Get Out (2017) - Peele arrives in a big way with funny American race nightmare

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Star Daniel Kaluuya screaming from intense emotion in a lounge chair on this striking B/W poster for Jordan Peele's Get Out

Chris is an African-American man, who is going with his Caucasian girlfriend Allison away for the weekend to visit her family's country estate, defying his misgivings about her not informing them of the color of his skin in advance ...

 

Get Out is written and directed by great New-Yorker filmmaker, debuting Jordan Peele (Keanu (2016, writer)).

It is terrifically awkward and amply shows what it feels like to be the new (literally) black sheep of a family; and then it is funny, really funny, - not least in the scenes of repartee between Chris and his friend (Lil Rel Howery (Good Boys (2019)). Get Out cultivates racial paranoia, (SPOILER whites overtake black bodies with brain transplants!), and the reluctance among blacks for other blacks to become 'too white'.

In the horror part of the film it is especially the 'sunken place' scenes, where this nightmarish hell is achieved through hypnosis, which is rather frightening, and Catherine Keener (The Soloist (2009)) functions well as a stoic hypnotist. You might have to be black to find Allison Williams (College Musical (2014)) actually scary here, SPOILER and the culmination in which Chris murders his way through the house to escape it, could have been achieved to greater effect.

But Daniel Kaluuya (Chatroom (2010)) is outstanding as Chris, and Get Out has a timely electricity to it that must have been most powerful in an American cinema around the time of its release. It is original and, in my opinion, more funny than frightening, - and hopefully it brought its multi-racial audiences closer together than it divided them further?

 

Related post:

 

Jordan Peele: Us (2019) - Get in line to scratch your head (writer/director)

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 4.5 mil. $

Box office: 255.5 mil. $

= Mega-hit (returned 56.7 times its cost)

[Get Out premiered 23 January (Sundance Film Festival) and runs 104 minutes. Shooting took 23 days from February 2016 - ? in Alabama. The film opened #1 to a 33.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it spent another 3 weekends in the top 5 (#2-#3-#4) and grossed 176 mil. $ (68.9 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were South Korea with 15.5 mil. $ (6.1 %) and the UK with 12.7 mil. $ (5 %). Deadline Hollywood calculated the film's net profits at 124.8 mil. $. It was nominated for 4 Oscars, winning for Best Original Screenplay. It lost Best Picture to The Shape of Water, Actor (Kaluuya) to Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour and Director to Guillermo Del Toro for The Shape of Water. It was also nominated for 2 Golden Globes, 2 BAFTAs, won an AFI award, won 2/5 Independent Spirit award nominations, 3 National Board of Review awards, among countless other honors. Peele returned with Us (2019). Kaluuya returned in Robot & Scarecrow (2017, short), Great Performers: Horror Show (2017, short) and theatrically in Black Panther (2018); Williams in Girls (2012-17), Patrick Melrose (2018, miniseries) and theatrically in The Perfection (2018). Get Out is certified fresh at 98 % with an 8.40/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Get Out?