Jordan Peele of sketch comedy show, Key and Peele, has already done a nearly impossible feat – that of generating a 100 percent rating on movie review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, for his directorial debut Get Out. The horror movie deals with the topic of racism, where a simple meeting with the parents of the protagonist’s Caucasian girlfriend leads to something murkier.
“My nerdom, my love of the genre, was paralyzing for a while. I couldn’t imagine putting together something as good as my favorite things. Even if I could, I couldn’t imagine somebody giving me the opportunity to do that, giving me the millions of dollars it takes to make a movie. But I can confidently say that I 100% got to make the movie I wanted to make,” Peele said in an interview recently. The actor/filmmaker has always had an affinity towards horror films.
Adding that a social thriller is far more scarier, Peele feels his movie is mostly unwatchable because of how uncomfortable the topic is. “If it’s too funny, it’s doing a disservice to the seriousness of the issue at hand [of racism]. That tonal balance is probably the reason the genre has been hands-off with the issue of race. So very early on, I knew that the key to this movie was getting the right balance of tension and release because it’s got to be fun and also poignant,” he said.
Several critics have given favourable reviews to this film.
“Peele’s perfectly tuned cast and deft camera work unleash his uproarious humor along with his political fury; with his first film, he’s already an American Buñuel,” wrote Richard Brody of The New Yorker.
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“Jordan Peele’s Get Out is an unmitigated triumph of the form. It’s a primal campfire story born of very real and all-too-plausible fears, and it very much as its fingers on the pulse of our current insane zeitgeist. Peele has taken to calling it a ‘social thriller’ in recent press rounds, and that’s as good a description as any. It uses the obvious discomfort built around its premise to create tension and uneasy suspense even before we find out if there is any real danger. It is a glorious mix of social commentary, gallows humor and bruised-forearm chills. Dr Fredric Wertham would have hated it. You’ll love it,” wrote Scott Mendelson of Forbes magazine.
“Get Out is a stinging criticism of the white liberalism that carries itself as empathetic towards blacks, but that empathy only extends as far as white control…[Peele] wants us to empathize with Chris not just on the level of Chris being black, but that his minority status makes him vulnerable to what Rose’s suspicious parents and their friends have in store. Get Out is scary not because of the specifics of the situation—again, it’s not like the film is warning about powerful hypnotists in our midst—but because of the racial and power dynamic it presents,” wrote Matt Goldberg of Collider.
Here’s the trailer of the film:
The film stars Daniel Kaluuya, Catherine Keener, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford and Stephen Root. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 24 January, and is set to release in the USA on 25 February.
Pic: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for TNT LA