Jordan Peele learned how to scare people by making them laugh. As characters like Funkenstein’s Monster on the popular sketch show Key & Peele he investigated popular culture, ethnic stereotypes and race relations through a satirical lens.
Get Out, his directorial debut, however, contains few laughs. By design. It’s a horror film about college students Rose and Chris, played by Allison Williams and Daniel Kaluuya. Things are getting serious and it’s time to meet the parents.
“Do they know I’m black?” he asks. She assures him race is a non-issue as they head to her leafy up-state hometown to meet parents Missy and Dean (Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford). After a few days Chris feels uneasy, a sensation compounded by an alarming call from his best friend. “I’ve been doing my research and a whole lot of brothers have gone missing in that suburb,” he says. Chris wonders if his hosts are racist and deadly or just racist.
“It’s a horror movie from an African American’s perspective,” Peele told Forbes.com.
While working on the script Peele sought advice from Sean of the Dead director Edgar Wright and other genre filmmakers but says ultimately his career in comedy was the best training to make a horror film.
Making people laugh, he declares, and scaring the pants off them share a similar skill set. Both are all about pacing, reveals and both must feel like they take place in reality he says.
His love of horror dates back to watching A Nightmare on Elm Street as a teen. It was the first movie that really terrified him. Since then, he says the first sight of Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs really frightened him.
“You come down the hallway, and he’s just waiting for you,” he told the New York Times. “It’s the protagonist in motion and something waiting for him, patiently and calmly. Those are so chilling to me.”
Get Out isn’t a typical horror film, however. Peele refers to it as a “social thriller,” a movie that veers away from the Nightmare on Elm Street thrills that made such an impression on him as a teen. Instead the main villain is something more insidious than even the slash-happy Freddy Kruger; it’s racial tension. He says the story is personal but is quick to add it speedily veers off from anything strictly autobiographical. Instead it is an exploration of racism in all its forms he hopes will ultimately be relatable for his audience no matter who they are.
He compares Chris’s anxiety to Sidney Poitier’s classic Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. In that film parents, played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, have their attitudes challenged when their daughter introduces them to her African American fiancé. He says the uncomfortable situation of meeting in-laws for the first time is universal.
“The layer of race that enriches and complicates that tension (in the film) becomes relatable,” he told GQ. “It’s made to be an inclusive movie. If you don’t go through the movie with the main character, I haven’t done my job right.”
Funnyman Jordan Peele isn’t the first name you think of when you think of horror, but his new movie, “Get Out,” might change that. The “Key & Peele” star has dropped the satire that made his name in favour of scares.
College students Rose and Chris, played by Allison Williams and Daniel Kaluuya, have reached the point in their relationship when it’s getting serious and it’s time for him to meet her parents.
“Do they know I’m black?” he asks. “It seems like something you might want to mention. I don’t want to get chased off the lawn with a shotgun.”
She assures him race is a nonissue—“My dad would’ve voted for Obama third time if he could have,” she says. “They are not racist.”—as they head to her leafy up-state hometown to meet parents hypnotherapist Missy and neurosurgeon Dean (Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford). After a few days Chris feels uneasy. A police officer demands to see his driver’s license even though he wasn’t driving the car and Dean is friendly, but strange. “How long has this been going on,” dad asks, “this thang.”
The atmosphere of apprehension builds during a garden party thrown on Missy and Dean’s estate. “It’s like they’ve never met a black person who didn’t work for them,” Chris says. Guests make inappropriate remarks and the only other African American attendee (Lakeith Stanfield) is standoffish until a flash bulb triggers a seizure. “Get out!” he screams over and over, attacking Chris. Unnerved Chris wants to leave, but finds himself trapped, wondering if his hosts are racist and deadly or just racist.
Back in the city Chris’ best friend, TSA agent Rod (LilRel Howery), is worried about his friend. After a google search or three Rod becomes convinced Chris has been kidnapped and his being used as a suburban sex slave.
“Get Out” is the weirdest and most original mainstream psychodrama to come along since “The Babadook.” The basic premise harkens back to the Sidney Poitier’s classic Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. In that film parents, played by Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, have their attitudes challenged when their daughter introduces them to her African American fiancé. The uncomfortable situation of meeting in-laws for the first time is universal. It’s the added layers of paranoia and skewered white liberalism that propels Chris’ situation into full-fledged horror. In this setting Chris is the other, the stranger and as his anxiety grows the social commentary regarding attitudes about race in America grows sharper and more focussed.
The first hour is a slow burn, a gradual build to the weird behaviour that comes in the final third. Peele skilfully shapes the story, carefully adding layers of horror and humour (mostly courtesy of Howery) that grows to a bloody climax. The subtlety of the first hour is abandoned near the end when the movie shifts tone from a sinister Kubrickian feel to something more akin to an 80s slasher flick.
