Get Out (2017)

[First review here.]

USA / Japan, 104 minutes

Director/writer: Jordan Peele

Photography: Toby Oliver

Music: Michael Abels, Childish Gambino

Editor: Gregory Plotkin

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, LaKeith Stanfield, Betty Gabriel, Marcus Henderson, Stephen Root, Lil Rel Howery

[spoilers] The making of Get Out spanned the transition from the Obama to the Trump era in the US, which affected Get Out directly in terms of the way it ended. The streaming version available via Amazon Prime includes an alternate ending with explanatory voiceover from director and writer Jordan Peele, turning to horror movies after a lifetime of comedy. This career shift may not be as radical as, say, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who transitioned from comedy into national wartime leader. But it’s pretty radical, especially given that Peele’s horror movies are not just there for the sensations—though they are generally quite good at sensations—but also as a forum to discuss and enlighten contemporary and ancient racial issues. Get Out is consciously “woke” before that term was coopted and distorted by rightwing dullards. Indeed, Peele chose the Childish Gambino song “Redbone” to play with the titles at the beginning of the movie in part because the song’s chorus urges us to “stay woke.”

Get Out is also funny, with a premise that is sitcom gold: Black boyfriend Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) is being taken Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner style by his white girlfriend Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) to meet her family in a distant, affluent New York suburb. Chris has his concerns about how they will take him as a Black man, but Rose tells him not to worry. They’re not racist. They would have voted for Obama for a third term if they could have, which her father Dean Armitage (Bradley Whitford), a neurosurgeon, later confirms word for word. But once there we see Chris had good reason for concern. The white family is awkwardly welcoming but can’t help constantly revealing their unconscious racism, of which the Obama comment is a great example. But there are more disturbing undercurrents as well, more than Chris or any of us might have expected, such as Black servants who are hostile and zombie-like by turns. There’s often an uneasy sense of just how isolated this place is.

Us (2019)

For the third year in a row now an African-American movie has posted surprise breakout box office numbers early in the year. One was Black Panther and the other two are horror movies with extra sauce directed by Jordan Peele. If Get Out played a little safe first by going for laughs (Peele is still probably best known as a comic, after all), and then winding up the final third in all too familiar slasher style horror convention, Us is better, more ambitious, even more committed to its unique premises and piling on the conventions in layers. There are unmistakable racial glosses in both, but they are often more like recognizable universal elements contributing to the general anxiety. We're not that surprised, for example, when police are slow to respond to a 911 call from the family of four in Us (Winston Duke, Lupita Nyong'o, Shahadi Wright Joseph, and Evan Alex). And no, it doesn't matter that they are buppie middle class. In fact, what's more surprising is that there might actually be a reason other than racism for the slow response. Or at least, I know a reason was mentioned. But other things were mentioned that would make it seem unlikely. Us can get to be slow sledding at some points toward the end, encumbered by all its concept and hints of counter-concepts and a desire to impress. That might mean the movie is actually even better on another go. I don't know about that yet. But down on the level of the hoary old horror movie, it has plenty of good things going on, borrowing dread from classic themes of horror, notably the always strangely unnerving doppelganger threat, mixing them shrewdly with not-yet-so-classic themes of home invasion movies like Funny Games (1997 version), The Last House on the Left (2010 version), or The Strangers (2008), along with some seasonings of body horror and paranoia from The Brood and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. A big neon sign early in the movie points to C.H.U.D. and there's a hazy sort of kidnapping in there too, as backstory. At a carnival. Plus '80s nostalgia. It finally all sets up a mano a mano throwdown between the family that has spent the first 20 minutes of the movie charming us silly—Us is as good on middle-class complacency as the early scenes of Close Encounters of the Third Kind—versus their strange counterparts in the restrained red jumpsuits, which may or may not be part of a worldwide plague, like the original George Romero zombies. But that's part of the concept and there for you to figure out with loved ones later over pie and coffee. There's only so much you can do with these kinds of mysterious what-is-the-universe-anyway kinds of things. Us does most of them and does them pretty well and it knows how to scare without shock cuts (though of course it has shock cuts). Everyone is good and N'yongo is amazing, especially in the red. See it.

Get Out (2017)

Like most thrillers or horror movies, the first half of Get Out—when the sources of tension are not yet clear, and all you know is there are intriguing and unsettling things to worry about—is better than the second half, when all unlikely ramifications must play out. Get Out also indulges today's too easy bent toward super-heroics to connect plot dots. Catherine Keener gets the honors here for powers beyond our mortal ken. Still, these weaknesses are a matter of the film's chosen form as much as anything. As a so-called comedy / horror movie, nervous laughter is what it's all about. Director and writer Jordan Peele, who I don't otherwise know, established himself first as a comic actor. This is his first directing job though not his first screenplay and it's solid, its chief strength being the peek it provides into the simmering anxieties of African-Americans attempting the post-racial thing when the only people around are white. The nightmare fantasy behind the friendly show: these smiling faces ultra-privileged whites still want to hold blacks in bondage as slaves and secretly that's exactly what they're doing. Daniel Kaluuya is Chris Washington, a young black man. Allison Williams is Rose Armitage, his white girlfriend. Rose is taking Chris home to meet her family for the first time, though she's neglected to mention to them that he's black. That wouldn't be post-racial. Understandably, that's cause for concern for Chris. More troubles: on the drive to the country estate, they accidentally hit and kill a deer, though it doesn't die right away, which shifts the picture in an instant to unpleasant realms. When the responding policeman asks for Chris's ID, Rose kicks up a stink. He wasn't driving, she says, and has no obligation to show his ID. When Chris meets the family these problems only get worse. The father, Dean (Bradley Whitford), turns unnaturally slinky and hep when he meets Chris. He wants to know how long this "thang" with his daughter has been going on. Later he tells Chris he would have voted for a third term for Barack Obama if he could have. It's one cringing moment after another, which is only complicated by the fact that all the Armitages' servants are black, and furthermore, they're acting kind of peculiar. Catherine Keener is Missy Armitage, Rose's mother and a psychiatrist who specializes in hypnosis therapy. Dean is a neurosurgeon. But all is not as it appears in this lush exurban enclave. Something is not right. That's what the movie is about and those are the scary parts, and they are better left to be discovered on your own. It's worth seeing, especially for the insights on black anxieties, as far as they go.