Get Out review
Firstly, I want to apologize for not having written up anything for the past two months. I’ve been pretty busy, and getting back into the groove of writing things I want to write about has been pretty hard lately. Not to say there hasn’t been a shortage of good movies in theaters, either. Quite the contrary. January and February have really turned themselves around in the space of a few years from the traditional dumping grounds for all the really bad horror movies, rom-coms, and low-budget action thrillers, into a legitimate movie month. We’ve had four really good movies so far this year: Split, The Lego Batman Movie, John Wick: Chapter 2, and Get Out, but I want to talk about Get Out for now, because it’s been the most interesting to ruminate on as time goes on.
If you didn’t know already, 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 years Keanu, a pretty dang funny little comedy 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. I’ve heard it described as a cross between Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and The Stepford Wives.
If you couldn’t tell by that description, it 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 than what I was expecting.
On top of that, Jordan Peele establishes himself as a real legitimate talent behind 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 naturalistically into the dialogue in 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 debutes I enjoyed a lot. I hope you get out to see Get Out. It’s the best movie of the year so far and it’s definitely one we’re gonna be talking about for a long time.
The Media Fire gives this movie a 9/10
