Get Out (2017)

*** out of ****

Ok, so we all know it has a stupidly high rating on Rotten Tomatoes (currently 99%). That's higher than “It Follows” (2014), the scariest film I've seen in many years. Is this one is good as “It Follows”? Not on your life. But it's entertaining as hell and has some damn good spooks in it too.

Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) is a talented young photographer, and he and his girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) have gotten serious enough that he's going with her to meet her parents. He's moderately concerned how he'll be perceived as he's black and she's white, but he appears more resigned than anything. He expects a typical “white liberal” welcome, where everyone will go out of their way to show how accepting they are of him, while dropping the odd comment here and there to show they are really, really not okay with it. And at first he's right......

Her Dad keeps calling him “m'man” and insists on a hug when they meet. Mom (Catharine Keener) says all the right things, but keeps glancing at him with very distasteful looks. She's a therapist who can hypnotize patients, and one evening under the guise of help Chris quit smoking, she hypnotizes him without permission. And if you thought when watching this movie that things had been tense and weird up to that point, well, you ain't seen nothing yet.

There are other non-Caucasions around, but Chris notices that they act really, really bizarre. The gardener Walter (Marcus Henderson) for instance, seems like an NFL-sized combination of Uncle Remus and Hymie from “Get Smart”. The maid (Betty Gabriel) appears to be a constantly terrified robot (when I saw her I leaned over to the friend I was with and said, “She's like a Stepford Wife”). Clearly there are weird things afoot..... but for a very lengthy part of the movie we have no idea what the weird things are.

Believe it or not, this is the genius of the story. You know something is amiss, you know that Chris is in serious danger (and so does he, most of the time), but you really don't know why or from whom. It could be only one or two of the characters that are dangerous..... or it could be all of them.

Without giving too much away, your worst fears about how dangerous things are weren't as bad as how dangerous things REALLY are. But what's really going on is so friggin' weird that it's borderline awesome! I suppose I might have guessed what the danger was if someone forced me to guess, but then I would have dismissed it as too far out there. But the way the plot unfolds makes the eventual explanation crazy, but still almost believable. ALMOST.

It has some good jumps, some really creepy stuff, and the occasional really great laugh. For a fluffy horror picture that's enough for me to give it a good recommendation. But this is better than the average horror flick, full credit to them, but it isn't exactly as good as a 99% Rotten Tomatoes rating would lead you to believe. If you like the genre you'll love it, if you can tolerate the genre you'll like it, but this won't make any non-fans of scary movies into new fans. A solidly entertaining effort.