Review- Get Out

Get Out is incredible. I want to recommend that you stop reading this review right now and just go straight to the cinema. It's probably better than Beauty and the Beast and definitely deals with much more interesting themes. If you are still here though, I'll try to keep the review as spoiler free as possible. Get Out is the story about a black man who is going to visit the house of his white girlfriend's parents. They're liberals, greet him with hearty cries of "My man!" and tell him how they wish they could vote for Obama a third time. They're very friendly. Too friendly. Clearly, something is off and Chris, our lead, has to try and work out what that is, as well as try and understand what all these oddly friendly black servants are doing here. To say anymore would spoil the superb plot but just trust me that everything you see is important (people who know what Chekhov's Gun is will be very happy) and the ending hits the perfect note to end the film on.

Acting is important with a film like this as you don't want to have characters from either race portrayed too heavy handidly; you don't want all the white characters to seem senselessly evil and you don't want every single black character to be virtuous gods. Part of that comes down to the screenplay (which I'll get to) but the actors take most of the weight on this front. Star of the film is Daniel Kaluuya as Chris, a man who essentially has to represent the fears of most African-American men in America. His role is one that is performed with a wonderful subtlety, as he puts up with a lot of low key racism while gradually coming to his own conclusions about the events. The rest of the cast serve as side characters with highlights being Allison Williams as the girlfriend who spends most of the film feeling guilty and having to fight for her boyfriend and a hilarious LilRel Howery who acts as comic relief but in a way that oddly never lessens the tension. You have the creepy dad (Bradley Whitford), the odd black guy (Lakeith Stanfield or Donald Glover's high friend from Atlanta) and the dodgy, Laertes-esque son of the family (Caleb Landry Jones, the clingy henchman from War on Everyone). You won't find a bad performance in the film. Not one.

What I somehow have to restrict to one paragraph here is the absolute genius of Jordan Peele. I know a little about his work (I've seen a few of his Key and Peele sketches and loved him in Fargo) but this is the first true display of his talent that I've seen and talent truly is the word. His script is already one of the best of the year in a year where we've had Manchester by the Sea and 20th Century Women set the bar high. Racism gets addressed but not the kind of racism you think of when you hear it. It's the kind of racism where treatment of black people is ever so slightly off from everyone else and it is initially funny to watch it be satirised but becomes slowly terrifying. Peele clearly also knows his horror very well as he creates a suspenseful tone that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the final shot. Admittedly, I could have done with fewer jump scares as they pepper the first half of the film but in the second half, Peele trusts his audience enough with genuine creepiness, restrained gore and story catharsis. Simply put, Peele has marked himself out as a director to look out for and while I will definitely be following his work from here, it is incredibly depressing that he made something so good in his very first film.

With Get Out, you need to believe the hype. Ignore all the people saying it's a horror film (it's a thriller with some jump scares and some laughs), ignore the Blumhouse logo (although they have been making progressively better films recently with Whiplash, The Gift and Split) and definitely ignore the spoiler filled trailers. Just go in with an open mind, prepare to have sweaty palms and enjoy a rare intelligent horror film. I enjoyed it so much I'm already attempting to work on a second viewing, reason enough to give the film a