Get Out: social criticism and philosophical inquiry in amongst a bizarre plot and interracial politics

Jordan Peele, “Get Out” (2017)

Jordan Peele’s comedy horror film, his first as a director, about an interracial relationship that goes awry can be seen as a timely social commentary on present-day racism and the forms it can take. Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a man, has been in a romance with Rose Armytage (Allison Williams ), a white woman, for several months and she invites him to meet her family on their rural estate. They drive out into the boonies and he is awed by the gracious country mansion and the eccentric warmth of Rose’s parents (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) and her brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones). One little problem: their black servants seem so passive as to be zombie-like. From the moment Chris enters the family estate, the plot builds steadily to its bizarre revelation: Rose and her folks are a front for a white supremacist cult that kidnaps black people and uses their bodies with their supposed inherent genetic abilities (such as their strength and athleticism) as vessels into which to transplant their own brains while the original owners’ brains are trapped in a permanent comatose prison.

The film’s production values are very good and transition easily from comedy to drama to B-grade horror and back again. The silly premise of brainwashing and brain-harvesting is made plausible by Peele’s targeting of white “liberal” or socially progressive hypocrites who profess empathy for black people and other victims of white or Anglocentric racism, and who immerse themselves in other people’s cultures, all to feed their own egos and self-satisfaction without considering the damage they might be doing to those they patronise. Peele plants little clues in details of the plot and the cast of characters to flesh out the plot: Rose’s dad happens to be a neurosurgeon and her mother is a psychiatrist who practises therapeutic hypnosis – this of course means Chris will be hypnotised into submission and will be subjected to invasive brain surgery, so the thrill of the plot for viewers lies in guessing how close Chris comes to realising what he’s in for and how he can save himself. The Amityville-style country house setting emphasises Chris’s total isolation from any kind of help and the danger he is in.

Plot holes galore do exist, the most obvious being that in a narrative which carefully stacks all the odds against the hero, a miracle is needed if he is to save himself. The film is not too clear on how Chris overcomes the hypnosis without being found out using stuffing from ripped upholstery to block his ears from mesmerising talk and the sound of teaspoons scraping teacups.

The cast is also very good in playing stereotypical roles and it is to Kaluuya and Williams’ credit that their characters seem very real even though at the climax and afterwards, Chris and Rose descend into one-dimensional and crude figures. Chris’s sudden violence and brutality come right out of left field and one supposes that the Armytages’ early treatment of him has ironically given him a savagery that he otherwise would not have been able to express. Rose’s remarkable transformation from indie college girl rebel to a cold-blooded freakazoid fanatic with machine gun is supremely chilling. Special mention should be made of Keener as a warm and gracious if quirky mother figure who ends up a malevolent, even vicious creature.

While on one level the film is pessimistic in insinuating that there can be no accommodation between black and white people, and black people can never, ever be sure of the attitudes of well-meaning whites towards them, on other issues the film encourages deeper inquiry into cultural appropriation, racial stereotyping and the nature and purpose of one’s existence. Many cultural innovations made by black people, especially in music (as the film’s soundtrack alludes to), have been claimed and commodified by white people. Rose’s family and fellow cult members prey on black people on the presumption that their bodies are better-looking and perform better sexually than white people’s bodies do – and because black people happen to be “cool” (because of their historical role as underdogs and oppressed victims). The cult’s quest for immortality by transplanting cult members’ brains into stolen bodies is part of a deeper quest for the significance and purpose of human existence. The film’s regrettable identification with identity politics and its concerns with other more laudable issues make it a complicated and intriguing beast and ensure its place among those cult horror flicks that are as much social criticism as cheap thriller material.