The trailer for Jordan Peele’s horror movie Get Out is here, and it looks eerie as heck.
Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams play a couple visiting Williams’ home for the first time. When they arrive into the suburb in what seems like a Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner comedy, it become clear very quickly that something else is going on. Her parents, played by Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford, seem friendly but hypnosis and their seemingly traumatized caretakers also suggest otherwise. A friend calls Kaluuya’s character to warn him of other black people disappearing in that suburb and everything goes wild.
Peele, who’s a fan of horror, has used the genre in Key and Peele sketches before (“Sexy Vampires” will never stop being funny). In an interview with Forbes, he cites Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives as tonal inspirations for Get Out. He also talks about how horror and comedy are great ways to talk about social issues:
As with comedy, I feel like horror and the thriller genre is a way, one of the few ways, that we can address real life horrors and social injustices in an entertaining way. We go to the theater to be entertained, but if what is left after you watch the movie is a sort of eye-opening perspective on some social issues, then it can be a really powerful piece of art.
Peele also adds that Get Out is “a very personal story,” as it comes from the perspective of an African American man dealing with extreme and subtle racism that “many people may not know exists on a day to day basis, or for a lot of people.” The writer/director notes that thrillers about race are more rare, and he’d love to do more thrillers.
While we’ve been seeing a lot of subversive horror films in recent years, I don’t know if I’ve seen many films take on race relations as head-on as Get Out strives to do and it’s very exciting. Even when we do get horror stories interested in race, they are often focalized through a white protagonist. Considering how much horror has a tendency to kill off their black characters early on, use them as demonic antagonists, or have them in the backdrop to signal foreign danger, Peele’s film has a lot of potential to change that. Immediately in the trailer we see a police officer ask Kaluuya for his license despite him not driving, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste” (the slogan for the United Negro College Fund), and more.
The movie’s use of a super-white suburb, lacrosse equipment, and BINGO as a place for fear, rather than comforting, familiar space will no doubt yield a lot of laughs as well. Get Out will be released February 24th, 2017. What did you think about the trailer?
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