Horror and politics strangely go hand in hand. From John Carpenter’s THEY LIVE and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK to Wes Craven’s THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS and more recently THE PURGE films, the genre has a wealth of voices and with GET OUT, comedian Jordan Peele makes his heard to an unsuspecting audience.

 

From one half of American double act Key and Peele, GET OUT is as horror as it gets. Set in the south of America, it’s easy to think that GET OUT is a film about racial hatred, how wrong you would be, this is a film with so much more depth and tension that it would be ignorant for Peele’s film to be ignored when it comes to awards season.

 

Four months into a relationship, Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) finally gets to meet their parents of his girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams). Nervously, Chris’s African-American heritage brings a nervous disposition to proceedings and as the family get together is underway, his anxiety may be just cause.

 

GET OUT cleverly plays on preconceptions and while the red neck south is an easy picking to make, interestingly, there’s a layer of this film that completely supercedes that by making the white family that of an educated and much more refined nature. As the film plays out it’s horror elements, the cat and mouse tale is more politically targeted at the liberal left than may be first expected. Peele has openly admitted that this film is “to show how, however unintentionally, these same people can make life so hard and uncomfortable for Black people. It exposes a liberal ignorance”. GET OUT is much about cultural appropriation as opposed to the colour of skin and while Black is fashionable to quote one character in the film, it is as much an ignorance that people are cultured beyond colour or race.

 

The film may sway toward the political side however it’s one that is needed in cinema, the method of using horror somehow makes it more accessible for Peele’s message to reach an unsuspecting audience but leaves a message that can’t be ignored. Yet beyond this, there’s an effective balance between tension and horror that makes this one of the best horror films of 2017. While the shocking conclusion may steer away from reality and go a little far fetched from the initial draw, the movement into a Witchcraftian horror leaves GET OUT with a welcome blend of terror and political statement that feels both fresh and needed.

 

While Peele may leave his directorial debut for a return to comedy, GET OUT leaves us wanting more from a visionary who has a imagination and a voice to be heard.