Already riding high on a tidal wave of critical acclaim and a member of the ‘100% Certified Fresh’ club on Rotten Tomatoes, Jordan Peele’s (one part of the comedic geniuses that are Key&Peele) horror comedy/social commentary Get Out finally reaches Irish shores, and boy, was it worth the wait. Holding up a mirror to liberal’s views of racism, and showing how a bunch people who think they intimately know the plight of their black counterparts can actually do more harm than good (one man’s insistence that he loves Tiger Woods will raise an uneasy laugh), many a thought will be provoked, but the genius of Peele’s directorial debut is that it doesn’t just rest on it’s social satire, delivering an unbelievably entertaining experience from start to finish.
The story follows photographer Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya), who has his doubts about meeting his white girlfriend Rose Armitage's (Allison Williams) parents Missy and Dean (Catherine Keener and Bardley Whitford) for the first time. Once he sets foot in their lavish estate, his concerns prove to be valid, with Missy, Dean and their friends attempts to make him feel welcome being a landline of casually racist small talk. But that’s the least of his worries, as he soon discovers that there is something incredibly mysterious surrounding the increasingly odd behaviour of the Armitage’s back servants.
From the opening frame, Get Out will immediately grab you as Peele’s smartly written and layered script drip feeds you the information, leaving you as much in the dark as Chris is. The audience's unease matches our hero's as the movie marches on, and while it may be billed as a horror, it has all the trappings of a psychological thriller as soon as the action transplants to the Armitage estate, with one or two scares thrown in for good measure. The film is shot through with a style all it’s own, especially when it comes to Missy’s own brand of hypnosis and the 'Sunken Place’. This trippiness further goes to foster unease in the audience, and, aided by an incredibly game cast, Peele slowly cranks up the wonderful weirdness until the bonkers third act, where every little detail and element introduced comes together in a torrent of gore and violence that was missing in the, by comparison, sedate first hour. He also manages to mix in a welcome layer of comedy, mainly down to the inclusion of Lil Rel Howey as Chris’ best friend, Rod. He is mainly separate from the action, at home in Chris’ apartment, trying and failing to piece together the mystery for himself, and Howey wrings every available bit of humour from his role. You may think pausing the story to check in on the comedy relief would damage the flow of the story, but it actually strengthens it, giving us time to catch our breath before Peele throws another crazy twist at us.
Get Out never hits you over the head with it’s social commentary, but what it is trying to say will be uneasily familiar to just about everybody. But that is one piece of the puzzle that makes this movie so damned entertaining, and one of the finest horror movies of the last few years. I’d go far as call it a masterpiece.
The story follows photographer Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya), who has his doubts about meeting his white girlfriend Rose Armitage's (Allison Williams) parents Missy and Dean (Catherine Keener and Bardley Whitford) for the first time. Once he sets foot in their lavish estate, his concerns prove to be valid, with Missy, Dean and their friends attempts to make him feel welcome being a landline of casually racist small talk. But that’s the least of his worries, as he soon discovers that there is something incredibly mysterious surrounding the increasingly odd behaviour of the Armitage’s back servants.
From the opening frame, Get Out will immediately grab you as Peele’s smartly written and layered script drip feeds you the information, leaving you as much in the dark as Chris is. The audience's unease matches our hero's as the movie marches on, and while it may be billed as a horror, it has all the trappings of a psychological thriller as soon as the action transplants to the Armitage estate, with one or two scares thrown in for good measure. The film is shot through with a style all it’s own, especially when it comes to Missy’s own brand of hypnosis and the 'Sunken Place’. This trippiness further goes to foster unease in the audience, and, aided by an incredibly game cast, Peele slowly cranks up the wonderful weirdness until the bonkers third act, where every little detail and element introduced comes together in a torrent of gore and violence that was missing in the, by comparison, sedate first hour. He also manages to mix in a welcome layer of comedy, mainly down to the inclusion of Lil Rel Howey as Chris’ best friend, Rod. He is mainly separate from the action, at home in Chris’ apartment, trying and failing to piece together the mystery for himself, and Howey wrings every available bit of humour from his role. You may think pausing the story to check in on the comedy relief would damage the flow of the story, but it actually strengthens it, giving us time to catch our breath before Peele throws another crazy twist at us.
Get Out never hits you over the head with it’s social commentary, but what it is trying to say will be uneasily familiar to just about everybody. But that is one piece of the puzzle that makes this movie so damned entertaining, and one of the finest horror movies of the last few years. I’d go far as call it a masterpiece.
