Get Out (2017)

Director: Jordan Peele

Starring:  Daniel Kaluuya,  Allison Williams & Bradley Whitford

Review Author: Shaun

Rating: 4.5/5 pints of Guinness

In recent years, the starting months have now turned into prime money-making territories, gone are the days of studios waiting until the Summer/Winter seasons to release their blockbusters. In quite a stacked month for March, and yet a small film has managed to stand out with a bang at Sundance in January and is now creating a major buzz on its worldwide release. Get Out comes to us from the mind of Jordan Peele of the excellent comedy duo Key and Peele. They’ve already more-or-less made the jump to the big screen with last year’s Keanu, a pretty dang funny little comedy that Jordan Peele also co-wrote. Get Out is a totally different animal altogether though; a horror-thriller more along the lines of a classic Hitchcock than anything else.

The film explicitly deals with a lot of themes of latent systemic racism in 21st Century America, and specifically, how white people keep inadvertently perpetuating it. Getting into detail as to “how” would spoil the fun of going out and seeing it for yourself, but believe me when I say that this movie’s pretty dang smart. Even if you can see the broad outlines of where the plot is going, the themes and ideas the movie raises and the unique angles it takes with them will keep you thinking about it for days. I walked away from Get Out with something very different from what I was expecting.

On top of that, Jordan Peele establishes himself as a real legitimate talent behind the camera here. The performances he gets out of his actors are note-perfect. The actors are going through a lot of different emotions in short periods of time here, having to move from total relaxation to mild suspicion to genuinely uncomfortable to terrified in short spans of time, and everyone sells it perfectly. They’re all working off a really brilliant script too. I haven’t seen a movie that is able to weave in foreshadowing and larger character beats this naturally into the dialogue for quite some time. It all feels very grounded and none of it comes off as forced. Even elements like the comedic side-character, something that could’ve fallen really flat in anyone else’s hands, come as a welcome relief to break up the pacing.

The cinematography also should be commended here. There isn’t a single shot that feels wasted or that doesn’t hold important relevance to what’s happening in the plot. Best of all, Get Out doesn’t overstay its welcome at all. Running at barely over an hour and thirty minutes, the movie feels perfectly paced and probably the easiest and most accessible watch I’ve had this year.

Calling Get Out this year’s 10 Cloverfield Lane might be doing it a disservice for everyone but me, seeing as 10 Cloverfield Lane didn’t have nearly this much ambition at play thematically, but they’re both really excellent horror-thriller directorial debuts which I enjoyed a lot. I highly recommend this film, it’s a fun-filled horror thriller that breathes a bit of fresh air into the movies slacked mouth. In closing, I think It’s one of the best movies so far this year and it’s definitely one we’re going to be talking about for a long time, don’t be surprised if you catch this on my Top 10 list at the end of this year.

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