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Get Out (2017)


The "final girl" phrase was coined in the early '90s by film scholar Carol J. Clover studying the golden era of slasher films of the '70s and '80s, such as Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and Friday the 13th. In these films, groups of teens find themselves facing terrifying killers, and these groups get picked off one by one. Those who die first are the ones who engage in sex, drugs and drinking - typically every character except the final girl. She is seen as morally superior, often a virgin, and is therefore spared and left to face the killer herself in the climax. However, she is often rescued by a strong male character, like a first responder, or she escapes and the killer's whereabouts are unknown.

    Midsommar's May Queen and the New Age of Final Girls (ALEX PAYNE, MAY 11, 2020, CBR)
I'd just like to make a few discrete points about this deservedly praised horror film from Jordan Peele. The first is that the controversy over it being listed as a Comedy in the Golden Globe Awards is semi-inexplicable. Mr. Peele himself says that the film is intended to be Scream for black audiences and noone would deny that the model was a satire of the horror genre. Getting hysterical about this decision seems like the sort of soft racism that the director is satirizing. And any film that features Lil Rel Howery's brilliant comic turn as the TSA agent, Rod, who even gets the final say, is definitely a comedy.

Second, what do I mean by "soft racism"? Obviously the exploitation of the black victims by the Armitage family and their white friends is repellent and is classically racist. However, the manner in which they speak about blacks and their reasons for choosing black victims is about fetishization, almost a myth of physical superiority, rather than the more typical view of blacks as an inferior race. The Order of the Coagula are essentially wannabes, like the suburban white boys in their teens and twenties who crank rap tunes and follow the NBA. Note that, at the end of the film, Rose is online scouting her next victim for the project and he is literally the top NCAA basketball recruit. This kind of objectification is unquestionably racist, and insidious in its own right, but it is a bit more nuanced than viewers have given it credit for. It also indicts the white audience more directly than other iterations of racism, which may explain why folks skipped over it.

Finally, consider the "final girl" meme above, which many critics and even Mr. Peele himself, think the plot has subverted. They contend that Chris is the final girl, rather than Rose. Rather, the subversion goes far deeper and, at least in my research, I haven't seen anyone mention it: not only is Rose the final girl but Chris is the slasher. It is Chris who kills, or is responsible for the death of, every character in the movie. In that sense, Get Out is a revenge/empowerment thriller, owing more to the great Blaxploitation films of the '70s than people recognize. The fact that we are all rooting for "Jason" instead of the "campers" is an achievement in its own right, but owes more to Shaft and Superfly than to Friday the 13th.

None of which it to detract at all from Mr. Peele's accomplishment. Get Out is exquisitely shot and scored, features consistently excellent performances, is truly funny and, obviously, ends up being deeply though-provoking about some of the most important issues we face today. hard to think of a greater debut by any filmmaker.

(Reviewed:06-Jun-20)

Grade: (A)

Websites:

See also:


    -FILMOGRAPHY: Jordan Peele
    -WIKIPEDIA: Get Out
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Jordan Peele (IMDB)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Get Out (IMDB)
    -WIKIPEDIA: Us
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Us (IMDB)
    -YOU TUBE CHANNEL: Key & Peele
    -VIDEO: Jordan Peele Breaks Down "Get Out" Fan Theories from Reddit (Jordan Peele, Dec 1, 2017, Vanity Fair)
    -FILM SERIES: Jordan Peele: The Art of the Social Thriller (Brooklyn Academy of Music)
    -AUDIO INTERVIEW: 'Get Out' Sprang From An Effort To Master Fear, Says Director Jordan Peele (Dave Davies, March 15, 2017, NPR: Fresh Air)
    -VIDEO ARCHIVES: jordan peele (You Tube)
    -PROFILE: Brothers from Another Mother (Zadie Smith, 2/16/15, The New Yorker)
    -PROFILE: Jordan Peele’s X-Ray Vision: “Get Out,” his docu-horror-thriller-comedy about race in America, was the movie of the year. What will he show us next? (Wesley Morris, Dec. 20, 2017, NY Times Magazine)
    -PROFILE: Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele on Fargo and Wanting Michael Winslow for Their Police Academy Reboot (Denise Martin, JUNE 3, 2014, Vulture)
    -PROFILE: SCARIER (AND BETTER) THAN YOU EVEN THINK: JORDAN PEELE SEES ‘US’: How a comedian evolved to horror and transformed Hollywood (Kelley L. Carter, March 19, 201, Undefeated)
    -PROFILE: How Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele Have Broken the Comedy-Duo Mold: Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele have broken the dusty comedy-duo mold, collecting a Peabody, five Emmy nominations, and millions of YouTube viewers along the way. Their daunting new mission: reboot the fabled Police Academy franchise (JAMES WOLCOTT, OCTOBER 10, 2014, Vanity Fair)
    -PROILE: How Key & Peele Make Comedy That Goes Really, Insanely Viral: In less than two years, the Comedy Central duo has created some of the most successful characters and bits in recent memory. Here's how they do it. (Jordan Zakarin, Sep 25, 2013, BuzzFeed)
    -PROILE: Jordan Peele on ‘Keanu’: ‘It Looks Like Michael Mann Made a Comedy’ (Dave McNary, Apr 28, 2016, Variety)
    -PROFILE: Jordan Peele Talks 'Get Out' And His Love For Horror Movies (Scott Mendelson, Oct 5, 2016, Forbes)
    -PROFILE: The First Great Movie of the Trump Era: How Get Out began as a rebuke to Obama-inspired dreams of racial harmony and became a conduit for fears reignited by the rise of the new president. (JADA YUAN and HUNTER HARRIS, February 2018, Vulture)
    -PROFILE: Jordan Peele on ‘Get Out,’ the horror film about racism that Obama would love (JEN YAMATO, FEB. 25, 2017, LA Times)
    -PROFILE: Meet Lil Rel, The Scene-Stealing TSA Agent From Get Out: The unassuming folk hero of Jordan Peele’s new horror movie talks about writing truth into film, and the movie’s alternate ending. (ANUPA MIS, 3/03/17, Fader)
    -ARTICLE: Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’ Almost Had a Much More Bleak Ending (Ethan Anderton, 3/05/17, Slash Film)
    -ARTICLE: ‘Get Out’ Filmmakers Explain Why They Changed the Ending (ADAM CHITWOOD, FEBRUARY 22, 2018, Collider)
    -ARTICLE: Oscars: 'Get Out's' Jordan Peele Makes History as First African-American Original Screenplay Winner (Lexy Perez, 3/04/18, Hollywood Reporter)
    -ARTICLE: "Get Out" will compete as a comedy at Golden Globes and people have feelings (RACHEL LEAH, NOVEMBER 15, 2017, Salon)
    -ARTICLE: Is 'Get Out' a Comedy? What Jordan Peele Says (MARIA VULTAGGIO, 11/15/17, Newsweek)
    -INTERVIEW: Jordan Peele on Us: ‘This is a very different movie from Get Out' (Steve Rose, 9 Mar 2019, The Guardian)
    -ARTICLE: Jordan Peele’s Get Out Almost Had an Impossibly Bleak Ending: The comedian’s horror debut could have gone down an even darker road. (YOHANA DESTA, MARCH 3, 2017, Vanity Fair)
    -INTERVIEW: Jordan Peele on How He Tackled Systemic Racism as Horror in ‘Get Out’ (Ricardo Lopez, Nov 1, 2017, Variety)
    -PROFILE: For Jordan Peele, ‘Get Out’ success has been a surreal journey (Peter Hartlaub Feb. 24, 2018, SF Chronicle)
    -PROFILE: Jordan Peele on a Truly Terrifying Monster: Racism: The sketch comedian takes on racial politics and the “liberal elite” in his debut feature, the horror movie “Get Out.” Here, he talks about his life and work. (Jason Zinoman, Feb. 16, 2017, NY Times)