Kaluuya is the film’s beating heart. Williams, Keener and Whitford, who somehow make their mundane WASPy behaviour creepy as a facebook message from your high school gym teacher, ably back Kaluuya. Add to that Walter Marcus Henderson and Betty Gabriel as the otherworldly, possibly lobotomized handyman and housekeeper and you have the elements of a memorable night at the movies.
“Get Out” is a horror film—there are all manner of shocks and jumps—but like all great genre films it isn’t just that. It could more rightly be called a social thriller, a film that looks at everyday ills—in this case racial tension—through the lens of a genre movie.
Being an only child has its benefits. You don’t have to share clothes or wait in line for the bathroom, but Nate Gardner (voice of Anton Starkman) is lonely and one day announces to his busy parents, “I’ve decided I want a baby brother.”
To speed the process along the youngster writes a letter to the folks at Stork Mountain. “Dear Stork Delivery Service,” he writes, “Our son really deserves a baby brother. P.S. He has to have ninja skills. Signed adult parents Perry and Sarah Gardner… adults, not Nate.”
What Nate doesn’t know is that Stork Mountain head honcho Hunter (voice of Kelsey Grammer), a white stork and the executive CEO of Cornerstore.com, dropped babies years ago in favour of picking up packages. Why did they stop? Because there are other ways to get babies.
With huge profits rolling in the CEO offers the company’s top job to Junior (Andy Samberg). With over 1 million deliveries under his beak, he’s their best stork, but the new job it comes with a caveat. Junior must fire the company’s lone human employee, Orphan Tulip (Katie Crown), but the brash-but-kindhearted bird can’t bring himself to let her go. Instead he assigns her to the least used department in the company, the Letter Sorting Department.
Tulip intercepts Nate’s letter and accidentally feeds it into the Rube Goldberg-esque Baby Making Machine—literally a machine that makes babies, and not… well, you know what you were thinking—and through the science of baby making transforms the note from pen and ink to an adorable baby girl
Trouble is, Junior has never delivered a baby and doesn’t know what to do with the unauthorized child. He knows he must do something before Hunter gets wind of the kid. With a wounded wing Junior has no choice but to take Tulip along as they begin a wild adventure to unite the child with Nate and his parents. “If I can deliver this by Monday I can still be made boss,” says Junior.
“Storks” never quite takes flight. A manic mix of action-adventure and kid’s humour, it often feels padded by cut-a-ways and musical numbers and never met a gag it can’t run into the ground with repetition. There are several stand-out moments, like a silent battle between storks and penguins, kept quiet so as not to wake the baby and the ever-morphing Wolf Pack, who can change Transformers style into anything from bridges to submarines, but everything else is over-amped and loud with a side of sentimentality thrown in.
Samberg is perfectly cast as the brash but not-so-bright lead character and Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele provide funny and interesting voices to the Wolf Pack leaders but most of the voices are as undistinguished as the story.
“Storks” has promise but never really delivers the goods.
Take one part “Key and Peele,” add the appeal of an internet cat video and you have “Keanu,” the new kitty caper comedy from Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele. The big screen debut of the sketch comedians isn’t purrfect but it has some furry funny moments.
At the beginning of the movie the Allentown Brothers (the heavily made-up Key and Peele) shoot up a drug lab, killing everyone inside. The only survivor is a kitten who makes a run for it, escaping the carnage and who, after a trek across Los Angeles, ends up at the doorstep of stoner photographer Rell (Peele). It’s fortuitous for both of them. The kitten needs a home and Rell, who was just dumped by his girlfriend, desperately needs a companion. By the time Rell’s pal, family man Clarence (Key) stops by, the lonely guy has bonded with the cat, now named Keanu. When Keanu is stolen in a burglary these two button-down guys take a walk on the wild side, tracking down Keanu’s new owner, gang leader Cheddar (Method Man). Taking the street names Shark Tank and Techtonic they infiltrate the gang, take drugs (“It’s like you’re smoking crack with God!”), get shot at and rescue the cat. “We in the market right now for a gangster pet.”
The SPCA is going to love “Keanu.” The cat hero isn’t exactly the main character, he’s more of an excuse for the action, but he may be the most memorable film feline since Blofeld’s cat. The stars of the show are Key and Peele who bring the strengths of their sketch show to the movie. Key’s facility with voices and words coupled with Peele’s elastic face keep things interesting in what is essentially a skit stretched to feature length.
Unlike me, who couldn’t resist some terrible cat puns while writing this review, K&P don’t go looking for the “purrpatrator” of the crime or anything like that. Instead the movie is a mix of down ‘n dirty jabs—for instance, the local strip club is called Hot Party Vixens or HPV—fish out of water gags, a brilliant celebrity cameo and a fixation on George Michael that borders on the pathological. Throw in a few shoot outs and some quirky characters—thanks to Will Forte as Rell’s pot dealer and Jason Mitchell as gang member Bud—and you have a movie that aspires to be a spiritual cousin of 80s action comedies like “Beverly Hills Cop” or “48 Hours.” It doesn’t quite scale those heights but there are enough laughs to keep things interesting, especially if you are a cat lover.
