Foreshadowing / Get Out (2017)

---

• As Chris is getting his things packed, Rose tells Chris's dog, "I have to pry something out of your dad." Her family's whole scheme involves removing Chris's brain and replacing it with someone else's.
  • A double example: she'll have to pry the deer antlers out of her dad after Chris impales him on them.
• When Chris asks Rose if her family will take issue with his skin color, she casually tells him that her father won't try to chase him off the property with a shotgun. During the climax, as Chris escapes from the Armitage house, Rose pursues him with Dean's hunting rifle.
• While talking on the phone on the way to the Armitage estate, Rod tells Chris about a Noodle Incident at his job where he tried to pat down an elderly woman, justifying it by saying that one should not underestimate the elderly and that the next terrorist attack will involve some "geriatric shit". As it turns out, Rod is right to be wary of the elderly, since the Coagula project is spearheaded by senior citizens.
• The deer Chris and Rose hit in the beginning foreshadows the movie's hit-and-run motif and also foreshadows the weird deer-skeleton monster that attacks Chris in the trailer (in the film itself, the deer monster is absent, but the initial encounter, along with Dean's dislike of deer, sure does foreshadow how Chris finally defeats Dean: he gets Impaled with Extreme Prejudice using a taxidermy stag's head. Sometimes you hit the deer, and sometimes the deer hits you.)
• The cop's treatment of Chris when the couple is pulled over (demanding to see Chris's license despite the fact that Rose was driving) sets up the racism Chris faces in the town.
  • An even more subtle moment from this scene: Rose sure is eager to get the cop away before he looks at Chris's ID. It's almost like she doesn't want any official record that he's in the area so that he won't be found when he seemingly vanishes from the outside world.
  • A minor one, but Chris states he has a State I.D. instead of a driver's license. We later learn that he probably doesn't drive because his mother was killed in a hit and run.
  • The scene is also Fauxshadowing in that the police sirens approaching Chris at the end of the film appear to suggest the cop's return, leading to a Downer Ending where Chris is arrested for murder — or worse. However, the man in the cop car is actually Rod, surprising both Chris and the audience. In the original ending, the foreshadowing of the racist cop's presence would have been straightforward.
• When Rose and Chris first arrive at the Armitage house, Rose leaves her bag at the bottom of the stairs, and Chris carries both his own and her bags up. It's subtle, but it's also an early hint at Rose's true, uncaring nature.
• Chris' tour of the estate:
  • Dean quips: "It's such a privilege to be able to experience another person's culture." A harmless, even rather enlightened statement. It also hints that the Armitages are enabling the Body Surf of wealthy white people into black ones.
  • They pass a childhood photo of Jeremy, who Dean proudly states is studying medicine to be "just like his old man." Jeremy helps Dean perform the brain transplants, and is implied to be learning the procedure himself for when he becomes the family patriarch.
  • As Chris and Dean pass the stairs to the basement, Dean tells him not to go there because they've got a "black mold" problem. The basement is where the Armitages literally mold black people for their white customers.
  • Dean mentions that his father was a track runner who lost to Jesse Owens, while the groundskeeper has a bizarre running exercise. The groundskeeper is actually Grandpa Armitage.
  • Dean also comments that his father "almost got over it." The loss is what inspired his transplantation of white people's brains (and consciousness) into black bodies.
• When Missy first offers hypnosis to fix Chris' cigarette addiction, Rose defends his unwillingness by saying: "Some people don't want strangers messing around in their heads." Another hint towards the brain transplants.
• During the first night's dinner:
  • Everyone is seen enjoying glasses of wine. Rose's, however, is empty, because she already did her part in their plan to body-snatch Chris, which was bringing him to the house. The others, with full glasses, still have a part of the plan to fulfill.
  • When Jeremy (with gleeful verbal sadism) tells Chris the story about his sister's first kiss, we get a hint — in downplayed form — of Rose's character being more voracious than she appears.
  • There's a lot of talk about Chris's athleticism, with Dean questioning him about his sport and Jeremy telling him that with his genetic makeup and physique, he could be a beast at MMA. Now watch that exchange knowing how the Armitages and their circle value the African-American body...
  • Also during that dinner scene, Jeremy says that jiu-jitsu is about using your brain and being three to four moves ahead of your opponent. When Chris is trying to get out of Jeremy's headlock to open the front door, he notices that Jeremy keeps kicking the door closed with his right leg. On the fourth try, he's ready, and this time, when Jeremy tries to kick the door shut, he stabs him.