    -INTERVIEW: Best of 2017 (Behind the Scenes): Jordan Peele goes inside Get Out's biggest twist (Derek Lawrence, December 20, 2017, Entertainment Weekly)
    -INTERVIEW: Jordan Peele on Get Out, His Fears and Cultural Hope (Eddie S. Glaude Jr., 2/15/18, TIME)
    -PROFILE: Jordan Peele’s Forum Keynote Unpacks ‘Get Out’s American Nightmare (MATT WARREN, Film Independent Forum)
    -ESSAY: 'Get Out' the Book: Read Jordan Peele’s Notes On His Iconic Film: We've handpicked some of the best annotations Jordan Peele shares in Get Out: The Annotated Screenplay. Reading them will change how you watch the movie. (Naomi Elias, November 16, 2019, Film School Rejects)
    -ESSAY: Jordan Peele Breaks Down Religious Themes Of ‘Us’ & Calls His Latest A “Dark Easter” Film (Charles Barfield, March 29, 2019, The Playlist)
    -ESSAY: Jordan Peele Has Mastered His Brand of Horror. But It Hasn’t Trickled Down to His Productions.: ‘Lovecraft Country,’ the new Peele-produced HBO horror series, is both a tribute to and a subversion of H.P. Lovecraft’s work. But it never reaches its full potential as a revisionist fantasy. (Alison Herman Aug 13, 2020, The Ringer)
    -ESSAY: Welcome to the 2022 Slate Movie Club: Looking back on a year in movies that made me say Yes—and asking for my fellow critics to tell me why I was wrong to say Nope. (DANA STEVENS, DEC 26, 2022, Slate)
    -ESSAY: What’s the Meaning of Jordan Peele’s Nope?: Wrong question. (SAM ADAMS, JULY 22, 2022, Slate)
    -PODCAST: Elif Batuman on the Cult of Family in Get Out (Open Form, August 11, 2022)
    -VIDEO: Quentin Tarantino on Get Out: Quentin Tarantino talks about the brilliance of Jordan Peele's Get Out and theorizes why the movie made such an impact. (History of Horror podcast)
    -ESSAY: Get Out and Galatians 3:28 (CHARLES HOLMES JR., MARCH 21, 2017, Think Christian)
    -ESSAY: Our Sunken Place: "Post-Racial" America in Jordan Peele’s Get Out (brooke Hughes, University of Buffalo)
    -ESSAY: What Made That Hypnosis Scene in Get Out So Terrifying: The Atlantic looks back on the key film moments of 2017, starting with Jordan Peele’s subversive horror masterpiece. (DAVID SIMS, DECEMBER 5, 2017, The Atlantic)
    -ESSAY: In Get Out, the Eyes Have It: Jordan Peele’s fantastic film relies heavily on the sense of sight to amplify its racial horror. (LENIKA CRUZ, MARCH 3, 2017, The Atlantic)
    -ESSAY: Manipulations of Stereotypes and Horror Clichés to Criticize Post-Racial White Liberalism in Jordan Peele’s Get Out (Jillian Boger, Bridgewater State University, The Graduate Review)
    -ESSAY: Anger translator: Jordan Peele's Get Out (Michael Jarvis, Science Fiction Film and Television, Volume 11, Issue 1, Spring 2018)
    -ESSAY: In The Sunken Place: A Review Of Jordan Peele’s Get Out (Joseph L. Lewis, 28 March 2019, Religious Studies Review)
    -ESSAY: THE THEOLOGY OF SUSPICION: WHAT ‘GET OUT’ CAN TEACH WHITE CHRISTIANS (KENJI KURAMITSU, MAR 17, 2017, Sojourners)
    -ESSAY: ‘Get Out’ Contains a Theological Lesson That Is Easy to Miss (DELONTE GHOLSTON, 3/06/18, Relevant)
    -ESSAY: ‘Get Out’ and the Villain Next Door: The horror film’s final reveal is perfect?—?because it’s so deeply, terrifyingly familiar (Allison P. Davis Feb 27, 2017, The Ringer)
    -ESSAY: Everything You Need to Know About Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’: The follow-up to ‘Get Out’ demands to be analyzed from all angles, and the Ringer staff has it all covered (The Ringer)
    -ESSAY: Do ‘Get Out’ and ‘Being John Malkovich’ Exist in the Same Universe?: Yes, and we have definitive proof (Lindsay Zoladz, Mar 26, 2019,The Ringer)
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    -PODCAST: Get Out (Bill Simmons, Sean Fennessey, and K. Austin Collins, Feb 27, 2018, The Ringer: The Rewatchables)
    -FILM REVIEW ARCHIVE: Get Out (Metacritic)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Richard Brody, The New Yorker)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out ( K. Austin Collins, The Ringer)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Joe Morgenstern, WSJ)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (James Berardinelli, Reel Views)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (David Edelstein, Vulture)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Aisha Harris, Slate)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Katie Walsh/Tribune News Service)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Alissa Wilkinson, Vox)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Carrie Witmer, Business Insider))
