Get Out: Movie Review

I’m writing about this movie some time after its release in theaters (I saw it in a cinema when I was on holidays in Valencia last year, to tell you the truth) just because I’ve just re-watched it on DVD: Get out is a 2017 film directed by Jordan Peele, his first as a director, starring Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams. I’m not the first one to notice, of course, but this film is really amazing and goes straight into the list of great recent debuts in the history of cinema. Three of those that immediately come to my mind are: Lucky (2017) by John Carroll Lynch, Ladybird (2017) by Greta Gerwig and, to remain within the horror genre, The witch (2015) by Robert Eggers.

In Get out everything works superbly, something that I can perhaps explain better with some examples. The opening scene, with clear references to John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), is perfectly connected to the scene of the party in which the same, but completely transformed, black guy “wakes up” for a moment and shouts “Get out!” to  our protagonist, Chris, who’s still in the dark about what’s going on in the villa of her girlfriend’s parents. Also, it is foreshadowing the fighting skills of her brother!

When the cop asks Chris for his documents after the car accident even if he wasn’t driving and the ice-cold Rose opposes herself to this abuse, it seems that she’s defending Chris (which later comments “that was hot!”)… but she only does it in order to avoid leaving official traces of Chris’ passage in that area! Brilliant.

The comic relief, Rod (LilRel Howery), is great and really makes you laugh. Also, the surreal situations in which he finds himself in serve the plot. His denunciation which results not credible even to the African American policemen, his clumsy attempts to save his friend by deceiving the much smarter Rose… everything leads us to accept his providential arrival at the end as a well-deserved happy ending (even if in the classic horror tradition of UNHAPPY ending, if the police had arrived instead and arrested Chris maybe we would have accepted the ending anyway!) .

And the dialogues are great, I love the way in which the director frames every shot (I love the symmetry that he uses; the movie poster is also very symmetric, with the strong black and white juxtaposition), the special effects are well done… And I was impressed by the way in which the director deals with the issue of racism in today’s United States. Jordan Peele shows us a group of rich pro-Obama white men claiming that they are not racist and that they admire the African American community, but at the same time are incredibly racist as they are ready to USE the persons of that community as if they were some 1800s’ American slavers… this type of hypocrisy is far from fictional in the world today! And the soundtrack, the actors, the photography , the tension created by the mystery at the beginning (the plot is really unpredictable!) and by the violence later… in short, it’s a really phenomenal film, worth watching many times!

If you haven’t done so, watch Get out as soon as possible, you won’t regret it! Ciao!