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YMMV / Get Out (2017)

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  • Accidental Aesop:
    • Though many black people in America will confirm some of these as being long-learned lessons:
      • Carry a portable charger on your person so you know your phone is getting charged.
      • Never let someone else drive when going into an unfamiliar location with unfamiliar people for the first time.
    • More generally, hypnotherapy is not necessarily the healthiest cure to quit smoking.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • It is possible that the reason Chris ultimately can't bring himself to choke out Rose is not so much a sentimental inability to kill the woman he had loved as it is him realizing once he starts to that she's getting off on it, so he refused to make the impending ending of her life undeservedly "happy", so to speak. Though considering what happened with Chris' mother, it would make sense for him to have a savior complex towards women. It is also possible that he decided that Rose was the kind of person who deserved his mother's fate of slowly dying alone in the middle of the street.
      • On a more symbolic level, the scene visually echoes historical racist imagery of black men committing violence against "innocent" white women. Rose may be smiling because she feels Chris is succumbing to what she perceives as his "true" nature. By refusing to finish the deed, Chris is also refusing to give her the satisfaction of dying in the belief that he's a monster — especially because none of the Armitages would have shown him the same mercy.
    • Do the Armitages still love each other despite their evilness? Was Rose and Roman's silence about the rest of the family's deaths because they never cared about them or were they in Tranquil Fury as they went on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to kill Chris? A deleted scene showing Roman still having a petty grudge against his sports competitor Jesse and Rose' general psychopathy and genuine apathy towards her relatives' deaths imply that no, they do not.
    • It is well established that police reports should contain information on all witnesses to crime scenes, traffic incidents, and so on, and thus the cop may not have been acting out of racism when he asked for Chris's ID. Given the number of black people who had been mysteriously disappearing in that area, the cop may very well have been investigating the matter and wanted to see if Chris was one of those missing people, which would cast a whole new light on Rose's attempts to make him leave.
    • One recurring one, which has been Jossed repeatedly, is that Rose and the others were hypnotized themselves. They were not, as confirmed by Allison Williams in an interview with Seth Meyers (and more or less previously on a podcast), flat out debunking the theory that she (and really anyone in her family) was ever hypnotized and saying she, like the rest of her family is just a flat-out evil white supremacist. She went as far as to say she only gets the “Were you hypnotized?” question from white people who want to make excuses for her. Rose is just a cold-blooded psychopath.note  Not that any of this stops this interpretation from being spread around.
    • A deleted scene mentions Rose was hypnotized years ago to help her get over her stage fright. The commentary said this was meant (as a red herring) to hint she might still be controlled.
    • To a lesser extent, is Rose even capable of love? It's established she was only using Chris and luring him into a trap, but he finds out she was very successful with luring in both men and women. Could she have faked it, or was she genuinely attracted to them, given the Froot Loops scene? She also has a deadened response to seeing her family killed and her house up in flames (which may or may not be Tranquil Fury), but arms herself with a rifle to "rescue" her grandmother, and cheers on her grandfather to chase down Chris. It's all ambiguous if Rose ever truly cares about anyone or is a straight-up Lack of Empathy Bitch in Sheep's Clothing.
    • Georgina's death. One could say that her death after attacking Chris while he tries to rescue her after Mrs. Armitage took over, leading to the car crash is really her taking herself and Mrs. Armitage out.
    • Though he is ultimately right about the Armitage family's secret dark side, did Rod warn Chris not to go out of genuine fear for his own safety? Or did he say that as a result of his own possible prejudices toward white people?
  • Anvilicious:
    • Unsubtle as it is, the film does everything in its power to show how racism, be it institutionalized stereotypes or Condescending Compassion and positive discrimination, turns people into monsters and puts its victims in danger. If it weren't as unsubtle as it is, the movie would not have had the same impact, considering the then-current political climate and the already divisive nature of the subject itself. In other words, so-called "positive" discrimination — as well as systems and practices that privilege certain groups at the expense of others (even if no racist sentiments are expressed) — is just as bad as overt and blatant discrimination, and both are faces of the exact same greater system.
