Get Out

The directorial debut from Key and Peele’s Jordan Peele’s, Get Out, is a sleeper of a satirical horror movie that’s been lighting up movie audiences.

I watched the trailer for Get Out and thought to myself, “I’ll bet I would enjoy that.” If you watch the trailer and think the same thing, then I highly recommend this film. It is solidly written and great fun from start to finish.

Get Out is the story of a young black man named Chris, who is going to meet his girlfriend’s parents at their fabulous Southern plantation. If the idea of meeting your significant other’s family doesn’t fill your heart with complete, all-encompassing dread, then there is more to chill your blood as the strange occurrences around the property make Chris uneasy from the word go. Get Out keeps the audience on the edge of our seats.

The story itself is actually quite predictable. I figured out the twist about 15 minutes into the movie, but even knowing that did not ruin the story for me. Chris is a very likable hero and seeing him get sucked further and further into a situation that is getting more and more out of his control was a great ride. Everything is tightly woven with very little time wasted, and the fact that a lot of the more sinister occurrences around the compound are disguised by racial bigotry, is actually a nice touch. The issue of a black man meeting a white family is addressed, and used without feeling heavy-handed as situations like that often do, and the type of tension that it creates is just perfect for what ends up happening.

All in all, the performances are spot on across the board. Daniel Kaluuya is perfect as Chris and Betty Gabriel has a couple of real standout moments as Georgina the housekeeper. Even the girlfriend’s older brother, whose mannerisms and general tone in no way fit with the rest of the cast, are welcome, and end up making perfect sense with the framework of the picture. Everyone has the same sort of fake friendliness you would expect from a group of closet racists, but it turns into so much more than that. Even the comic relief character (played by Lil Rel Howery) is a great addition that doesn’t take away from the tension as so often happens in thrillers like this.

Technically the movie is exactly what you should hope to expect (but often can’t) from anything that gets a theatrical release. It is well put together, everything makes sense, there is music in the right places, good but not overpowering. The entire thing is packaged into a very reasonable hour-and-a-half runtime, which seems to blow by as you get sucked in to the story.

Get Out is not without it’s flaws, however. It is exceptionally simple if you are a veteran of horror movies. It is very easy to see what is coming and it could be enough to ruin the film if it weren’t so well done. The performances really save it.

The finale, while incredibly intense, feels very easy and Chris seems to react not as the character we have come to know, but as someone who has lived through one too many Saw movies, which is a little off-putting, but also incredibly satisfying. Also, for a horror movie, it is not scary. No jump scares, no moment when your blood turns to ice because you don’t know what is going to come out of the dark. All of that stuff might sound game-breaking, but the story is so well told and tightly wound that it doesn’t really matter that you aren’t shitting your pants in raw terror, or sweating as you try to figure out what is going to happen next. You just get to sit back, relax with some popcorn, and watch a really great movie.

Overall, I would recommend this show to anyone who watches the trailer and is interested. It isn’t going to blow your face off or give you a stroke from all the never-before seen flashes of untold brilliance, but it is going to leave you satisfied that you just watched a cool show and you don’t regret taking the trip to the theatre.
Unlike Rings. Rings was a piece of shit.

Tags: get out, horror, jordan peele, movies, review

About the Author

Brando Quiring is an aspiring writer and all around good guy whose interests include giant robots, things that go bump in the night, spicy food, and smaller robots. He believes that through his studies of life around him and his contributions to it, he will some day save the world.