Get Out Blu-ray Review
Mathew Plale
June 16th, 2017
As his girlfriend runs through the checklist, Chris shows a look of concern. “Do they know I’m black?” he asks.
It hadn’t occurred to Rose (Allison Williams, HBO’s GIRLS), who is white, to tell her parents because she doesn’t view him as black. But Chris (Daniel Kaluuya, Denis Villeneuve’s SICARIO) knows others do and will. When they arrive at Rose’s parents, he finds it a gorgeous home, complete with ornately decorated rooms that probably never get used and black servants that probably get too much use.
Despite hesitation, Chris is greeted with smiles and hugs by Dean (Bradley Whitford, who had a role in another genre-slapping horror film, THE CABIN IN THE WOODS) and Missy (Catherine Keener, 2015’s ACCIDENTAL LOVE). But something is…off in the way Dean speaks, as when he, prompted by nothing, tells Chris he would have voted for Obama for a third term. From there, Chris begins noticing that the servants have a certain catatonic demeanor about them.
None of this sounds like comedy, nor does it sound like horror (at least in the traditional sense). But GET OUT is a meshing of both. The comedy isn’t quite what one would expect from writer/director Jordan Peele (2016’s KEANU, Comedy Central’s KEY & PEELE), but it is present in its own quiet, unintrusive way, allowing for the uneasiness that blends with the horror. The horror, too, begins untraditionally. Viewers are initially presented with the sort of horror that occupies nightly news, and then one social commentary, until finally presenting a supernatural element that occupies the same basement as a mad scientist movie.
GET OUT is charged by race and how both whites and blacks view, discuss and approach it. This groundwork is laid immediately, when the prologue introduces a black man who, before being kidnapped, remarks that the all-white suburbs are like a hedge maze. Later, a guest of the Armitages remarks that black is “in fashion” while another, a former pro golfer, can’t help but praise Tiger Woods in front of Chris.
As the intentions develop, we become keenly aware of the traits of the setting and characters. The Armitage home is like a haunted house on a plantation in Stepford, its servants mindless and clearly “cured” to fit a needed mold. What the mold is, when revealed, is terrifying–it may seem out of place, but the hints were there all along.
Lead Daniel Kaluuya does a remarkable job at conveying all of this. As twists and reveals emerge, Kaluuya must take Chris through the journey, a complex transformation that sees the man confronting his own biases, others’ judgements and society’s constraints. This is a stellar turn, one deserving of the accolades it will undoubtedly receive.
For his part, Jordan Peele has proven unpredictable and, more key to his career, keen and qualified. As his directorial debut, GET OUT is a brush of freshness to the genre and a demonstration of how such commentaries can be approached in cinema.
BLU-RAY REVIEW
Video: 2.40:1 in 1080p with MPEG-4 AVC codec. Details are excellent throughout, while colors are healthy and black levels are deep.
Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1; English DVS Dolby Digital 2.0. Subtitles in English, French and Spanish. The audio transfer is also strong, with clear dialogue as well as clean music and SFX cues.
Feature commentary with writer/director Jordan Peele: Peele offers a strong track in which he discusses the themes, style, cast, characters and much more of GET OUT.
Unveiling the Horror of GET OUT (8:50): This featurette goes into how the project came about, the horror elements, themes and more.
Q&A Discussion with writer/director Jordan Peele and the Cast (5:28): These excerpts from a screening feature comments from Peele, Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams and Lil Rel Howery.
Deleted Scenes (23:03): There are 11 here, which can be viewed separately or as a whole. They are: “Rose Hypnosis,” “Extended Rutherford,” “Badminton,” “Sunken Place Deer,” “Detective Latoya Extended,” “Rod Arrival 1 – Sex Slave,” “Rod Arrival 2 – Don’t Give Up On Love,” “Rod Arrival 3 – White Girls,” “Rod Arrival 4 – Cousin Single,” “Rod Arrival 5 – Bathroom” and “Rod Arrival 6 – Rose’s Vote.”
Alternate Ending (3:39)
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