Get Out

Movie Review

Get Out (Photo Courtesy of Google )

Get Out (Photo Courtesy of Google )

Wayne Chan, Photojournalist

Disclaimer: This article reveals twists and important details integral to the plot

Get Out is a great film and amalgam of both the mystery and horror genre. The storyline was a blend of the classic thrill of horror film, the queer uneasiness of the mystery genre, and the comedic humor of the movie’s director, Jordan Peele. Joseph Yazvin (10) commented that the movie was “funny yet scary at the same time.”

While the story might appear to be contingent on the racial tensions in contemporary society, the plot explains the victimization of African-Americans in the film as a desire for change rather than a realization of hatred. The family and their organization has a process of luring a black victim to their residence, hypnotizing them, selling their bodies in an auction, then transferring the buyer’s consciousness into the victim’s body. The victim then would just be a passenger in their body trapped in a sunken place, watching and listening without control. When the original people get transferred into their new body, they naturally want to experience a different life and be “stronger and faster.” Therefore, African-Americans were the usual victims.

Although the movie was a brilliant film, some elements of the plot was never thoroughly covered. For example, the film made it apparent that a flash of light released the original consciousness back into the body; however, when Georgina started crying no sudden burst of light triggered her burst of emotion. Was it a slight emergence of the original host, or was it the underlying sadness of the victim that surfaced to the host’s consciousness? Furthermore, there was no explicable reason for any normal person to take a sprint through the forest towards another person, followed by a sharp dogleg turn to the left. The way the groundskeeper ran appeared to be abnormal, yet was never justified by the plot. Most illogical was the discovery of the box of photos which alerted the victim, Chris played by Daniel Kaluuya, to their evil scheme. It was clearly intentional of the family to inveigle the victim to the closet which revealed their aggression. However, there is no beneficial outcome of having a victim aware of the perpetrators plans, thus it does not make much sense that any captor would do such a thing.

Though the film contained minor deficits of the plot, the rich characterization of the story more than compensated for the shortcoming. There was the mother who remained eerily defensive and eager to perform hypnosis on the main character. There was the father who had an artificial acceptance and happiness for the victim. There was also most notably the TSA worker who championed excessive pride for his line of work.

Overall the film was a captivating two hours of a thriller/ mystery film that unraveled the absurd yet realistic, terrifying yet comedic story of an everyday man.