DIRECTOR: Jordan Peele
LEAD CAST: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison
Williams, Bradley Whitford SCREENWRITER:
Jordan Peele PRODUCER: Jason Blum,
Edward Hamm Jr., Sean McKittrick & Jordan Peele EDITOR: Gregory Plotkin MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Michael Abels
GENRE: Horror CINEMATOGRAPHER: Toby Oliver
DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures
LOCATION: Alabama, USA RUNNING
TIME: 104 mins.
Technical assessment: 4
Moral assessment: 3
CINEMA rating: A14
MTRCB Rating: R13
Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) packs his
bags for a weekend break upon the invitation of his girlfriend, Rose. He is
meeting her parents for the first time. Chris becomes upset upon learning that
Rose fails to mention to her parents that he is black. The latter explains that
her parents are not closed-minded, and surely are not racists and that made him
less anxious. Sure-enough, both parents
welcome Chris with atypical warmth, but Chris gets a creepy feeling as he notices
the freakish behaviors of their black household helpers Georgina and Walter. His apprehension builds up some more with the suspicious behaviors of everybody in the house except Rose. Are his suspicions valid or are they just a byproduct of the fear of racial discrimination which he still encounters every day
of his life?
Get Out is an intelligent and modern take on racial
discrimination in America which many thought and believed, has already been
addressed accordingly. The director is
able to work around the theme well with the genre. The filming is solid and storyline is focused.
Daniel Kaluuya excels in the film—his
facial expression and emotion speaks of appropriate fears absent in the
dialogue. He is the kind of protagonist
that audiences would really care deeply about. The entire ensemble of actors delivers
perfectly well. As the audience is
entertained with the thrills inherent to the genre, they are also taken into a
world where one may ponder basic questions on humanity. It’s quite rare nowadays to see a film that
would elicit such profoundness in the seemingly mundane details of daily human
existence. What is even remarkable is
that though the film tackles racial violence—it manages not to wallow in
excessive violence. The film leaves a
lingering feeling of disgust, guilt, fear and vindication. For sure, one will never take racial
discrimination for granted again after seeing this film.
Get Out speaks of how far and low humans would go
just to maintain the status quo. The
root of racial discrimination is deeply embedded in the tenets of human civilization
and has not really been eradicated yet even if the United States has already had
an African-American president—and even when there are already
internationally-recognized black high-achievers. Many African-Americans still fear being
discriminated against. The hate is still real. The violence is real. The film even transcends the resistance and
dialogue even more in the treatment of the black’s superior qualities—of bodily
strength, uniqueness of color, etc. as object of envy and a cause of their doom
rather than salvation. The character of
Chris shows that love makes all humans equal regardless of race or origin. Superiority is only a product of illusion—of
lies told over the years and accepted as truth. Another lie which humans have the tendency to believe
is that they are equal with God and therefore can also create and re-create and
manipulate human life on whim. Using science and human intelligence as shown in
Get Out, where humans are motivated
by greed and pride, is evil. In the end,
though, good triumphs over evil—a proof that God saves the righteous—and He
does not look at the color of one’s skin as He created men equal, very
different from one another for a reason, but equal. For humans, that may be far-fetched, but for
God, it has always been that way. For its mature theme, and for graphic scenes
of gore and violence in the film, although in context, CINEMA deems Get Out as appropriate only for
audiences aged 14 and above.
