agorman

Get Out

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I just came back from seeing this at the theatre, and am reeling.

This movie is unbelievably taut. Not a frame feels wasted, and it transitions into becoming a horror movie perfectly. 

I think I'll need to see the movie again to unpack it more. Felt there is quite a lot to chew on. 
I'm just joining the chorus of voices here saying this movie is unbelievable....but man.....it is extremely good.

 

It's probably because it was opening weekend but man, the audience at my theatre was a BLAST to watch this movie with. First movie in a while that reminded me why I love going to the theatre/how seeing a movie with a public audience can really enhance the experience.

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1 hour ago, gormanate said:

I think I'll need to see the movie again to unpack it more. Felt there is quite a lot to chew on.

 

Strongly agree.  There is a lot of movie here.

 

Here are some spoiler-filled questions!

 

Thinking back I find it very hard to recontextualize any of Walter and Georgina's interactions as their "true" characters. (Except for Georgina displaying the carrot cake.) Walter doesn't seem to enjoy his midnight sprints, which seems like it was his entire motivation in the first place.  And his appreciation for Rose doesn't seem any more grandpaternal than it did romantic.



 

That may be because of their surgery-induced internal struggle, but it doesn't make for very good advertising for the party guests.  Dre's outburst is even worse—why do they all want to live like this?  The art dealer Hudson is made explicitly aware that he'll have a tormented Chris inside his head at all times and he seems fine with that.

 

What is the significance of Rose's ponytail in the final act?  Switching from her hip modern cut to the ponytail is meant to let us see the character in a different way, but is there more to it than that?  It isn't just her regressing to childhood because we don't see her in a ponytail in any of her old family photos.

 

The film used burnout son Jeremy well as a foil for Chris, but he fit in so awkwardly with the rest of the family.  What was his motivation?  Did he not believe in the Armitage family methods?  Did he want Chris's body for himself?  Why did he cultivate such a gross stache?

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How scary is it? What kind of scary is it? I'm really bad with certain sorts of horror movies but I really want to watch this. For reference, Black Swan was too spooky for me, and The Ring fucked me up so badly that I was effectively broken for a couple weeks, but "horror" movies like AlienSlither, etc. don't even scare me. I'm not really sure why things that scare me scare me or why things that don't scare me don't scare me, but I think jump scares are probably the worst and gore/body horror aren't scary at all. Can I see this movie?

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I'm in a similar position, but have different sensitivities. The torture in Pan's Labryinthe was too much for me and I just can't handle an hour of being incredibly tense. I'd say Black Swan is the upper limit of what I'm willing to watch.

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Uhhh, I laughed all the way through Black Swan so I'm the wrong person to answer, but I think Get Out might be over the limit, but not by too much.

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The movie isn't nearly as intense as I was expecting it to be. Instead, it just cleverly utilizes the grammar of horror movies to address particular issues. The jump scares and gore are pretty mild. If you can handle the jump scares in Alien and the gore of something like Die Hard you should be okay.

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Get Out is not a scary movie. The scare moments are mostly played for awkward/nervous laughter. The gore moments aren't too intense, largely implied, and cathartic.

 

 

Which is a shame, because the satire mostly doesn't come together in the end (the answer to "why black people?" needed to be way stronger, and making the family purely evil and manipulative kinda defangs how this is mostly a movie about dealing with micro-aggressions from the "good" white people of the world), and it kinda just abandons the satire for middling horror in the home stretch. But so much of this movie works on a scene by scene basis and the character of Rod is so funny and such a great meta-commentary (he's basically a more subtle version of the office workers in Cabin in the Woods), I was really into this anyway.

 

Worth seeing with an audience.

 

EDIT: My spoiler-free capsule review

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I think the satire is extraordinarily effective -- articulating the massive gap between what it means to admire the accomplishments, arts, and even culture of black people and to actually respect them as human beings, which are often treated as equivalent.

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Really good movie, but I agree with the criticisim in the spoilers by mikemariano and Patrick. I don't have much to add to that, but I'll just repeat a thing to emphasize that this one point really felt like a gaping plot hole:

 

Why would the rich people want to live on pretending to be servants? No, even essentially being servants. Or should it be understood they only played it for this one guy for two days? What about the previous guy, the next one? Seemed like a practiced routine.

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Re: plot holes

Spoiler

The two servants were Rose's grandparents. They were just playing the role of servants for the weekend since obviously they can't act like themselves with Chris around. I assume they would have to do it every time one of these auctions happened.

 

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More re:plot holes

Also they don't always act like servants. When the party starts, they're greeting all the guests as the guests exit their cars. And the grandpa dude never did any real servant stuff beyond raking leaves and chopping wood, which for all we know he's doing for fun. Once you've been old and stuff you might especially like to use your fancy new body to work a bit.

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Also re: the 'why black people' thing, what you hear in the movie isn't the actual reason, it's just the way that the villains justify it to themselves. The real reason is just that they value black lives less. Saying that would be out of character and excruciatingly unsubtle though.

