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This review was originally published on January 24, 2017, as part of our Sundance Film Festival coverage. It has since been updated.
“Get Out,” Jordan Peele’s ambitious and challenging debut feature film, which premiered in a secret screening at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, reveals that we may one day consider directing the greatest talent of this fascinating actor and writer. Though we were aware of his abilities from his days on “Key & Peele” and in feature comedies prior to this, his directorial debut is a complex, accomplished genre hybrid that should cause him to reconsider his professional trajectory. “Get Out” feels new and exciting in a way that most studio horror films don’t manage to achieve. It has the ability to be both unsettling and hysterical at the same time, and it is completely unafraid to call people out on their racist bile. The director revealed during his Park City premiere that the project began with an attempt to write a script for a movie he had never seen before. There should be more directors like “Get Out” who are willing to take risks with their films.
However, it should be noted that Peele is clearly riffing on some films he has seen before, including “The Stepford Wives” and “Rosemary’s Baby,” though with a charged, racial twist on the material. It is essentially about that unsettling feeling you get when you realize you don’t belong somewhere; when you realize you’re unwanted or, worse, that you’re wanted too much by someone. Peele injects a racial and satirical edge into the age-old genre foundation of knowing something is wrong behind closed doors around you, giving the film a racial and satirical edge. Think about it: what if going home to meet your girlfriend’s white parents was not only uncomfortable, but potentially life-threatening?
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With an excellent tone-setter, “Get Out” gets the ball rolling. A young man (the fantastic Keith Stanfield, who has appeared in two other films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and is fantastic on FX’s “Atlanta”) is walking down a suburban street when he makes a joke with someone on the phone about how he always gets lost because all the streets sound the same. A car drives past him, then turns around and begins to slowly follow him down the road. Because it’s an otherwise deserted street, the man is aware that something is wrong. The intensity of the situation is suddenly amplified, and this is perfectly staged in terms of Peele’s direction, and we are thrust into a world in which the seemingly safe suburbs are anything but.
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Cut to our main characters, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams of “Girls”), as they are getting ready to return home to meet her parents for the first time. Rose hasn’t told them he’s black, which she dismisses as a non-issue, but he’s on the fence about it. While Chris’s TSA Agent buddy (a hysterical LilRel Howery) cautions him against going with Rose, Chris finds himself falling in love with her. He’ll have to meet up with them at some point. Rose claims that her father would have voted for Obama a third time if he had the opportunity.
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Something is off about Chris and Rose’s arrival at her parents’ house from the moment they set foot inside. Sure, Dean (Bradley Whitford) and Missy (Catherine Keener) appear friendly enough, but almost too friendly, as if they’re trying too hard to win Chris’ affection and trust. The demeanor of a groundskeeper named Walter (Marcus Henderson) and a housekeeper named Georgina (Betty Gabriel), who almost appear to be like the pod people from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” is even more unnerving than the rest of the characters. There’s just something wrong with everything. But, as we so often do in social or racial situations, Chris tries to rationalize their actions, claiming that Walter is jealous and Georgina has a problem with Chris being with a white woman, among other things. Even Rose’s eccentric brother (Caleb Landry Jones), who frequently appears as if auditioning for the film adaptation of “A Clockwork Orange,” is a source of tension in the story. Things start to get even stranger when Chris goes outside for a cigarette one evening, and things get even stranger in ways that I will not spoil—in fact, the preview gives away far too much. If at all possible, avoid it.
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As Peele builds the evidence that something is wrong in the first half of his film, “Get Out” becomes a slow-burning thriller. Or is Chris simply overreacting to the normal racial tension in the community? Ultimately, Peele’s greatest accomplishment here is in the way he navigates that fine line, staging exchanges that occur all the time but imbuing them with a greater sense of danger. White partygoers compliment Chris’ genetically-blessed physical attributes, and Chris’s mind races as he wonders what the greater purpose of this visit for this young man is. Chris is a minority in a sea of white people who appear to want to own him, which is itself a razor-sharp commentary on the way we often seek to possess cultural aspects that are not our own.
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Peele then throws his hammer to the ground. The final act of “Get Out” is an unpredictable thrill ride that will leave you breathless. Peele, as a writer, doesn’t quite bring all of his elements together in the climax the way I would have liked him to, but he proves to be a strong visual artist as a director, finding unique ways to tell a story that is becoming increasingly out of control. Although some of the satirical and racially charged issues are swept away by the final act, it is slightly disappointing that some of the issues are not addressed more directly. When it comes to race, Peele is experimenting with so many intriguing ideas that I wish the film had a more satisfying payoff, even if that disappointment is more than offset by the sheer intensity of the final scenes, during which Peele demonstrates a proficiency with horror action that I had no idea he possessed.
As for the actors, Peele has a strong command of his craft, eliciting an excellent leading man performance from Kaluuya, having Williams essentially riff on her “Girls” persona, and knowing exactly what to do with Whitford and Keener, both of whom have always had that threatening edge to their amiability. When it comes to sneaking in something sinister into their gracious host routines, they’re experts.
Most importantly, Peele understands how to keep his concept at the forefront of the film. As a result, we are kept on edge and uncertain from the very beginning to the very end of “Get Out.” Even when Howery allows for a little comic relief, it is frequently in the context of how he is convinced that all white people want black sex slaves, so we are never truly at ease. He understands that whenever a black man travels back to his hometown to visit his white girlfriend’s parents, there is a sense of unease and uncertainty. He’s simply turning up the volume on a well-known source of racial tension in order to make a horror film. For the purpose of making horror films, many of our most celebrated genre filmmakers have done exactly the same thing: they have amplified fears that are already ingrained in the human condition. We simply don’t see something quite this ambitious from a February horror film or from a first-time director on a regular basis. Even if the second half doesn’t quite live up to the promise of the first, Peele should not only be commended for taking such a risk, but he should also have producers lining up outside his door to see what else he hasn’t seen before.
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