In “Get Out,” director Jordan Peele created an intelligent, meaningful horror film that looks fearlessly at the subject of race. Considered one of the best movies of 2017, it has been nominated for Best Picture in the 2018 Oscars.
“Get Out” is the story of a black man, played by Daniel Kaluuya, whose white girlfriend’s family attempts to brainwash him so they can take control of his body.
Kaluuya’s character, Chris, is nervous about meeting this family, the Armitages, from the movie’s beginning. He is uneasy about the prospect of being a black person in a mostly white setting. Though his girlfriend, Rose, played by Allison Williams, assures him that her family isn’t racist, nothing at their country mansion eases Chris’ fears.
Rose’s mother, played by Catherine Keener, who offers to help Chris break his smoking habit through hypnosis, unnerves him. He is also wary of the Armitages’ black servants after he encounters them moving around the house at odd hours of the night. Chris becomes even more uncomfortable at a party thrown by the Armitages where several white guests direct racially charged comments toward him and Rose.
Very little about “Get Out” is traditionally scary before its violent third act. Instead, as Chris becomes more and more paranoid of his surroundings, so does the audience. Chris’ friend Rod, a TSA agent played with the perfect degree of comic energy by Lil Rel Howery, repeatedly warns Chris that he doesn’t think Rose’s family can be trusted, but by the time Chris realizes this, it’s too late for him to escape their house.
The movie is a gripping thriller from beginning to end, but its greater achievement is its commentary on being black in modern American society. Peele, who also wrote the film, filled it with potent images and metaphors to illustrate this point.
Perhaps this is most clearly expressed in the Armitages’ main goal: they are white people trying to control a black man’s body, a version of slavery. Their means of doing this is hypnosis, a process that involves sending Chris into “The Sunken Place,” a psychological state where he is mentally present but physically paralyzed and unable to speak.
Peele explained this metaphor online in March, tweeting, “The Sunken Place means we're marginalized. No matter how hard we scream, the system silences us.”
Throughout the film, Peele’s central theme remains the same: being black in an environment dominated by white people is a terrifying prospect. The movie features mad scientists and gory violence, but its scariest element is ultimately racism.
Karlos Hill, chair of African and African-American studies at OU, said “Get Out” has made a valuable contribution to discussions about racial issues throughout mainstream culture since its release in February 2017.
“It is a horror film, but it really created dialogues around race and racism,” Hill said. “There are very few films that have done that in the way that ‘Get Out’ did.”
In addition to its nomination for Best Picture, “Get Out” will also compete in the categories of Best Actor (for Kaluuya), Best Director and Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars in March.
The Academy has not been kind to past horror films. Only two others have previously been nominated for Best Picture — “The Exorcist” in 1973 and “The Silence Of The Lambs” in 1991, which won the award. “Get Out” is therefore not a favorite to take home the Oscar in any of these categories.
Predicting the success the movie will have at the Academy Awards is difficult, both because it has so few precedents at the Oscars and because no other film matched its cultural influence in 2017.
But perhaps that is the movie’s greatest strength: it doesn’t need the Academy in order to be meaningful or important. In “Get Out,” Peele presents complex ideas about race by means of a widely popular and thoroughly entertaining movie. Oscar or no Oscar, that’s a success.
