At a glance
| Director | Jordan Peele |
| Release year | 2017 |
| Runtime | 104 minutes |
| Genre | Horror, satire |
| Starring | Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Catherine Keener |
Plot
Chris Washington goes upstate to meet his girlfriend Rose’s parents. Dean and Missy Armitage are warm in the way that makes him check the room. The Black servants on the property smile too evenly. A weekend party fills the lawn with guests who comment on his body, his frame, and his genetic advantage. Chris’s friend Rod, a TSA agent, is the only person on the phone who treats the weekend as a problem.
Missy offers to hypnotize Chris for his smoking. The session puts him in a place the film calls the Sunken Place. What the Armitages want from him is not a secret the movie holds until the last minute. It is a system, and the weekend is the interview.
Production
Get Out is Jordan Peele’s first feature as director. He wrote it during the Obama years and shot it in a period when the country was arguing about whether racism was over. The film’s answer is the party. Blumhouse and QC Entertainment produced it for about $4.5 million. It opened in the United States on February 24, 2017, and grossed more than $250 million worldwide.
Daniel Kaluuya plays Chris. Allison Williams is Rose. Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener are the parents. Lakeith Stanfield appears as a guest who is not himself. Peele has said the original ending was bleaker, and that the released ending was changed so the film did not punish Chris for surviving. The Academy nominated it for best picture, director, actor, and screenplay, and Peele won for the script.
Cast
- Daniel Kaluuya as Chris Washington
- Allison Williams as Rose Armitage
- Bradley Whitford as Dean Armitage
- Catherine Keener as Missy Armitage
- Caleb Landry Jones as Jeremy Armitage
- Lil Rel Howery as Rod Williams
- Lakeith Stanfield as Andre Logan King
Trivia
- Peele has called it a horror film, not a comedy with scares. The laughs are the guests’ dialogue.
- The Sunken Place was shot as a physical drop, then finished as an image of falling away from the room.
- The budget was small enough that the gross made it one of Blumhouse’s clearest hits.
- An alternate ending, with Chris arrested, was filmed and later released as a supplement.
- Us and Nope are Peele’s next two features. They are not sequels.
- The film won the Oscar for original screenplay.