Review - Get Out (2017)

'Get Out,' the self-assured first feature from comedian-writer-actor turned director Jordan Peele, attempts to carry on the well established, oft overlooked tradition of black filmmakers couching social commentary in the conventions of straight-ahead genre. Peele's loaded take on the horror-thriller follows Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a young black photographer who spends a hellish weekend at the suburban family home of his white girlfriend (Allison Williams). At first, her affluent, liberal-leaning parents (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) seem harmless, if a little prone to racially insensitive faux pas, but the more time Chris spends among their eccentric friends and strangely aloof African American housekeepers, the more evident it becomes that he is in great danger. While it works perfectly well on the surface level - in terms of the carefully constructed atmosphere, constant scares, and sheer gratification elicited by the violent denouement - 'Get Out' fails to make any particularly meaningful statement about race relations in America, or provide much insight into the psychology of its protagonist. Its white villains are too villainous to read into, their evil plot too far-fetched to possess any real metaphorical resonance, and most crucially, the character at the film's center has too little to say about it all. Chris gawks in disbelief, weeps in terror and fights doggedly, but from first scene to last, we learn almost nothing about how he feels, beyond the apprehension and fear suggested in the title of the movie. There is a disappointing thinness to the characterization, and while much of the imagery associated with slavery and black oppression is striking and novel in the realm of horror, it amounts to window dressing, cobwebs in Dracula's castle.