Movie Review: Escape is Not Guaranteed in "Get Out"

Get Out delivers horror, intrigue & social commentary.
There’s no escaping that Get Out is one of the most lauded films of 2017. Praised far and wide amongst circles of horror fans and critics first time director Jordan Peele serves up a sinister take on a black man’s first time meeting his white girlfriend’s parents. Our protagonist Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya, Black Mirror) is a photographer and dog dad has been dating Rose Armitage (Allison Williams, Girls) for five months when she finally coaxes him to formally introduce himself to Ma and Pa Armitage. But here’s the rub. Rose’s ‘rents don’t know that Chris is black. That he’s Rose’s first boyfriend of colour.

The scenic drive up to the Armitage abode is interrupted when a deer smashes into the car, leaving Rose and Chris shaken up, and Chris served up some overt racism from a white cop who demands Chris show ID even though it’s Rose’s car and she was the one who was driving the entire time. Gah.

When the two finally reach the forested estate, and the majestic house which is more of a mansion that a mere cabin in the woods, Chris is met by jovial hunting enthusiast and doctor Dean Armitage (Bradley Whitford) who’s armed with an arsenal of dad jokes and little quips about how he’d vote for Obama for a third term. He’s going for unfazed but he comes off as a bit of a try-hard, which comes through at once when he starts to let his criticisms out and traps Chris in a passive-aggressive micro-interrogation. Momma Armitage, Missy (Catherine Keener) is a psychiatrist and skilled hypnotherapist and she too, starts off buddy-buddy with Chris before looking down at him for his bad habit of smoking and questioning how good he is for her daughter.





Chris is caught off guard by the Armitage’s hired help: cook and housekeeper Georgina (Betty Gabriel) and gardener and groundsman Walter (Marcus Henderson) who are both black and in positions of servitude. He’s made even more uncomfortable by how eager to please and unceasingly positive they are. Chris’s discomfort is intensified as he spies odd behavior from the two on a dark night. Georgina’s Stepford Wife personality and her seemingly innocent and casual acts against Chris, like unplugging his cell phone and leaving it die, leave him prickling with bad feelings all over.

Chris’s best friend, a TSA Officer Rod Williams (Lilrel Howery) adds sass and humor to the ongoings with his frequent calls to Chris and his theory that the Armitage’s are screwing with the minds of black people and turning them into their “sex slaves” and servants. Unfortunately the police force and his fellow TSA coworkers don’t take his fears too seriously.


The thriller tone of Get Out is exacerbated by an shrill and urgent musical score that punctuates the most eerie of scenes, it’s reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Psycho. It’s not just the sounds that put us on edge, the visuals when Chris is unwittingly hypnotized by Missy to quit smoking, during the session he ends up falling into a blackness and endless space and stuck in “the sunken place”, far removed from the sitting room, with Missy looming over him with her voice distant and echoing, as if he’s been pushed down to the bottom of a well, are chilling.




With her family’s big summer bash looming on the horizon, Rose and Chris get roped into staying. Getting out doesn’t seem like a possibility anymore. Something made even more urgent by the arrival of Rose’s little bro, Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones). A sleaze-ball with a hyperactive frat boy and aggressive personality who’s fascinated by Chris’s blackness and has some fantasy of him being a thug and street fighter just because he’s black. The Armitage celebration goes south when Chris is bombarded by all the white relatives and encounters an acquaintance Andre (Lakeith Stanfield) who went missing some months earlier when he was walking around a suburb one evening. Now he’s dressed up to the nines and on the arm of a white woman twice his age, and has the same enthusiasm and robotic happiness as Georgina and Walter. The peculiarity mounts ever higher when Rose and Chris step away to get some space, and Dean hosts a silent auction on the lawn. What are the bids for? A photograph of Chris propped up on an easel. And considering none of them are really art enthusiasts it’s not hard to realize that the image is just a stand in for Chris himself. Yikes. Looks like Rod’s theory isn’t so far fetched anymore. . . .

Get Out diverts from it’s thriller/horror tone during the last forty or so minutes, when it completely delves into the realm of science fiction. To keep this spoiler free for those who’ve yet to see Get Out the following scenes that play out in rapid succession are bloody, gory, and horrific as the mysteries unravel. Some of it has been steadily lead up to since the beginning of the film, but there are still bombshells and unexpected twists that inject even more terror into an already creepy movie. A hidden box of photographs, a series of medical experiments, and freaky video confessionals are just a few of the shockers that come at us as Get Out winds to a closing.

There have been some horror duds this year, but Get Out is not one of them. Well cast, with a airtight plot and a gradually increasing sense of panic and dread along with deliberate camera work, it’s a win on all counts. Get Out delivers horror and intrigue, and it also is very socially conscious. There’s an interesting parallel between hunting deer and Dean’s fixation with hacking into a population that’s running rampant, and Chris being a part of the black community. It’s even more twisted when Dean admits seeing dead deer fills him with glee, and he wishes he could annihilate them all. Eek.

All photos from IMDB.