Over Hyped: Get Out (2017)

Get Out (2017) is Stepford Wives meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers with a racial spin. By now everyone is surely familiar with basic plot: black Chris goes to meet his white girlfriend Rose’s family and finds out they’re part of a group of evil white people (and one Asian guy) who’s been kidnapping black people and stealing their bodies thanks to a hypnosis/brain transplant method developed by Rose’s parents.

Jordan Peele was motivated to create this movie because he was shocked that his fellow Americans had seemingly become convinced that Obama’s election had magically ended racism in the US. So, to better show just how ridiculous the notion that African Americans’ lives had suddenly become perfect truly was, he decided to make a movie in which a bunch of upper class white people are desperate to become black. Not just black adjacent like the Kardashians - real black people. Because that makes perfect sense in a story taking place after Trump was elected with the enthusiastic support of the emerging alt-right, which gave Right Wing ideas an appealing edgy makeover for a younger generation. Frankly, the body swapping is the most credible part of this premise.

Unfortunately, white people dying to lose their white privilege isn’t the only problem with the whole body swapping plot. What about ID? How are the original white person’s assets being transferred to their new black selves? In the case of one of the other transplant victims, Dre, there’s a wife who hasn’t body swapped yet. How is any of this justified? Did white Logan die and then his widow quickly married a much younger black man? Wouldn’t this raise some eyebrows, especially if it happens again and again? And what happens if the wife also body swaps? Are they going to say the wealthy white widow died, leaving everything to her much younger second husband, who promptly married an age appropriate black woman who, coincidentally, also suddenly left her old life behind after dating her new white neighbours’ daughter? Are these couples going to stay in that community and avoid outsiders forever? If Chris had been their first victim, you could just say they hadn’t thought this through, but he’s not. This glaring plot hole is never addressed. He could’ve mocked his captors’ obvious oversight, but for some reason, Peele decided to play the nonsensical premise straight and limit the humour to Chris’s friend Rod’s theories about the missing people being turned into slaves through hypnosis (which is actually more plausible than the truth) and concerns about Chris having a white girlfriend (which sound strangely hostile to interracial relationships). At least mention leaving the country and starting over somewhere else. Of course, if they did, they’d be treated as their new black selves rather than their real white ones, so…

Apart from the ID issue, there’s the evil white people’s method of luring victims. When Chris is waiting for the surgery, Hudson tells him that Rose’s way is nicer than her brother’s. I’m guessing Jeremy was the one who kidnapped Dre by luring him into another neighbourhood and jumping him. On the other hand, Rose dated Chris for five months, met his friends, was seen with him by several people. How is this smart? Does she only date people with no social media presence? Is she stopping them from posting photos of her online? With social media the odds that more than one person will realize that all these missing people had been dating the same woman at the time they disappeared are pretty high. Rose’s picture should be on the walls of several Internet sleuths by now. There should be warnings everywhere about the creepy white woman whose black dates always seem to disappear without a trace. Yes, she’s white and her family has money, but that’s not going to protect her forever. Even Ed Buck was caught eventually. And why the hell did she keep the photos of herself with the previous victims? That’s evidence!

Other things that don’t make sense: why did Rose tell Chris that he was her first black boyfriend and that she didn’t tell her parents he’s black? What if he had refused to meet them? It’s clear that those two details are seen as problematic and could’ve scared away others. I’m guessing her family’s many blunders are so she can say Chris left without her after he disappears? Really, that’s the only reason for that because they have obviously interacted with black people before and Rose knows they’re making her SO uncomfortable. On top of that, Jeremy’s aggressive behaviour would be considered suspicious after his sister’s boyfriend disappears. After all, it’s not as if Chris is cut off from the outside world - he manages to talk to Rod more than once and even sends him Dre’s photo. The neighbours at the party are equally weird. Rose should know the answers to those questions and have passed them along well before that. Isn’t the whole purpose of dating the victims to find out everything about them? And why do Rose and her family keep their act after it becomes clear Chris has figured out something is wrong? What was the point of her pretending to look for the car keys? It’s not like they’re all cackling with sadistic glee as he freaks out.

