Get Out

Image credit: Best Buy

You can say what you like about horror movies and what they look like as a whole: an acquired taste, bags of cheap reaction tricks, tasteless etc, but thanks to Jordan Peele’s original chiller Get Out, these sorts of attitudes are being rapidly reorganised. Just look at the Academy’s reaction: the film has already achieved major feats in snagging four Oscar nominations in all the major categories – being Best Picture, Best Leading Actor, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. If it walks away with a Best Picture win, then it will be the first horror movie since Silence of the Lambs –and the second horror movie in history to do so.

A truly chilling film Get Out tells the story of interracial couple Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) and Rose (Allison Williams) and their trip to spend a weekend with Rose’s parents in their isolated country house. At first Daniel simply thinks that the parents' overbearing friendliness is an awkward attempt to not seem racist, but as the weekend progresses and a series of strange events start to happen he comes to realise a more sinister reason for his being invited.

All the film’s achievements become even more impressive when you consider that it’s Peele’s film debut. Not only is the movie sucker-punching that annoying horror cliché of the minority –almost always an African-American- character being the first to get killed, it’s a brilliantly constructed satire that displays all weapons in the genre’s arsenal, yet hardly ever takes a real stab at you. Peele’s stinging dialogue mixed with lingering mid-shots that suggest the inevitability of something dark and sinister happening –though of course we never know what until it’s too late- all work to put us in mind of other horror movies, which helps to create the expected anxiety and suspense.

Image credit: Vox

For an interextual breakdown think Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner mixed with The Stepford Wives with a dash of The Wicker Man’s out-of-the-frying-pan-and-into-the-fire plot development. You could even argue that there’s a vibe reminiscent of Victor Halperin’s White Zombie in there somewhere. Thus as a modern horror movie it really ticks all the boxes: it’s a social critique and a clever reinvention of genre –while simultaneously paying homage to it- that successfully builds suspense and shocks audiences into silence with a strange and deeply disturbing twist.

Not only this, but it’s a beautiful display of director’s as well as actor’s talent. Daniel Kaluuya as the film’s protagonist is wonderfully genuine and Peele’s direction gives you this sense that you’re in the hands of a professional: someone who knows all the ins and outs of what they’re doing and how it’s going to make you feel.

It’s a shocking movie, but it’s tasteful and –in horror standards- quite subtle; treading that tightrope between thriller and horror and just teetering further towards the latter side.

Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel, Lakeith Stanfield, Stephen Root, and Lil Rel Howery