    • Trust your instincts in a dangerous situation and listen to your good friends when they tell you it's sketchy. While Chris gets red flags, Rose keeps overriding his creep vibes by being apologetic and seemingly understanding of the situation. By the time he realizes he should leave, and that someone keeps unplugging his phone, it's too late: Missy has him hypnotized and Rose reveals she was never going to let him leave. As Rod puts it at the end of the movie, "I told you not to go into the house."
    • Being a liberal doesn’t make you any less guilty of racism. Racism is often portrayed as the exclusive domain of the right, but the film shows how liberals can easily use their apparent progressiveness as a shield for their own bigotry, which can be more dangerous than overt, obvious racism.
    • People of a racial minority can be racist towards other minorities, as shown by Mr. Tanaka's racism against Chris.
  • Award Snub:
    • Due to title card rules for the Screen Actors Guild Awardsnote , Betty Gabriel and Lil Rel Howery's scene-stealing turns as Georgina and Rod were not eligible to be included in the nominated ensemble cast.
    • The film lost the Best Musical or Comedy Golden Globe to Lady Bird, although most believed the bigger snub was it even being nominated in that category rather than Best Drama, which felt more fitting.
    • Some felt that it should have been the big winner at the Oscars instead of The Shape of Water.
    • Shockingly, Allison Williams was overlooked for her performance as Rose.
    • Surprisingly averted by Daniel Kaluuya (at least with regards to getting nominated). When the movie opened at the Sundance Film Festival, it was an immediate contender for Best Picture and Original Screenplay, but many expected that Kaluuya would be snubbed. as the Academy isn't really kind to horror movie performances. However, as the awards season began and progressed, he was nominated for many major awards, culminating in a nomination for Best Actor at the Oscars. He lost to Gary Oldman, whose performance as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour dominated the category that year.
  • Awesome Music:
    • We get a long stretch of "Redbone" from Childish Gambino when we are introduced to Chris.
    • The main theme played in the opening and closing credits is no slouch either.
  • Broken Base: One rift caused by the film came from Samuel L. Jackson, who argued in the Hot 97 podcast that casting Black-British actor Daniel Kaluuya in an African-American rolenote  treated their respective cultural racism as interchangeable. The assertion caused wide arguments across many in the filmmaking industry, with some like Devere Rogers agreeing with Jackson that racism towards African-Americans is very different from that toward Black-Brits, while others, like Jordan Peele himself, argued that the rift was not so wide that a good actor couldn't bridge them. Ultimately, Jackson chose to rescind his complaints after a rebuking from Gloria Tafa, who rebutted that his accusal being directed at black actors rather than the casting system would hinder each other rather than provoking change.
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • Seeing Chris brutally pick off the Armitage family one by one as he makes his escape is a breath of fresh air after seeing him helpless and powerless for most of the movie before that point. In particular, there's Chris breaking Missy's teacup before he kills her, taking away her one true weapon against him.
    • Seeing Walter regain his original personality and then shoot Rose with her own gun when she hands it to him is utterly satisfying. In a tragic way, him taking himself out right after that is also this, as he not only frees himself of his own misery, but also rids the world of Roman too.
    • The ending, where Rod arrives to rescue Chris while leaving Rose behind to bleed out. Especially because of the brilliant setup that tricks the audience into thinking it was going to be the racist cop from earlier in the movie. It's quite common for the audience to break into cheers at this moment during screenings.
  • Complete Monster: The Armitage family is a pack of despicable bigots and are all devoted members of the Order of the Coagula, but several of them stand out as particularly vile even in comparison to the rest of the depraved cult:
    • Rose Armitage is a high-ranking member of the sinister Order of the Coagula, and is in charge of procuring the cult's victims, luring them through false relationships. Once acquiring a victim, they are psychologically tortured, culminating in their minds being overwritten via brain transfer. A sliver of the original inhabitant is condemned to the "Sunken Place", wherein they are fully aware of their surroundings, but are powerless to do anything about it. Initially posing as Chris Washington's girlfriend, Rose assists her family with detaining Chris before casually browsing the internet for more victims. Even as she bleeds out, she still thinks of nothing but hurting Chris, playing the victim card to frame Chris for attempted murder when a police car approaches. A cold-hearted sociopath who doesn't bat an eye even at the death of her family, Rose dedicates her life to manipulating others.
