Mar 24, 2019
Hi everyone!
It’s a special review today for One Movie Punch. In preparation for this weekend’s release of Jordan Peele’s “Us”, I went back to watch “Get Out” for the first time since seeing it twice in the theaters. I always planned to review the film after starting the podcast, but I just never got around to it. So, with my review for “Us” coming up tomorrow, I thought reviewing “Get Out” the day before seemed like the right thing to do. And I definitely have a lot to say.
Later this week, we’ll have reviews from Ryan L. Terry, Garrett Wright, Keith Lyons, Andrew Campbell, and one more from yours truly. We’re also gearing up for a week of Spring Break films in April. If you have any favorites, let us know over social media, or at onemoviepunch.com. And if you feel like supporting the podcast, you can always contribute to our Patreon fund at patreon.com/onemoviepunch. All funds go to making this podcast possible.
On to the review!
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Today’s movie is “Get Out”, the breakout social horror film written and directed by Jordan Peele. The film follows photographer Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya), who is heading into the country with his white girlfriend Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) to meet her parents. However, not everything is as it seems in the Armitage household, and Chris must do everything he can to get out. Jordan Peele won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay at the 2018 Oscars. The film also received nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Daniel Kaluuya was nominated for Best Actor.
No spoilers.
Perspective is an important concept for understanding our modern world. Each of us has a perspective, shaped by our families and our friends, our experiences and our education. We refine that perspective by looking for examples that support our views, or trying to understand or rationalize away examples that don’t. Until recently, however, not all of our perspectives were reflected in the entertainment industry, and for a long time, it showed. Women were often reduced to caricatures. People of color were often mocked or reduced to tokenism. LGBTQ people weren’t even allowed on the screen, or only in the most offensive ways. Whole perspectives either missing or masked or only marketed towards homogenous markets. Without those perspectives, we miss out on the opportunities to understand another’s experience, and to understand the larger social problems around us. And it offers us a unique opportunity to tell tales from these many missing perspectives.
Which brings us to “Get Out”, a film that’s all about perspective, and in particular the perspective of a black man meeting his white girlfriend’s parents for the first time. Meeting the parents is a stressful situation, but for Chris, it’s that stress *plus* having to navigate the social and racial politics that go along with it. Daniel Kaluuya does an amazing job capturing that stress and fear, from the initial planning and packing, to the car ride to meet the parents, to the all too awkward conversations with Rose’s parents, expertly played by Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener, not to mention the more than awkward conversations with Rose’s brother Jeremy, played by Caleb Landry Jones. Every microaggression, intentional or not, becomes a social battleground, and it forces us to challenge our own perspectives. I certainly flinched more than once when I saw my own awkward behavior interacting with people of color reflected back at me on the screen.
Jordan Peele certainly had a lot of experience on “Key & Peele” tackling these microaggressions with white characters in a comedic way, but placing them within the context of a horror film made them all the most sinister. Subsequent viewings deepen those battlegrounds, as you begin to notice the deep subtext in the dialogue. However, Chris also struggles with the lack of authenticity from the black characters he meets, especially during an extended conversation with Georgina (Betty Gabriel), the Armitage’s maid. It creates a lot of doubt about identities.
As events unfold, it becomes even more difficult to know who to trust, especially when the only and least likely voice of reason in the film is Chris’s best friend, dog sitter and TSA agent, Rod Williams (Lil Rel Howery). Rod’s character also serves a brilliant thematic purpose, though, playing on the stereotype of people screaming at characters in horror films to stop doing stupid things. He becomes an unlikely guide for Chris to avoid falling into the trap of tokenism for black characters in horror movies, a perfect subversion of tokenism when combined with Kaluuya’s incredible performance. Cultural appropriation by the wealthy is another prominent theme within the film, one I can’t really dive too much into without spoilers.
I’ve seen the film three times now, which for a media consumer like myself is a rare event. The first time I was on the edge of my seat. The second time, which I dragged One Movie Spouse to, I started to notice all the amazing little details in the dialogue, the story, and the sets. This last time confirmed for me just how well put together the film is as a whole. Nothing is wasted. Every scene is just long enough with just the right amount of dialogue. Details in the story and the imagery weave together nicely. The pacing is a slow acceleration, with just the right amount of comedy relief when needed.
You can tell the film was a labor of love for Jordan Peele, but “Get Out” has become much more than that. For Jordan Peele, it has opened up many, many doors, including rebooting “The Twilight Zone”, a new show called “Lovecraft Country” which of course has my attention, a reboot of “Candyman”, and tomorrow’s review for his follow-up, “Us”. It has opened up the genre of social horror films to a new revival, with new perspectives, and a rediscovering of old classics. I would even argue that “Get Out” gave another jolt of legitimacy to the horror genre as a whole. We need new perspectives because they give us new insight into ourselves and our society, and horror films offer perhaps the best way to address those issues. And thanks to Jordan Peele, we’re seeing a lot more perspectives being included, and all of us are reaping the rewards.
“Get Out” is a modern masterpiece about racial politics and cultural appropriation, that uses the horror genre in new and subversive ways. Jordan Peele crafts an excellent script, then brings together a film that has everything it needs and wastes nothing. “Get Out” continues to impact the horror genre today, and will be studied by generations to come as one of the best films of all time.
Rotten Tomatoes: 98% (CERTIFIED FRESH)
Metacritic: 84 (MUST SEE)
One Movie Punch: 10/10
“Get Out” (2017) is rated Rand is available for rent and purchase from major digital outlets.
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