Get Out

Get Out's central conceit, about a Stepford Wives-ish plot by blithely entitled suburban whites to colonize black people's bodies, is a trenchant metaphor for white supremacy. The timing, character development, and gift for social satire that writer-director Jordan Peele honed as a sketch comedian all translate effortlessly to horror, allowing the first-time filmmaker to entrance his audience as deftly as Catherine Keener's Missy mesmerizes Daniel Kaluuya's Chris with that tapping teaspoon. The Sunken Place where Missy maroons Chris is the film's most indelible image, a stomach-churning representation of how it feels to be stripped of your autonomy and personhood by a dominant culture that remains cruelly blind and deaf to your plight. In a world where almost no one is what they initially appear to be, Get Out anatomizes the evil lurking in the relatively benign-seeming prejudice that plays out as fetishization or envy, a form of racism that doesn't see itself as racist at all. Written for Slant Magazine