    • Roman Armitage, the family's grandfather, is the source of all the misery that the Order of the Coagula is responsible for. A track and field athlete who lost against legendary black athlete Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics, Roman nursed the subsequent grudge for decades and let it transform into a form of loathsome racism that convinced him white people were owed the so-called "advantages" of a black body. Subsequently, Roman devised the Coagula procedure, conditioned his entire family into a cult to auction off their method to potential buyers, then transferred his mind into the family's groundskeeper. Roman spends almost the entire movie inconspicuously running laps in the Armitage family's backyard, with the happy knowledge his procedure is dooming countless black men and women to be trapped within their own bodies within the "Sunken Place", helplessly Forced to Watch every moment as Roman's white clients steal their lives and bodies.
    • Dean Armitage proudly follows his father's example leading the Order of the Coagula. After his wife Missy traps young black people in the Sunken Place, Dean transplants the minds of wealthy white clients into the younger bodies, having performed the surgery countless times over the decades. Hosting auctions to sell his "products", Dean also trains his son Jeremy to learn and perform the disgusting procedure.
    • Missy Armitage is the wife of Dean and happily in on every plot to sell innocent black people to the cult of the Coagula members so they might have their brains carved up and be replaced with the minds of white people. The hypnotist of the group, Missy forces them to relive the worst times of their life, using her hypnosis to confine all of them to the Sunken Place where they will be trapped forever.
  • Crosses the Line Twice:
    • Rod's hideously graphic (albeit factually accurate) Jeffrey Dahmer monologue to a nauseated Chris. Admonishing Chris that he could be walking into a serial-killer type trap? Sound advice. Him talking about how Dahmer killed his victims? Tasteless. Him giving an outrageously over-the-top description involving blowjobs with severed heads? Hysterical!
    • Likewise, at the end of the movie, he's just rescued Chris from a dangerous situation, getting him in a TSA vehicle and leaving Rose to die. What is the first thing Rod says to a traumatized Chris? "I mean, I told you not to go into the house." Shaken as Chris is, he seems tempted to laugh.
  • Diagnosed by the Audience: Jeremy Armitage displays lots of erratic, aggressive behavior from the beginning—either due to his implied drunkenness or other possible sources, given his family background. It's likely because of this that he forcibly kidnaps victims, rather than luring them to the Armitage estate through romantic relationships like Rose.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: As detailed under Misaimed Fandom below, some fans ignored confirmation via Word of God that Rose Armitage was in fact a willing participant in her family's conspiracy. A lot of fans like to ignore this, and claim she's another victim of her family's brainwashing.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Everybody loves Rod. For some, it's because of his awareness. Sometimes it's because of his Bait-and-Switch arrival at the end of the movie. But mostly, it's because he gets the best lines. There's also the fact that in a horror movie like this, a mostly-comedic character like Rod would disappear halfway through the flick, but instead Rod's skills and awareness allow him to become The Cavalry without losing his comedic edge. It's also important to note that Rod's character is explicitly invoking the claim many black people make/have made in film and TV that they'd NEVER do the stupid things leads in horror movies do. So Rod is, for them specifically, an Audience Surrogate.
  • Fanon Welding: Fans theorized that the film is a Stealth Sequel to Being John Malkovich, due to both movies sharing the plot point of people forcibly taking over other people's bodies. As Catherine Keener appeared in both films as an actress, it is also theorized that Missy Armitage is none other than Maxine from Being John Malkovich. The directors of both films liked the theory.
  • Friendly Fandoms: With Chainsaw Man, due to series creator Tatsuki Fujimoto publicly recommending Get Out and other Jordan Peele works, along with both works featuring thematically similar villains — specifically, an apparently kind and attractive love interest who turns out to be a sociopathic Manipulative Bitch, only interested in using the protagonist's body for her own ends. The Episode 2 ending of the Chainsaw Man anime even features a homage to Get Out.
