Black Comedy

Get Out (2017) starts with a black man walking through a leafy suburb, worrying about getting Trayvoned. Before he knows it, a man in an iron helmet has grabbed him and stuffed him into a car. Then the real horror starts.

Jordan Peele is a black man living in New York with a white girlfriend (Allison Williams), and they are getting ready to visit her parents in a leafy suburb. He's nervous, his friend LilRel Howery is nervous for him, but Allison just laughs it off. Her parents are cool about race, even though they can be dorks. And the dorkiness is the real scary thing here. Not just potential in-laws, but white, liberal in-laws.

So after a horror start, this quickly becomes a comedy of manners - although I was cringing and hiding my eyes through a lot of it. But don't worry horror fans, it gets plenty scary before the end.

I don't really have much to say about this movie, and not just because I'm not spoilering. (It's Stepford Wives times Black.) In a lot of ways, it's a perfect movie, every detail in place. Peele is black Everyman, neither street nor bougie. Williams seems just right for the white GF, not a siren, not a wannabe, just regular folks. Kind of post-racial. I kind of wanted her to be more of a vamp - or a Jean Seberg gamine, irresistable to the African-American male. But I think casting a "girl next door" was a better choice. Of course, I haven't seen her in Girls, so I may be missing some subtext.

In conclusion, I guess this means we should watch Keanu?