Bill Reviews ‘Get Out’: Making A Polite Smile Be Utterly Terrifying

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Simply put, Get Out, the new film from writer/director Jordan Peele is very likely going to wind up being the best horror film of 2017. I realize it’s only February, and there’s a lot of other big-hitters coming out this year, but I think we’ll hit December 31st and be able to look back and find we’re right. While certain comparisons to The Stepford Wives will come to mind, but that’s a vast oversimplification of what’s going on.

The main story is that of Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose (Allison Williams), who have gotten to that point in their relationship that it’s time to meet the parents. In this scenario, Chris is an African-American and Rose is white, and her parents are a relatively wealthy couple living on a suitably remote country estate. When they arrive, Chris discovers that the estate has a pair of African-American workers – a housekeeper, Georgina (Betty Gabriel) and a groundskeeper . Chris goes to say hello to them only to have them smile and reply back with expressions that make every hair on the back of your neck stand up, because something about it just reads entirely wrong.

Rose’s parents, Dean (West Wing’s Bradley Whitford) and Missy (Catherine Keener) are all smiles and welcoming. Dean especially says everything that a well-meaning white person might say, right down to his instance that he would have voted for Obama for a third time having been given the chance. Dean is a neurosurgeon and Missy is a therapist, specializing in hypnosis for addiction blocking. Chris goes out for a smoke and Missy offers to help him out with his habit with a free session, which he politely declines.

The film is well written, the characters are more than cutouts, and the genre’s trope characters are constantly taking hard left turns off of their normal paths to try something new. Chris’ friend Rod (LilRel Howery) provides comedic relief via phone calls, but the humor works. Where most horror film comedic quips are ill-conceived at best and tacky or crass at worst, Get Out’s moments of humor are sharp and it comes off as something that I’d probably say myself in the situation (if I had the wits to think of it anyway).

One thing that really stands out is how well the movie makes the white audience uncomfortable with how the characters are acting on the screen. A scene of an officer demanding Dean’s ID during a traffic stop when it was Rose that was driving; Dean taking out his ID insisting it’s ok, with Rose pushing back saying that the officer was out of line. Probably better than any other film I can remember, it makes us appreciate the awkwardness of the people around Chris, and how much he has to put up with (while the white audience thinks how horrid he’s being treated, and the African American audience is chuckling along being too familiar with the situation). The other huge upside is that the film could have taken this in a preachy direction, but it really doesn’t, it just sets up the scenarios and lets them play out.

When the scene finally arrives when things begin to come into focus, the audience realizes it even as Chris does. It plays out slowly, and the dread builds. The audience is drawn in, discovering they’ve been holding their breath along with Chris. It’s slow, it’s inevitable, like the moments just before a car crash. You know what’s coming, you see it taking shape, and there’s the anguish knowing that there’s really nothing that can be done to avoid it.

I’ve always been a fan of horror films, and in recent decades the real gems have been few and far between, but Get Out is the kind of breath of fresh air in the same way that Mad Max: Fury Road was for the action genre.

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