Black Misery

I’ve seen lots of horror movies so I know a lot of the standard tropes: what kind of character dies first, who is the villain in sheep’s clothing, when the jump scares are going to come, and even the plot. I also know that 99 per cent of the cast is usually white and the black character, if present, doesn’t usually survive. Sad, and stupid, but that’s the truth of Hollywood horrors.

I don’t imagine many of those films played as well to black audiences as they did to white audiences.

Enter Jordan Peele, the new wunderkind and de facto saviour of horror movies. Yes, the Jordan Peele of sketch comedy duo Key and Peele and comedy series MADtv. That’s like saying that Stephen King wrote a great romance novel set in Victorian England. It’s enough to tilt one’s head 45 degrees.

Peele is the writer and director behind Get Out, a new film that surprisingly now ranks high on my list of suspense thriller horrors. That’s a short, short list too, containing such masterpieces as Seven, The Shining, Cape Fear, The Silence of the Lambs, and Misery. Yes, I know those are all films with white protagonists.

Get Out, however, is simply brilliant in ways that none of those others even came close to touching on. As you’d expect, Peele brings a wonderful sense of humour to the proceedings but this is primarily a psychological film about racial politics. It’s a satire too, and its bite comes with a sneer and a smirk because it’s smarter about the real world that it’s commenting on.

Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) travels with his girlfriend (Rose) to visit her parents (Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford) in their very upper class, very out of town, and very white country estate home. She didn’t tell them that he is black but he remains unperturbed. He goes over and above to help the relationship because he’s cool and doesn’t want race to become a thing between people. Her parents seem cool too, even if they’re so wealthy that they have a couple of live-in servants. Yes, black servants. One of his first clues that things are amiss is evidenced by the strange mannerisms of these two servants. Without putting too fine a point on it, they talk and act very white and very, very odd with plastic smiles and such polished speech that would make a proper British gent nod in approval. An attempted fist bump turns into a handshake. That’s how strange and how white things start to get, and then they get weirder.

While Get Out has major overtones of Misery and The Cabin in the Woods, it has more important undertones of The Stepford Wives and The Manchurian Candidate. Peele’s novel story pays homage to some of the grander traditions of horror (i.e. the city kid in a country setting) but brings a fresh voice to the table. That’s a tall order considering all of the demon possessions, deranged nogoodniks, and creepy characters that populate contemporary cinema’s horror canon.

Even more important than all of that is that this is a low budget film that was written with a deft hand to play well for audiences young and old, and black and white. The story is told through some really great acting (thanks to some spot-on casting) and other pieces of the puzzle done just right including atmospheric elements like the score and the removed, secluded setting. Also, the violence here shown mostly through implication and precious little blood is spilled. Get Out is filled with brains and I mean intelligence, not viscera. Well, let’s just say that this movie is no tea party. It’s psychological, sociological and genre bending at its utter best. I laughed. I cringed. Better yet, I would come back for more.