The 2010s were amazing years for excellent debut horror films by auteur directors, holy crap.
Chris Washington is a Black photographer with a white girlfriend and the two are going to meet her parents. Rose, the girlfriend, assures Chris her family is woke and not racist, but things start to crack that Rose wasn't aware of without Chris's presence or perspective.
The film is just amazing as a piece of cinema. The acting is fantastic, and I feel like acts of sorcery were performed with a couple of scenes where...let's just say facial emotions are terrifyingly incongruous with the characters' dialogue and the performers pulling it off are scary. Talented, but eesh. The film is well-shot with strong visual iconography and memorable scenes, and it's packed with symbolism and foreshadowing.
As a horror thriller mystery, the film is entertaining and scary, but it's also an incisive piece of racial commentary. The film attacks the privileged mindset that "racism is over" (rationalized for any reason) by showing how prominent—and how monstrous—the blind spots of self-identified liberal allies can be. This isn't a film about redneck Baptist bigots. It's a film about how privilege can stand in the way of enlightenment. The ultimate reveal of what's going on in Rose's family is brilliant, not only because its fantastical nature nonetheless instantly fills in the blanks in a satisfying way—of course that was the situation!—but because it serves as an uncomfortably plausible setup. Who's to say, in a world where the thing could happen, that it wouldn't? And in what ways is it happening more metaphorically in reality? The film could be considered hyperbolic and one-sided, but no argument can afford to waffle with itself, and the commentary about the insidiousness of racism is only effective because it's presented in this stark manner. There's a place for telling stories about progress, and there's also very much a place to remind people not to get too self-congratulatory.
I think this is just a stellar film. It's scary, artfully crafted, and serves as a warning and reminder about the more subtle presences of racism in our society.
A masterclass in craft and purpose.
The 2010s were amazing years for excellent debut horror films by auteur directors, holy crap.
Chris Washington is a Black photographer with a white girlfriend and the two are going to meet her parents. Rose, the girlfriend, assures Chris her family is woke and not racist, but things start to crack that Rose wasn't aware of without Chris's presence or perspective.
The film is just amazing as a piece of cinema. The acting is fantastic, and I feel like acts of sorcery were performed with a couple of scenes where...let's just say facial emotions are terrifyingly incongruous with the characters' dialogue and the performers pulling it off are scary. Talented, but eesh. The film is well-shot with strong visual iconography and memorable scenes, and it's packed with symbolism and foreshadowing.
As a horror thriller mystery, the film is entertaining and scary, but it's also an incisive piece of racial commentary. The film attacks the privileged mindset that "racism is over" (rationalized for any reason) by showing how prominent—and how monstrous—the blind spots of self-identified liberal allies can be. This isn't a film about redneck Baptist bigots. It's a film about how privilege can stand in the way of enlightenment. The ultimate reveal of what's going on in Rose's family is brilliant, not only because its fantastical nature nonetheless instantly fills in the blanks in a satisfying way—of course that was the situation!—but because it serves as an uncomfortably plausible setup. Who's to say, in a world where the thing could happen, that it wouldn't? And in what ways is it happening more metaphorically in reality? The film could be considered hyperbolic and one-sided, but no argument can afford to waffle with itself, and the commentary about the insidiousness of racism is only effective because it's presented in this stark manner. There's a place for telling stories about progress, and there's also very much a place to remind people not to get too self-congratulatory.
I think this is just a stellar film. It's scary, artfully crafted, and serves as a warning and reminder about the more subtle presences of racism in our society.