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4 hours ago, Problem Machine said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Also re: the 'why black people' thing, what you hear in the movie isn't the actual reason, it's just the way that the villains justify it to themselves. The real reason is just that they value black lives less. Saying that would be out of character and excruciatingly unsubtle though.

 

 

I agree with this, but I think, as a movie that is examining the various ways self-proclaimed allies interact with black people and their culture, it is still a somewhat unsatisfying reason that leaves a lot on the table.

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Partially because the way the explanation is delivered. It's during a scene where you're still learning what's going on in the first place, which means instead of having an actual moment in the film where you realize they just value black lives less, you can only assume it after the film is done and you're reviewing everything in your head.

 


 

And because, as satire, it doesn't really address cultural appropriation in a meaningful way. I find the micro-aggressions-played-as-horror moments throughout the film way more effective than the reveal of what's going on. For me, it's more cutting and incisive when you think the family is genuinely well-meaning. In The Stepford Wives (a clear inspiration), the men in charge genuinely think what they're doing is best for them AND their wives, and that makes it much more insidious (and true to the patriarchy). If the ultimate conclusion of Get Out is "White people don't value black lives", than it's answering the least interesting question it raises. The whole movie has so much great stuff about micro-agressions & how to stay true to yourself in an interracial relationship & assimilation. Whether or not black lives matter to white culture at large is a more obviously answered question to me.

 

 

Which is not to say I don't think this movie is great. I just think the more solidified the What's-Going-On angle becomes the less interesting it gets. I think to do my concerns justice it'd probably have to be the kind of movie that makes no money as opposed to 100 million, so I am still pretty happy with the line this walks between sharp satire and crowd-pleasing horror, especially if it means Peele gets to make more films. 

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I agree. Your thoughts are pretty much my own: I do think it's answering the least interesting question it raises, and that it's also a great movie, and that to be that other thing it would probably have to be more or less commercially unviable.

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51 minutes ago, Patrick R said:
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And because, as satire, it doesn't really address cultural appropriation in a meaningful way. I find the micro-aggressions-played-as-horror moments throughout the film way more effective than the reveal of what's going on. For me, it's more cutting and incisive when you think the family is genuinely well-meaning. In The Stepford Wives (a clear inspiration), the men in charge genuinely think what they're doing is best for them AND their wives, and that makes it much more insidious (and true to the patriarchy). If the ultimate conclusion of Get Out is "White people don't value black lives", than it's answering the least interesting question it raises. The whole movie has so much great stuff about micro-agressions & how to stay true to yourself in an interracial relationship & assimilation. Whether or not black lives matter to white culture at large is a more obviously answered question to me.

 

 

Hm dunno I definitely got the impression a lot of these people felt like they were doing their future hosts a favor, like they would put their bodies to better use than they could. Admittedly, this too is just my read, and never stated explicitly in the text.

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I just finished watching this film, and it's super late now so I'm too tired to talk coherently about it but uhhh wow. I found this film to be incredible; it managed to get under my skin in a way horror films never do for me generally. The first half of the film nailed it so well and was so relatable that it made me genuinely anxious and uncomfortable. 

 

Also, I (a black guy) watched it in the cinema with my wife (a white lady), which was... an interesting context in which to see this particular movie!

 

I might come come back to this thread with more thoughts once I've had some sleep. 

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Just watched this. While there were lots of great performances in it (especially Daniel Kaluuya, whom I also really liked in Psychoville) and the satirical elements were really interesting and well-done, I was a little let down by the more genre elements. Despite knowing nothing about the film before watching it (except who the director and lead actor were and that it was a horror that also dealt with the African-American experience), I had worked out that

Spoiler

they were using their daughter to lure black people to their house then brainwash them, before the end of the first meeting with the parents (i.e. before the father gives the tour of the house). I wasn't surprised by anything from then until the reveal that the white people were actually inhabiting the black people via brain transplant (at which point I was at that sweet spot where all the clues started tumbling into place and I was like "how did I not get this?!", which was great). Having the comedy friend lampshade this a while after by figuring it all out immediately (at a post-hypnosis point where presumably Peele expected every viewer to have caught on) didn't really make up for it.

Speaking of that guy, he felt really out-of-place here, in a similar way to Johnny Depp's character in Tusk. He also felt like a black comedy character-type that we see a lot of, but I can't figure out how to describe that type. The kind of guy I'd expect Anthony Anderson to be playing.

 

EDIT: oh, re. the reasons

Spoiler

for picking black people, he says "Who knows? People want to [a?] change. Some people want to be stronger, faster, cooler." I think there's some interesting stuff going on there about appropriating culture because it's an exotic fashion novelty, and also that element of bigotry where it's believed that black people are genetically superior in some very specific aspects (they're good at sports, they have big dicks) even while being genetically inferior overall or in every other area, or liberals who say everyone is equal but still harbour these stereotypes.

 

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