Get Out (2017)

In writer/director Jordan Peele's directorial debut film - a low-budget ($4.5 million), R-rated horror-comedy titled Get Out that was wildly successful ($176 million domestic revenue, and $252.4 million worldwide), due to its timely subjects of prejudice and systemic racism. From its four Academy Award nominations, the social satire won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for its script, resembling in part The Stepford Wives (1975). Ultimately, it was the most profitable film of 2017 - with a whopping 630% return on investment.

• In the film's opening (after a brief pre-title credits prologue), talented 26 year-old African-American photographer Chris Washington (British actor Daniel Kaluuya) was driving to the upstate NY countryside with his white girlfriend Rose Armitage (Allison Williams) of five months. Rose had assured him that although he was the only black guy she had ever dated, her parents would be welcoming. He arrived at the plantation-styled estate to meet her supposedly-progressive, non-racist, liberal parents during a weekend getaway:
  • Missy (Catherine Keener), a steely-eyed matriarch and hypnotherapist
  • Dean (Bradley Whitford), an affable neurosurgeon doctor
• Chris also met two odd black servants who acted stiff, catatonic, compliant and unnatural:
  • Georgina (Betty Gabriel), maid-housekeeper
  • Walter (Marcus Henderson), groundskeeper
• Chris also encountered Rose's drunken, spoiled and violent, racist son Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones).

Georgina - Housekeeper Servant

Jeremy - Rose's Brother

• a strange foreshadowing was mentioned by Dean when he defended having black servants: "We hired Georgina and Walter to help care for my parents" - literally, they WERE his parents!
• during Chris' visit, he was subjected to Missy's hypnotherapy to help him stop his nicotine addiction to smoking in a session to cure him. In an induced trance (caused by her teacup stirring), he became paralyzed in his chair when he described his guilt feelings and self-blame about a hit-and-run accident in his childhood (when he was 11 years old) that killed his mother. He had not done anything and had not called 911, but sat immobile in front of the television
• suddenly, Chris' consciousness left his body as he descended into blackness and screamed (in silence), and he floated paralyzed in the dark void that Missy called the "sunken place." [Note: It was also a visual representation of his every-day reality, living as a marginalized, powerless individual.]

Chris' Hypnotherapy Session with Missy - The "Sunken Place"
Missy (Catherine Keener)	Eerie Tea-Cup Stirring During Hypnotherapy
Chris- Under Hypnosis	Chris - Descending or Falling into "Sunken Place"

• during the weekend, a group of privileged, wealthy white folks unexpectedly arrived (all in black vehicles) for an annual get-together. One of the couples (Alisa and Nelson) spoke to Chris and Rose - when Alisa inappropriately asked about their sex life: "So, is it true? Is it better?" Another gentleman made a second suspicious comment about how it was now fashionable to be black: "Fair skin has been in favor for the past what, couple of hundreds of years, but now the pendulum has swung back. Black is in fashion."
• when Chris spoke to "another brother" at the party, he realized that the black man Logan King (LaKeith Stanfield) was acting stiff, vacant and distant, and was married to a much older white woman named Philomena (Geraldine Singer). [Note: Logan was the same individual from the film's prologue, a Brooklyn native and jazz musician named Andre Hayworth, who was knocked unconscious at night on a dark suburban street in Evergreen Hollow by someone wearing a knight's helmet, and stuffed into a car trunk.]
• Chris also spoke to a noted blind art gallery owner Jim Hudson (Stephen Root) of Hudson Galleries. Chris phoned his buddy Rod Williams (Lil Rel Howery), a TSA agent at the local airport, and told him his concerns:
  • "They haven't met a black person that doesn't work for them."
  • "I got hypnotized last night."
  • "Yo, and the black people out here too. It seems like they all missed the movement. It's because they probably hypnotized."
• Rod warned: "They could of had you doing all types of stupid s--t. They could of had you barkin' like a dog, flyin' around like you're a f--kin' pigeon, lookin' ridiculous, OK. Or, I don't know if you know this. White people love makin' people sex slaves and s--t.... I think that Mom is puttin' everybody in a trance and she's f--kin' the s--t out of them."
• in one of the film's increasingly strange and weird scenes, Georgina apologized profusely to Chris for accidentally unplugging his cellphone, and then uncharacteristically didn't recognize his use of the slang word 'snitch.' She asserted ("Don't you worry about that. I can assure you. I don't answer to anyone"). He responded by trying to relate to her racially: "All I know is sometimes, if there's too many white people I get nervous, you know?" But then she repetitively told him: "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no...." Then, she made a most unusual statement: "The Armitages are so good to us. They treat us like family."
• feeling very spooked by the environment, especially when he was asked an embarrassing question: "Do you find that being African-American - more advantage or disadvantage in the modern world?", Chris tried to take an inconspicuous cellphone photo of Logan, who reacted to the flash with a nosebleed (excused later as an epileptic seizure) and screamed a raving-mad warning: "Get out!...Get the f--k outta here!"
• it was apparent that the camera flash also acted like a trigger, and Andre Hayworth (who was hypnotically buried inside him) was brought to the surface; shortly later, Rod phoned and told Chris that he recognized "Logan" as Andre "Dre" Hayworth, a missing person for six months who used to work at a movie theater. Chris explained: "He came to the party with a white woman like 30 years older than him." Rod again warned Chris: "Sex Slave. Chris, you've got to get the f--k up out of there, man. You are in some Eyes Wide Shut situation" before the phone went dead.

