never think of “bingo” the same way again…
Sewer Robot says
Additional thought: last year’s low budget sense-of-inevitable-doom-in-a-disarmingly-polite-setting horror which also begins ominously with the protagonists’ car striking a deer The Invitation is available for free on YouTube (also on Netflix)
While it’s nowhere near as tidy or clever as Get Out, there’s some fine “am I being paranoid or am I in danger?” tension building in the first hour before the more generic reel three mayhem..
https://youtu.be/P6WoQyaY3II
Gary says
Thanks for the tip. I’ll watch that this evening. Can’t wait to see Get Out in the light of your review.
Gary says
Oops, wasn’t your review, Sewer. Was Mr Cowslip’s. How dare you tacitly accept the credit!
Sewer Robot says
Er… sorry for the confusion, but on the plus side we’re keepin Arfur’s great review on the “Updated” list.
Third thought: many over this side are unfamiliar with Jordan Peele’s tv work, which contains many of the elements that turn up in the movie. There are far worse ways of spending an hour than sampling sketches from the Key and Peele show on YouTube*
(Human Centipede Reunion)
*(I don’t have shares in YouTube).
Gary says
Just watched Get Out. “Silly” would be my one word review. Very disappoint, I am. I mean, it was ok I guess, but I thought The Invitation (see above) was a much more interesting movie.