Category: horror

Get Out (2017, dir. Jordan Peele)

Andre is about to meet his girlfriend’s parents. This is made more awkward by the fact that they are wealthy privileged upstate people and he is a young black man. While the family seems to not make a big deal out of the racial differences and the father, in particular, wants to make sure he looks “woke,” Andre can’t help but feel something is off. There are two employees of the family: a housekeeper and a gardener, both black who behave in unusual ways. As the weekend progresses, it becomes evident Andre has stepped into the midst of a dark secret and may not leave intact.

I’ve written quite a bit about horror films on this blog, and I have a very particular taste for the elements of the genre that appeal to me. While Get Out doesn’t nail it as a horror film, in my opinion, it is still creepily effective and serves as a huge statement from a first-time feature film director. Jordan Peele has appeared on the directing scene fully formed, shaped by his years in comedy and writing, to produce a movie that resonates in our contemporary setting but also has a great understanding of film tropes.

On reflecting I realized Get Out is essentially a B-horror movie from the 1960s or 70s that has been freshened up with the element of racial elements and observations about how black people are fetishized in American culture while having their individuality discarded. Black people and their culture have become fashion statements for a disturbingly large percentage of the population. The stranger elements of the horror are kept under wraps until deep into the third act which is a brilliant decision because it keep us grounded up until the last moments. As the story progresses, Andre’s experience gets weirder and weirder in very controlled and plotted beats. There is a moment in the second act where we know things are going to get bad. This sequence was the moment where my wife said, “Oh, now I know why they are looking at Peele to direct the live action Akira film.”

The film is carried on the shoulders of Daniel Kaluuya who has had some supporting roles in American films, most notably Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario. Kaluuya is a British-born actor who appeared in one of the best Black Mirror episodes (“Fifteen Million Merits”) and was a writer-actor on the original production of Skins. At the age of 28, he’s one of those actors I’ve noticed in supporting roles and small lead roles that was brimming with talent. Get Out is proof that he is a fantastic lead and was able to carry this feature. I always think an actor’s ability to play nuance and subtlety is more important than big sweeping performances. Kaluuya plays the awkwardness and uneasiness right down the line but is able to seamlessly bring out those larger emotional moments. When the death of his mother becomes a subject of the conversation, he showcases some truly believably pain.

The supporting cast has three greats among them: Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, and Stephen Root. Each of them has such a strong sense of who they are playing, particularly Root whose character appears briefly, and they help build out this strange world Andre has stumbled into. Andre’s girlfriend is played by Alison Williams, an actress who I typically find annoying as hell in Girls, but is actually very effective in Get Out. Her brother is played by Caleb Landry Jones who ends up being the only distracting element in the film. On Andre’s side of the conflict is his friend Rod played by Lil Rel Howrey. Rod’s role in the movie is what feels the most reminiscent of Peele’s comedic work on Key & Peele. The banter between these two men will be very familiar if you have seen that show. The ending of the film also feels like a less humorous version of the way one of the sketches on that show would have wrapped up.

What I love Get Out the most for is that its target of satire is not a lazy one. The villains here are not backwoods Southern racists. These are people who believe they are enlightened/woke/progressive. By talking about how much they love black people and “would have voted for Obama for a third time” they believe they are accepting black people. Instead what happens is that they systematically pull individuality from the black characters in the film and essentially appropriate for their own whims of fashion. This is a much more interesting target than cliche racist hillbillies or neo-nazis. There’s no surprise in a neo-nazi being racist, but the villains here are more complicated, and thus there is a greater mystery and stronger payoff. My hope is that the success of Get Out would lead to two things: more writing/directing work for Jordan Peele and acknowledgment that less than conventional types of horror and science fiction have a big audience for them.

The Void (2016, dir. Jeremy Gillespie, Steven Kostanski)

Deputy Daniel Carter is enjoying a quiet night in his squad car on the side of the road when it’s interrupted by a crazed man stumbling out of the woods. Carter quickly delivers the man to the hospital which is being staffed by his estranged wife, two other nurses, and Dr. Powell, a beloved town physician. Things get weird when one nurse seemed to be possessed by an evil presence, and strange hooded figures appear en masse outside the hospital. Everything’s coming up Lovecraft in this homage to everything from cosmic horror to Lucio Fulci.