The Outdoor Silent Auction Sequence - For Chris!

• Chris was fairly certain that he must leave the house, but happened to notice an outdoor silent auction (a modern day slave auction) being conducted by Dean with the party guests - he saw a giant framed picture of himself on the front stage. To bid, each audience member held up bingo cards - the winner of the expensive bidding was Jim Hudson
• as Chris hurriedly packed to leave, he discovered photos in the cubbyhole-closet of Rose in prior relationships with black people (contradicting her claim that Chris was her first black boyfriend), including pictures of her with Andre, Walter and Georgina

Rose's Suspicious Pictures
With Other Black Guys	With Andre	With Georgina and Walter

• Chris attempted to immediately escape and frantically asked Rose for the car keys, but was confronted by her father Dean who asked a sinister question as he stared at the fireplace: "What is your purpose, Chris?...In life. What is your purpose?...Fire. It is a reflection of our own mortality. We are born, we breathe and then we die....Even the sun will die someday. But we are divine. We are the gods trapped in cocoons."
• Jeremy blocked Chris' exit, and Rose who finally held up the car keys admitted: "You know I can't give you the keys, right babe?" This was a turning point - Chris now realized that Rose was a willing participant and had deliberately lured him into the home of her family for ominous reasons. Missy clinked her spoon on her teacup to trigger a hypnotic response from Chris, who was knocked to the floor and again began to descend to the 'Sunken Place'
• in the next sequence, Chris was bound in the Armitage game-room basement and told the family's evil ploy - the film's major plot twist. It was explained via a videotaped info-mercial delivered by Rose's grandfather Roman (Richard Herd) on an old TV. The cultish Order of the Coagula assisted their beloved older white friends and relatives to live longer, by first brainwashing (through hypnosis) young blacks, and then transplanting (via neurosurgery) the elderly whites' brains into the bodies of the far younger and physically superior black people: "You have been chosen because of the physical advantages you enjoyed your entire lifetime. With your natural gifts and our determination we could both be part of something greater. Something perfect. The Coagula procedure is a man-made miracle. Our order has been developing it for many, many years and it wasn't until recently it was perfected by my own flesh and blood. My family and I are honored to offer it as a service to members of our group."
• meanwhile, Chris' TSA friend Rod spoke to female Detective Latoya (Erika Alexander) (and two other detectives Drake and Garcia), and claimed his friend Chris had been missing for two days. The two detectives were very skeptical and dubious about his assertion that the missing Andre had been brought back to life as Logan, and that anything else was out of the ordinary, when he told them: "What I'm about to tell you goin' to sound crazy. You ready?...I believe they've been abductin' black people, brainwashin' 'em, makin' 'em work for them as sex slaves and s--t....See I don't know if it's the hypnosis that's makin' 'em slaves or whatnot, but all I know is, they already got two brothers we know and there could be a whole bunch of brothers they got already."
• Roman's TV video, supplemented by an interactive session with Jim Hudson, further explained how the black subject's consciousness would be trapped in the dark void known as 'The Sunken Place,' although they would live on as a "passenger" in a white body: "Transplantation. Well, partial, actually. The piece of your brain connected to your nervous system needs to stay put, keeping those intricate connections intact. So you won't be gone. At least not completely. A sliver of you will still be in there somewhere. Limited consciousness. You'll be able to see and hear what your body is doing, but your existence will be as a passenger. An audience. You will live in - The Sunken Place."
• the blind artist Jim Hudson was being prepped in a surgical operating room by having his scalp removed. His brain was about to be transplanted into Chris' body that he had bought at auction. Others who had been surgically modified were:
  • Walter - implanted with Roman, Rose's grandfather (Dean's father)
  • Georgina - implanted with Marianne, Rose's grandmother (Dean's mother)
• cleverly, Chris blocked his ears with stuffing from the chair he was sitting in, and also blocked out Missy's teaspoon clinking sound to hypnotize him. He knocked out Jeremy with a blow to the head using a yellow bocce ball, then impaled Dean in the chest with a mounted set of "buck" deer antlers. Dean stumbled back into the prep room and overturned a candle, setting the entire room on fire and consuming Hudson. Chris broke Missy's teacup, leaving her defenseless, and then killed her by stabbing her in the head (or eye) with a letter opener. When Chris was attacked by a revived Jeremy, he was able to stab him in the leg with the letter opener, and then he brutally stomped Jeremy's skull
• meanwhile, Rose was unaware of the killings - she was cruising the Internet with earbuds, looking for her next potential victim, while symbolically eating colorful dry Fruit Loops cereal with a separate white glass of milk
• driving away in Jeremy's 2-door car, Chris also eliminated Georgina (who he had hit with the car) by deliberately crashing the car into a tree
• in the final moments of the film, Walter (not the 'grandpa' Roman persona, but the original Walter) shot Rose in the stomach with a rifle, and then suicidally shot himself. Chris began to strangle the lethally-wounded Rose (who avowed: "Chris, I'm so sorry. It's me. I-I love you. I love you"), but stopped when he realized he couldn't do it
• Chris was rescued by Rod, who drove up in an airport TSA vehicle (with flashing lights and siren) to whisk him away. Rod reminded Chris: "I mean, I told you not to go in that house," and explained how he had figured out the case: "I'm TS motherf--kin' A. We handle s--t. That's what we do. Consider this situation f--kin' handled."
• as the film ended, Rose was left to die by the side of the road