  • Jeremy trying over-aggressively to get Chris to show off his judo moves, and Rose's reaction to it: "He was gonna put you in a headlock!" Jeremy actually does so when he catches Chris trying to escape. It's implied this manner of subduing someone is preferred because it doesn't damage the victim's head. It also reveals that Jeremy is the one who abducted Andre, using the same method.
• Missy's little mannerism of stirring her drink and clinking her spoon against the edge of her cup. It's part of her hypnosis, intentionally done to seem like a harmless quirk so her target doesn't realize that she's hypnotizing them until it's too late.
• Walter and Georgina's behavior, initially teased as being brainwashed, is explained by them actually being old white people in new bodies:
  • Georgina is always fussing with her bangs. Walter is never seen without his baseball caps. Logan is also never seen without his hat. These things hide their brain transplant scars.
  • Dean's quip about his servants: "We hired Georgina and Walter to help care for my parents. When they died, we couldn't bear to let them go." Upon a rewatch, it becomes clear Dean's talking about his parents instead of the servants, in an Exact Words kind of way.
  • When Dean is showing Chris the house, he remarks, that his mother loved the kitchen, and that "We keep a little piece of her in here." As he says this, the panning camera causes Georgina to come into frame, precisely where that "little piece" is kept.
  • Chris has a print on his kitchen wall of a white girl wearing a black mask. It foreshadows the theme of white people wanting "the African-American experience", and so do the house guests wearing black and driving black cars. The abductor is a white man in a black mask kidnapping black men in a white car.
  • Georgina states that she "answers to no one." She's not really a servant of the Armitages — she's their matriarch.
  • Walter's affable, yet somewhat creepy comments about Chris and Rose's relationship make more sense in light of the fact that Walter is actually her grandfather.
  • Chris tells Georgina he didn't mean to "snitch" or "rat [her] out." She doesn't understand what he means before clarifying with "tattle-tale." She also uses the outdated term "cellular phone". Georgina's inability to recognize modern slang is due to being from a previous generation.
  • Walter warmly greets the party guests, even sharing a hug with one of them. It seems strange for the help to be treated so familiarly, but in reality he's Roman Armitage, the family patriarch.
  • Walter’s yardwork was nonsense, because he's not the groundskeeper, he just plays at it for a few days every now and then. Who tries to rake up an entire estate? That’s madness! Who tries to use one of those old-school lawnmowers that are just spinning? You just automatically assumed that he was a gardener because he was doing gardening things. But looking at him in straight detail, it makes no sense.
• Almost all of the strange interactions between the guests at the party make more sense after The Reveal:
  • Several comments are flashed back in the film itself to call attention to them, such as a "tight grip" to replace an ailing body unable to golf properly, and a woman feeling his muscles beneath his shirt as if inspecting a horse. They're both inspecting the merchandise. Someone else is looking for a sexually satisfying partner to replace a dying, paralyzed husband who can't perform or just the supposed hip factor of being black. Mr. Tanaka innocently but bluntly poses the most obvious question, "Is the African-American experience an advantage or disadvantage?" — in other words, he's weighing his options to see if being black is a step up from being Asian or not.
  • Philomena, Logan's older wife, takes him to a group of party attendees and has him spin around proudly as if presenting himself for their inspection, causing them to applaud. It might seem as if they're marveling over Philomena's property or conquest, when in reality Logan is showing off his new body to his friends.
  • Chris tells Logan he's happy to see another black person around, and Logan immediately tells Philomena what he said. Chris reacts as if it's a betrayal, but Logan doesn't seem to even realize that the comment was made in confidence, not having experienced life as a black man in the wide world. Chris also goes in for a fist-bump, and gets a handshake, with Logan being unfamiliar with the gesture.
• Rose decides to go on a walk with Chris during the bingo game, preventing him from discovering that it was really an auction where the guests were bidding on his body. This hints that she was complicit in the scheme.
• Rewatch Bonus version: On a first viewing, Jim Hudson seems like a decent enough guy when Chris meets him: He's sympathetic to Chris's discomfort and aware of the unenlightened attitudes of the other guests. On a second viewing, knowing that the party is an auction for control of Chris's body, Jim's attendance indicates that he is not to be trusted.
  • In addition, Jim tells Chris that he submitted photographs to National Geographic fourteen times before realizing he wasn't good enough. The number fourteen is a white supremacist code, referencing the "fourteen words" slogan to "protect the white future." Which the clearly suprematist Armitage family is trying to do through their Body Surf surgery.

---