Do you all think the racial text/subtext/satire /fame/praising director for records set etc…unfairly overshadow the fact this is a great horror film on its own legs.
I fear all the above will make the film be remembered as a gimmick rather than a great film.
Also: All this (Well deserved i admit) heaping of praise from white critics reminds me of the people praising Tiger just to prove #notallwhitepeople #Imawokecritic!
I suspect Aaron Sorkin is going to take over Jordan Peele’s body. Be on the lookout for walk and talk Key& Peele skits.
Nope, any more than that’s what happened with Rosemary’s Baby or Stepford Wives. Not all horror movies deal with social issues, but it’s a really common thing to do; Get Out just did it better than most.
I thought the walk-and-talk was Tommy Schlamme’s thing.?
scratches head If it’s well deserved, then how do we know that people are praising it just to prove #notallwhitepeople?
I thought it was a pretty good movie in its own right. I appreciated the subtle humor. I think my interest in the social message probably influenced my enjoyment of it. I also had really high expectations after all the praise it got and all the interviews I heard before I saw it.
Bumping this because I just watched it yesterday. I don’t do horror (the last thing even remotely in the same genre I watched was Blair Witch Project, and I regretted it). But I have intended to watch all of the Best Pictures nominees for 2017, and I knew I’d feel like I wimped out if I didn’t make myself sit through it.
The film was great. I’m glad I sat through it (or, at least, I was until I tried to go to sleep last night). I think most of my thoughts have already been covered here, but I did have one additional thought about the grandfather. I think it was more than just doing grandfatherly things. Remember, some of the idea was to enjoy being in these strong, exotic bodies. I thought in particular that the wood-chopping scene and the night-racing scene were about the grandfather relishing his abilities in this body. Flexing muscles he hadn’t had before, as it were.
The only thing I didn’t love about the movie was the brother. I felt like he was too over-the-top, overtly creepy for a family who otherwise was so patient and methodical in how they went about their business. But I realize that also lends credence to why he abducted people by brute force rather than taking his sister’s more measured approach.
Oh, and someone earlier made a comment about the sister/girlfriend noticing the car crash where she hadn’t noticed the fights in the house downstairs. I don’t think she was startled by the noise so much as the flash of headlights outside of the window. Just my impression, anyway.
Just saw it for the first time this weekend as well. My thoughts, starting with the good:
Nothing seems to be wasted. Just about every bit of scenery and dialogue adds to the film, which I really liked. Even at the very beginning, the little line about how grandpa “never got over losing to Jesse Owens” adds to the character of the family. The Jesse Owens thing also ties into Walter’s night running: Grandpa was a sprinter of near-Olympic caliber, and he’s relishing being able to run again. So, overall it’s quite a tight little movie.
No complaints whatsoever about performances. Everyone was well suited for their role and played it well, particularly Georgina, who was very freaky indeed. I didn’t realize until I was thinking about it the next day that all the primping she did, checking out her reflection, smoothing her hair and whatnot, was all about Grandma admiring her different physical form.
The not-as-good: for the most part, I found it predictable. There was one real surprise (“Grandma.”), and apart from that, it basically went exactly where you know it’s going to go, step by step.
Chris and his buddy happened to know the one other black guy at the party. You might say Peele is having a laugh at our expense (“See, we really do all know each other!”), but it seemed like lazy storytelling. Couldn’t he just recognize him as a college basketball player who went missing or something?
Initially I thought, at the end, they were going to pull a Brazil, and have the whole escape be a product of his cooked mind, when in fact he’s undergone the full procedure and is now living only as a zombie in the subconscious of a body being driven by someone else. But when it showed his girlfriend eating the cereal and milk, which is something he’d have no way of observing, I figured that was off the table and we were in reality.
That original ending would have been interesting, but one way they could have turned it around for him: Chris is in jail for a while, but then one day he gets released, and wonders why, until he sees on the news that dozens of bodies of old white people with their brains cut out have been found at the bottom of the lake, or in the ruins of the burned-down house.
I liked it, but I’m really up in the air about its Best Picture chances. Sometimes the Academy goes for something as different as Get Out, but that’s really rare, and a horror-type movie hasn’t won for 25 years. So, I’m pessimistic.
[coughs] covering the scar [/coughs]
That one took me right out of the movie, too…
I really enjoyed it and I generally hate horror movies. Starting off with the title which istm is joking with the fct that most horror movies wouldn’t exist if the protagonists hopped on a train when things get hinky.
Am I the only one who thought the reason Georgina drifted off so much was because the Grandma part of her brain was just going a little senile?
It was great to see it win both Best Director and Best Picture at the Independent Spirit Awards tonight. I celebrated by watching it for the third time, and remembered that there were a couple of great lines:
“My mother loved the kitchen, so we keep a piece of her in here.” (cut to Georgina standing at the kitchen counter)
“We hired Walter and Georgina to care for our parents. When they died, I couldn’t bear to let them go.”
Yeah, it was pretty good, but it was silly to nominate this for Oscars, and sillier still that it won one and that people argued for it getting Best Picture. “Moonlight” was a legitimately deserving winner last year; people need to be more patient and not try to make #OscarsSoBlack happen every year, without regard to the level of quality of black films to choose from.
It does sound like it would have been better with the original ending. Or, if you don’t want something so bleak, come up with a better ending than you used. It was the first moment in the movie where it really seemed like a Key & Peele sketch—and while I love a lot of their sketches, that is a step down from cinematic quality.
Isn’t this trying to have it both ways, though? This movie is often held up by its partisans as some kind of deeply meaningful allegory that has great relevance to real life race relations (something I find very dubious), but then if the real life implications are pointed out, it’s suddenly just a fantastical sci-fi horror thriller?
ETA: I do agree that it doesn’t make sense for him to keep asking her for the keys when he knows she’s in on it. That doesn’t mean he would have gotten away—they were basically just toying with him—but it doesn’t make sense for his character.
I’ve got to see it again. I was rooting for it for Best Pic at the Oscars.
I just watched this over the weekend, and really enjoyed it. I thought the ending fit well, because it was what the entire Rod/TSA agent plot was leading up to - having him just show up after Chris was arrested would have made his scenes earlier in the movie superfluous. And it fit in with the comedic elements of Rod’s character.
To address one complaint from earlier in the thread - that he couldn’t have been able to stuff the cotton in his ears. When he first wakes up in the chair, he tries to unbuckle the wrist straps with his teeth, clearly showing that he had enough freedom of motion to get his head down to his hands and wrists.