Near the end of the movie, it’s revealed that Georgina and Walter, who are introduced as housekeeper and groundskeeper respectively, are in fact Rose’s grandparents post body swap. They both act strangely throughout the movie and not all of it is a case of their original personalities breaking through. Dre/Logan basically acts older. Oh, and white, because he, gasp!, shakes Chris hand instead of fist bumping it. Which, judging from Chris’s reaction, is something no African American man would ever do (and is a clear sign his body has been hijacked by an evil, old white man). With Georgina, we get lots of staring, stilted movements, and a overly formal way of speaking that no one, not even the most formal person actually uses in real life. This would still be weird if she had been doing all that as the elderly white woman she really is. And why was she admiring her reflection on the window like she had never seen it a bunch of times before? Did she just switch bodies? At one point we see Rose already looking for her next victim, but if she really is dating one after the other, the fact that no one has noticed her by now is even more unbelievable. Walter manages to be worse than his wife. Is his creepy as hell talk about his granddaughter meant to imply some incestuous inclinations? Because that’s what it sounded like.

The famous scene of Rose sipping on a glass of milk and eating Froot Loops from a bowl while listening to Time of My Life on her headphones and googling “Top NCAA prospects” made me think High School Mean Girl rather than Female Version of Hannibal Lecter. I’m not sure what to think of her death. Chris interferes with Walter’s body swap and the original personality takes over for long enough to shoot Rose and then himself. She doesn’t immediately die and tries to reach out for the gun when Chris starts strangling her. He stomped, stabbed, and impaled the rest of her family already - why is he strangling her à la Othello and Desdemona? This feels a lot more up close and personal than the previous, bloodier deaths. Since the gun is right there, he could’ve easily shot her again or hit her with it. Chris doesn’t go through with the strangling and leaves her to bleed to death after Rod shows up to save him. Instead of following the friends as they drive away, the camera stays on Rose as she dies. Why? It didn’t do that for her equally evil family. Is she supposed to be worse than them? Because she isn’t. Does this have a deeper meaning because Chris still feels guilty for not calling the police when his mother didn’t come home and she ended up being left to die by the side of the road, the victim of a hit and run? He’s disturbed by a deer they run over on their way to Rose’s family home and he goes back to save Georgina (big mistake) after he hits her with the car, but in the end, he leaves Rose. Is it supposed to be ironic, showing white privilege poster girl Rose die alone like a lower class black single mother? Why is Get Out - a movie that shows a black man being auctioned to mediocre white people who want to steal his superior body for themselves - suddenly being enigmatic? Really, this movie isn’t subtle.

The biggest surprise is the fact that Chris gets away. An alternate ending had him being arrested for murder and telling Rod, who goes to visit him in prison, that he only cared that he had managed to stop the Armitages’ evil plan. Test audiences were not pleased with this downer ending, hence the change. Of course, both endings ignore the established fact that Rose’s family is part of a larger group and expect the audience to accept that there are no records of the procedure her parents developed out there and no one would ever even try to replicate it. A more interesting, twisted ending would’ve been for the body swap to be successful and then Hudson runs into the cop that stopped Rose and Chris after they hit the deer. Or maybe Rod could’ve managed to convince the police to investigate and the evil body swappers are unable to explain why some random black people have taken possession of the assets of missing wealthy white people and they end up being arrested on suspicion of their own murders. That would’ve acknowledged the stupidity of the villains’ scheme while still denouncing racism.

In the beginning I compared this to Stepford Wives, but weak husbands wanting to turn their wives into obedient fantasy women actually makes sense - white people wanting to be black in Trump’s America doesn’t. This concept would only work in a world in which all racial inequalities had been eliminated so maybe Peele should’ve gone full sci-fi and given the audience a futuristic utopia harbouring a dark secret. The loss of autonomy and black people being treated as commodities could’ve also been easily achieved by using Rod’s theory about the victims being hypnotized into becoming slaves. Like I wrote earlier, that is way more plausible than what we got.

So, the acting is great, the prospect of being forced to watch while someone else takes control of your body is obviously scary, and there are some good scenes throughout. However, I just couldn’t get past Get Out’s ridiculous premise and all the plot holes it generates, and I wouldn’t have liked it more if I had watched it without knowing the twist - it would’ve just been one more movie ruined by the ending. If it hadn’t been for its message about racism + the timing of its release, there’s no way it would’ve gotten so many glowing reviews.

By Danforth