Get Out
classified 15Please note: This was screened in Dec 2017
Film of the year in many a end of year poll (including Sight & Sound), Jordan Peele's brilliant horror-satire combined genuine thrills with a no-holds-barred critique of black-white relations with its tale of a young African-American man who visits his white girlfriend’s family only to find their superficially warm welcome masks an unthinkably dark secret.
Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is the black boyfriend of Rose (Allison Williams), a young white woman. Now that they’ve been dating for a few months Rose plans to take Chris back to her family home to meet her hugely wealthy and excruciatingly liberal parents Dean and Missy (wonderfully played by Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener). But when Chris arrives at their colossal home, he is deeply disconcerted to find that Rose’s family, though impeccably progressive, are surrounded by black staff, who lock eyes with the family’s honoured guest with glacial correctness. And when it so happens that the young couple’s visit coincides with a big family get together, the hospitality becomes more and more unsettling.
Very creepy, very funny and positively fearless, Get Out (which is now the highest grossing title ever for an original screenplay) has plenty to both frighten and enrage. Blending race-savvy satire with horror to especially potent effect, this bombshell social critique delivers a breathlessly suspenseful exposé of the horror of covert liberal racism.