Film: "Get Out"
Jordan Peele’s (“Key & Peele”) fearless directing debut is a brilliant horror version of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.”
Jordan Peele’s (Key & Peele) directing debut does what all great horror films do best—tap into existing cultural anxieties to send the terror deeper under the viewer’s skin and make it real. In Get Out, the daily unease of being black in America lays the groundwork for the real scares. Having reached the meet-the-parents milestone of dating, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya, Sicario) and his girlfriend (Allison Williams, Girls) take a weekend getaway upstate. The ensuing bubble of bucolic white privilege the couple finds themselves in becomes a delicious setup for this suspenseful exploration of 21st-century racism. At first, Chris reads the family’s (Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford) overly accommodating (and creepy) behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship. As the weekend progresses though, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead Chris to a truth he (and the audience) could have never imagined. To quote the director, “it’s a horror version of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” D: Jordan Peele, US, 2017, 1h 43m
Part of the Dartmouth Film Society series Reel Change