  • Genius Bonus:
    • Andre breaks free of Logan (the old white man whose brain controls Andre's body) long enough to warn Chris to get out after the flash from Chris' phone goes off accidentally. Dean, a talented neurosurgeon, then tells Chris that "Logan" suffers from epilepsy, and the flash caused an epileptic episode. Chris does this later to help "Walter" break free of Roman Armitage's influence, who then shoots Rose and himself before Roman reasserts control. In Real Life, neurosurgeons used to treat extreme cases of epilepsy, a condition where a person goes into shock from exposure to bright flashing lights, by surgically separating the two hemispheres of the brain. This caused a condition called Alien Hand Syndrome, whose symptoms included the patient losing control of their own hand, which then did whatever it wanted, including physically attacking the patients themselves.
    • The idea of one losing control of their body and being essentially forced into slavery also hearkens back to the original zombies from Haitian voodoo, predating the use of the term for flesh-eating undead. Probably not coincidentally, the zombie victims of Haitian voodoo would almost uniformly be black, and the concept of it originates in Western Africa, where many of the slaves brought to America originated from.
  • He Panned It, Now He Sucks!: The film's attainment of the rare 100% Rotten Tomatoes score being singlehandedly brought down by the infamous Armond White has not gone unnoticed by his detractors.
  • He Really Can Act:
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • I Knew It!: Many people called it before the movie was released that Chris's girlfriend, Rose, was in on her family's scheme.
  • Jerkass Woobie: While it obviously doesn't excuse their actions, which by far outweigh any sympathy they might manage to garner, it's possible to feel at least some pity for the Coagula cultists, bar the Armitages themselves, as most of them do have legitimate problems, ranging from an avid golfer whose passion was ruined by advanced arthritis, to a paraplegic who wants to be able to make love to his wife again, to Hiroki Tanaka, who is insinuated to be a victim of racism himself and is curious to see if changing his race would mitigate that.
  • Love to Hate: Rose Armitage, one of the most textbook examples of a sociopath in cinema history. She has a ton of charisma and a fair amount of badassery, which makes her arguably scarier than her equally racist family.
  • Memetic Badass: Rod, mostly because of his utterly awesome Big Damn Heroes moment at the end of the film and the fact that, his hangup on sex slavery notwithstanding, he was right the whole time.
  • Memetic Mutation:
  • Misaimed Fandom: A number of viewers decried the twist that Rose turned out to be a willing accomplice, right down to fan-theorizing that she was also a victim of her family's hypnotism. Ironically, this plays right into real-life racial biases, and Jordan Peele specifically invoked this in the ending.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Rose herself, before the movie even starts. She tricked several black men and women into loving her so she could lure them to her family. And if her interactions with Chris are any indication, she frequently subjected her previous victims to gaslighting, played with their emotions, and ultimately manipulated them until her family was ready to put their horrific plan into motion.
    • Grandpa Armitage crossed by creating the brain transplant scheme all because he envied black people due to Jesse Owens beating him out for the American track team headed to the 1936 Olympics.
    • Watching Missy knowingly draw out painful memories of Chris's mother's death while the poor guy sits there unable to move is pretty damn hard to watch. If anything, it feels like her eventual death wasn't painful enough.
  • Narm:
    • Even for an otherwise great movie, it still falls victim to the "false Jump Scare" tactic of modern horror films. To wit, when Chris sneaks downstairs at night, Georgina's silhouette walks across the hallway, which would have been fairly creepy had it not been for the ridiculously loud Scare Chord that ensued.
    • The scene where Walter runs toward Chris can be creepy to some, but others thought the intense way Walter runs and Chris's rather blasé reaction made it unintentionally hilarious. The Memetic Mutation the scene has undergone hasn't helped.
    • While considered unsettling and terrifying by plenty of people, some viewers found Allison Williams' performance after Rose's reveal to be downright laughable, with many thinking her portrayal of a sociopath was far too cartoonish and robotic to be taken seriously.
  • Narm Charm: The silent auction. It's completely silent, featuring nothing but Dean throwing out random numbers on his fingers and other people holding up Bingo cards for no discernible reason, all with spooky music playing. It's also both incredibly nerve-racking and a perfect demonstration of Show, Don't Tell because we don't need to have any idea what is happening to understand that Chris is in trouble and Jim is in on whatever the family's scheme is.
    • Likewise the scene where Rose is eating dry Froot Loops one by one with her hands. On paper, it sounds utterly laughable. But in the context of the rest of her extremely creepy, almost robotic behavior after The Reveal, it manages to come off as genuinely unsettling.
