The film about race that we needed. And still need. Get Out ftw.
“All I know is sometimes, when there’s too many white people, I get nervous, you know?”
The little film that could. A directorial debut from Jordan Peele, filmed for $4.5 million which has now grossed over $250 million and nabbed four Academy Award nominations to boot. Not only that, it’s a horror film too. But what underpins Get Out’s success if the fact talks about race in today’s American in a way we rarely see in our cinemas.
Puncturing the self-satisfied smugness around liberal whiteness, Peele takes a scalpel to the notion the USA is anywhere near being post-racial. Matter-of-factly portraying an interracial relationship (a political act in and of itself), Daniel Kaluuya’s Chris and Alison Williams’ Rose take the step of meeting her parents but nothing is as it seems. At all.
As a horror film, I’ll try not to give too much away. Suffice to say, there’s hair-raising thrills and a real sinking feeling that comes in discovering what lies behind the wealthy super-liberal facade of Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford as those folks. It is intelligent and bracing work but above all, heaps of fun to watch. If only the Academy had the balls to recognise it.