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Manhola Dargis, NY Times)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Alonso Duralde, The Wrap)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (ALAN SCHERSTUHL, Village Voice)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (AA Dowd, AV Club)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Dominick Suzanne-Mayer, Consequences of Sound)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Tim Robey, The Telegraph)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Empire)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Bob Mondello, NPR)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Brandon Harris, The New Yorker)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Mark Kermode, The Observer)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Peter DeBruge, Variety)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (David Ehrlich, Indie Wire)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Stephanie Zacharek, TIME)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (richard Lawson, Vanity Fair)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (David Sims, The Atlantic)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Jake Coyle, AP)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Common Sense Media)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Cameron McAllister, Christianity Today)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Keith Watson, Slant)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Kyle Smith, NY Post)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Johnathan Schumann, Ridgefield Press)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Armond White, National Review)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Aramide A Tinubu, Shadow & Act)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Jack Shepherd, Independent)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (John McDonald, Jacobin)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Rafer Guzman, Newsday)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Matt Goldberg, Collider)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Gerry Fialka and Will Nediger, Otherzine)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Thelma Adams, NY Observer)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Charlie Jane Anders, Wired)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Ina Diane Archer, Film Comment)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out (Karl Delossantos, Smash Cut Reviews)
    -FILM REVIEW: Get Out ()
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    -FILM REVIEW ARCHIVE: Us (Metacritic)
    -FILM REVIEW: Us (Tasha Robinson, The Verge)
    -FILM REVIEW: Us (Adam Nayman, The ringer)
    -FILM REVIEW: Us (Dan Caffrey, Consequences of Sound)
    -FILM REVIEW: Us (Brian Truitt, USA Today)
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    -FILM REVIEW: Us (Jason Guerrasio , Business Insider)
    -FILM REVIEW: Us (John Semley, Globe & Mail)
    -FILM REVIEW: Us (mick LaSalle, datebook)
    -FILM REVIEW: Us (Taylor Antrim, Vogue)
    -FILM REVIEW: Us (James Roberts, Glide)
    -FILM REVIEW: Us (Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun Times))
    -FILM REVIEW: Us (Prospero, The Economist)
    -FILM REVIEW: Us (Eileen Jones, Jacobin)
    -FILM REVIEW: Us (Jack Beresford, Irish Post)
    -FILM REVIEW: The Annotated Screenplay for Us (Ryan Coleman, LA Review of Books)
    -FILM REVIEW: Nope (Sonny Bunch, The Bulwark)
    -FILM REVIEW: Nope (Adam Nayman, The Ringer)
    -FILM REVIEW: Nope (Jesse Hassenger, InsideHook)
    -FILM REVIEW: Nope (Stephen Silver, Splice Today)
    -FILM REVIEW: Nope (John Podhoretz, Free Beacon)
    -FILM REVIEW: Nope (David Hudson, Criterion)
    -FILM REVIEW: Nope (Justin Chang, Fresh Air)
    -FILM REVIEW: Nope (Olivia Rutigliano, LitHub)
    -FILM REVIEW: Nope (Lex Prior, The Ringer)
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    -ESSAY: Black bodies are still treated as expendable: Ahmaud Arbery’s death and the black Covid-19 morbidity crisis show how much African American lives are treated as expendable capital. (Aaron Ross Coleman Jun 5, 2020, Vox)