Get Out
I took in Jordan Peele's horror/satire "Get Out" the other weekend, in part because it got a 99% critics fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and since Citizen Kane garnered 100%, I figured it should be within a percentile of that movie in quality.
Nope. Oh, it's pretty good. You won't feel ripped-off, the writer/director tips his hat to previous horror classics, the direction is competent, and it does make you root for the protagonist in danger, but it ain't Citizen Kane.
Why not? He should have let someone else take on more of the writing duties. There is both more of himself than we wanted to see, and more horror tropes, meaning fewer surprises for the audience, given what expectations I had having seen the trailers and an interview with him about the film. He mentioned in several interviews that he was inspired by the Stepford Wives, and thought he'd like to make a similar film, but about racism.
*SPOILERS*
SERIOUSLY, SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT
Before it descends in to the standard movie fair, it is very funny, and very pointed in what makes white liberals horrible in their interactions with black people - white people, prepare to squirm! And laugh! Then squirm more!
And, as I was prepared for, White People are Monsters, All of Them. Wonder who you, as a black man, can trust among the white people? None of them. Not one. Even the ones who admire you are admiring you with an eye to stealing what you have and what you are and using it for fun and profit. You can't trust white people, because you are meat to them, not really a human being. His buddy from the TSA on the phone tries to warn him, but it sounds so crazy when he predicts out loud pretty much what they're up to, that Our Hero doesn't heed the warning.
Yes, we are monsters, I know that. This is not news, but what shocked me was who the evil ring-leaders are! It's women. That's who is masterminding your destruction, your dehumanization - the white women, the kindly, smiling ones, the ones who say they love you, the lovers, the mothers, they plan to have the white men they control excise the parts of your brain that let you control your destiny and your person, and replace it with white brain parts, so you will be a hybrid, a coagulation of white and black, a being for whom the white parts of your brain control your behavior. You will be a spectator only, a helpless paralyzed consciousness watching the world as if it were a movie or TV show.
I have no idea what the inside of Mr. Peele's head is like, but if I were his white wife or white mother, I'd be a bit disturbed by this movie my sweet husband or son wrote. I mean, it's the best part of the writing, that he seems to be talking about his own coagulated head, but it's the disturbing part, too.
I declared spoilers above, but I may not have needed to, in that, he is not subtle in how he signals what the central mystery of the movie is. In interviews, he claims that all the "clues" he placed earlier in the film will be a revelation when you go back for a second viewing, but no, probably not if you are an over-consumer of crap movies, or even just of movies in the scifi-horror basket. This is the tropes problem I mentioned before.
But I can recommend it as a film.
Nope. Oh, it's pretty good. You won't feel ripped-off, the writer/director tips his hat to previous horror classics, the direction is competent, and it does make you root for the protagonist in danger, but it ain't Citizen Kane.
Why not? He should have let someone else take on more of the writing duties. There is both more of himself than we wanted to see, and more horror tropes, meaning fewer surprises for the audience, given what expectations I had having seen the trailers and an interview with him about the film. He mentioned in several interviews that he was inspired by the Stepford Wives, and thought he'd like to make a similar film, but about racism.
*SPOILERS*
SERIOUSLY, SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT
Before it descends in to the standard movie fair, it is very funny, and very pointed in what makes white liberals horrible in their interactions with black people - white people, prepare to squirm! And laugh! Then squirm more!
And, as I was prepared for, White People are Monsters, All of Them. Wonder who you, as a black man, can trust among the white people? None of them. Not one. Even the ones who admire you are admiring you with an eye to stealing what you have and what you are and using it for fun and profit. You can't trust white people, because you are meat to them, not really a human being. His buddy from the TSA on the phone tries to warn him, but it sounds so crazy when he predicts out loud pretty much what they're up to, that Our Hero doesn't heed the warning.
Yes, we are monsters, I know that. This is not news, but what shocked me was who the evil ring-leaders are! It's women. That's who is masterminding your destruction, your dehumanization - the white women, the kindly, smiling ones, the ones who say they love you, the lovers, the mothers, they plan to have the white men they control excise the parts of your brain that let you control your destiny and your person, and replace it with white brain parts, so you will be a hybrid, a coagulation of white and black, a being for whom the white parts of your brain control your behavior. You will be a spectator only, a helpless paralyzed consciousness watching the world as if it were a movie or TV show.
I have no idea what the inside of Mr. Peele's head is like, but if I were his white wife or white mother, I'd be a bit disturbed by this movie my sweet husband or son wrote. I mean, it's the best part of the writing, that he seems to be talking about his own coagulated head, but it's the disturbing part, too.
I declared spoilers above, but I may not have needed to, in that, he is not subtle in how he signals what the central mystery of the movie is. In interviews, he claims that all the "clues" he placed earlier in the film will be a revelation when you go back for a second viewing, but no, probably not if you are an over-consumer of crap movies, or even just of movies in the scifi-horror basket. This is the tropes problem I mentioned before.
But I can recommend it as a film.