Jordan Peele makes racial discomfort frightening without losing the jokes, and Daniel Kaluuya gives every awkward encounter weight. A few supporting performances are too broad, but this is a horror film we recommend well beyond its usual audience.
Get Out is funny, frightening and unusually precise about the ways people make a guest feel unwelcome while insisting otherwise. Jordan Peele writes and directs with a clear understanding of how exhausting it can be to remain polite. The film’s white liberals take their own decency for granted, which makes their interest in black people peculiarly intrusive. We recommend it for the discomfort as much as the shocks.
Daniel Kaluuya is the reason that discomfort stays personal. As Chris Washington, he makes the work of getting through an awkward encounter seem exhausting; we keep looking to him to decide how seriously to take the people around him. The satire depends on that judgement, because a performance that announced every insult would do our thinking for us. Kaluuya gives us room to recognise the offence and to understand why challenging it might be difficult, particularly when everybody seems so pleased with their own behaviour.
Bradley Whitford makes Dean Armitage’s eagerness to seem decent funny enough to be embarrassing. We recognise the demand for approval, and the unreasonable amount of attention it requires from the person receiving it. Caleb Landry Jones, as Jeremy Armitage, is less persuasive: the performance signals menace so strongly that there is little left for us to work out. A few of these encounters would be more uncomfortable if the supporting cast were allowed the same uncertainty that Kaluuya brings to Chris.
Toby Oliver and Denson Baker’s cinematography makes the nighttime stroll feel exposed, with too much uncertainty about what might interrupt it. The restraint works because we spend time looking for trouble rather than being shown exactly where it is. Rusty Smith’s production design makes the affluent surroundings feel established and secure, which is distinctly unhelpful to Chris. The place seems to have its own rules, and nobody appears particularly interested in his comfort with them.
Catherine Keener, as Missy Armitage, is particularly effective at making composure seem threatening without pushing the performance towards caricature. We were unnerved by her calm, because it gives Chris so little to respond to openly. Keener makes the effort to read another person’s face feel dangerous, and Kaluuya keeps that uncertainty visible without overplaying it.
Gregory Plotkin’s editing keeps the unease alive through the changes of tone, allowing the comedy enough room without letting it wipe away the threat. Michael Abels’s score makes that threat feel close even when the immediate occasion is still an awkward encounter. Neither humour nor music releases us from paying attention to Chris, which is why the film can change direction without seeming to start again. At 104 minutes, it establishes its social discomfort without making us endure every possible variation of it.
Horror often asks us to notice danger before its characters do. Here, Chris is already uneasy, and the harder question is what he can do with that knowledge while everyone expects him to behave. Peele understands how much pressure an apparently friendly welcome can exert, and how difficult it can be to explain why something feels wrong. Watch it for Kaluuya, and resist the temptation to learn much more about the invitation.