  • Older Than They Think:
    • The movie is frequently described as "The Stepford Wives about race." Race is actually discussed in the original novel of The Stepford Wives, where the final Stepford Wife we meet is Ruthanne, a black author (her husband, Royal, is also black) who attributes the oddness of Stepford to suburban racism until Joanna sets her right. She is intended to be the next victim of the conspiracy. However, The Stepford Wives actually reverses the Aesop of this film: Ruthanne should be more cautious of her husband on gender lines, and not her fellow women, even if they are white.
    • This is not even the first film in the twenty-first century to be about transracial body swapping. That would be The Skeleton Key, though the races and the roles are reversed in that case. The black servants stole their white masters' bodies.
  • One-Scene Wonder: Hiroki Tanaka, who only has one line, inspired many thinkpieces on the nature of his token-Asian presence in the film.
  • Out of the Ghetto: Horror movies rarely, if ever, do well at the Oscars, so nearly everyone was pleasantly surprised when it was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture. This also makes Jordan Peele one of only three people in history, after Warren Beatty and James L. Brooks, to be nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay in his directorial debut.
  • Paranoia Fuel: The movie runs on the premise of black people being used as literal livestock for the old rich white ruling class. While you won't fear that the movie's exact premise will come true, as it's too outlandish, you will start getting paranoid about other ways in which upper classes may start (or even already are) commodifying members of systemically oppressed communities for their own well-being and pleasure.
  • Signature Scene: The hypnotism scene, particularly the shot of Chris's teary-eyed face as he's helpless at the hands of Missy, has been featured in trailers and parodies, and is usually the first thing that pops in people's minds when discussing the film.
  • Special Effect Failure: It's minor, but there's some obvious green screen work done on the scene where Georgina and Chris crash the car. The fire in the surgery room is also oddly fake-looking for a movie made in 2017.
  • Vanilla Protagonist: Poor Chris. Thanks to being accompanied by well-written villains and a Memetic Badass, he ultimately became the least interesting character in the movie, even despite Daniel Kaluuya's damn good performance. Although, it can be argued that his characterization works for the story that's being told, as having an average guy as the main character lets the audience really imagine themselves in his shoes, which only adds to the terror.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: Considering it's a horror movie about a black man in white suburbia and came out at a time when racial tensions were at new highs, this response was inevitable. However, once the film came out, reviewers were surprised by the fact it targeted the Condescending Compassion and positive discrimination kind of racism associated with neoliberalism in addition to the more obvious xenophobia associated with the further right.
  • The Woobie:
    • Poor Chris ends up being subjected to the scrutiny of egotistical assholes who Mind Rape him repeatedly to force him into their specifications, and want to steal his body and turn him into a permanent slave. Not to mention that it turns out his girlfriend is their completely remorseless stalking horse. He even tries to save Georgina and Walter, but they both die in front of him. By the end of the film, he still has the Sunken Place trigger, and he's clearly traumatized for life. Even worse is that the alternate endings make it much worse for him.
    • Andre as well, due to him being violently abducted and him screaming at Chris to get out after his phone's camera flash allows his original self to take control, all before he's dragged away by numerous partygoers to go back to the Sunken Place. Even worse is that by the end, he's still a slave in his own body.
    • Rod, considering his best friend Chris goes missing shortly after Andre (another friend of his and Chris') went missing. Worse, when he tries to tell the authorities about it, they laugh at him.
  • Woolseyism: The French dub adds a layer of condescension to the Armitages' behavior through the use of Expository Pronouns lacking from English grammar. French language has two second person pronouns: "tu" and "vous", respectively the singular and plural form. Vous is also used to politely/formally address a single person who you aren't acquainted with too well, and using tu with a stranger is considered rude, unless said stranger is a child. The French dub has Dean addressing Chris with tu and Chris answers with vous, but they should both use vous since the movie's events are their first meeting. However, in France the scene of a white person using tu to speak to a black person they barely know is also emblematic of racism and paternalist condescension, since it invokes memories from French colonial history (half of Africa's territories belonged to the French colonial empire for a century until their independence in the mid-20th century, and the legacy of colonialism still remains).

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