If you are a fan of pulpy cosmic horror, then The Void has been made for you. It hits every trope you can think of Crazed Cultists? Yup. Portal to the other realm? Got it. Body horror/gore? It’s all here. There’s even some nods to John Carpenter’s The Thing but also Assault on Precinct 13 and even the underrated Prince of Darkness. In fact, The Void as a whole is a massive homage to low-budget 1980s horror films.

The practical effects are pretty top notch. Almost no CG is used, and the craftsmanship of puppets and makeup effects is very impressive. The gore is very much that Kayro syrup style lost to the popularity and expediency of computer effects. Physical gore in a horror film of this genre is so much more effective in making the audience feel the revulsion.

While The Void is an homage, it is still an original story on its own. It plays some clever tricks on our perceptions by starting with a scene where we are intentionally not told all the facts. The story is very simplistic with a few twists along the way, but it keeps you entertained as you go. Moments seem unimportant at first, and then later they end up being critical to the plot.

Where the film began to lose in was in some of the less than stellar cinematography. It starts out great, but somewhere in the middle of the movie it becomes very sloppy and hard to follow in some of the action sequences. The story is also such a great build up only to fizzle when we learn the villain’s master plan. For all the dread that was developed it left me with just an “oh, that’s it?” The Void ends up being one of those films that are a fantastic showcase for the physical effects crew but falls prey to a weak story.

Split (2017, dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

It takes only seconds for Casey and her two classmates to get abducted. They wake up in a bunker, being held captive by a strange man with apparent OCD about cleanliness. Later, they overhear conversations between this man and a woman. The door opens to reveal the same man as before but now posing as a woman. Casey quickly realizes they are dealing with a man that is experiencing dissociative personality disorder. The man is also seeing Dr. Karen Fletcher, a psychiatrist who is beginning to understand that the stability she believes she has instilled in her patient may be falling apart.

Split is not a great film. It is an entertaining movie. And I find it impossible to discuss the movie outside the context of Shyamalan’s body of work. Not too long ago I did a Revisit on Unbreakable and found myself remembering how much I loved the director’s early 2000s work. It wasn’t without significant flaws. The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are pretty flawless in my opinion, but starting with Signs the “twist” element of the work begins to wear thin. However, the aesthetic and technical aspects of this film, The Village, and even Lady in the Water is strong. The shots are interesting, music adds to the movie, and (sans Lady in the Water) they are cohesive narratives that make sense.

Then we entered the next period of Shyamalan’s work The Last Airbender/After Earth. These feel like the bid to become the Spielbergian blockbuster director, and I think most people agree they are disasters. Then he shifts again with The Visit and now Split, both produced by Blumhouse. One thought I had after watching Split last night was that if you showed me this film and Unbreakable, I would never think the same director made both movies. Unbreakable shows restraint and an intentional absence of clear exposition. Split is a film with too much exposition, and it feels like it is embarrassed about itself and needs to explain that it is “really super serious, you guys.”

Betty Buckley’s role of Dr. Fletcher mainly seems like an exposition delivery device. Rather than trusting the audience to figure out what is going on, the script has her spell out exactly what the man’s disorder is and even states how to bring back the original personality if there was a need to do so. As many reviews have pointed out, the entire picture feels like a higher budget exploitation film from the 1970s/80s. There’s nothing wrong with making that sort of pastiche/homage film, but something feels off throughout the entire experience.

Anya Taylor Joy plays Casey, and it is nowhere near as interesting a role as the one she had in The Witch. She is still an excellent actress given the material offered to her. And she is the only actor in the cast who gets to exhibit an iota of subtlety. She gets a lot of silent moments to show her reactions and thoughts. The final “twist” feels horribly crass and almost seems to say “Oh thank goodness for childhood abuse and trauma, it saved the day.” There is ambiguity about what Casey will choose to do in her final scene and to leave that open isn’t terrible though.

While Anya Taylor Joy plays things subtle, James McAvoy as the mysterious man turns it up to eleven and keeps it there the entire film. His performance is simultaneously impressive and embarrassing. He does show skill transitioning smoothly between personalities in the same scene, complete with facial expressions melting from one to the other. The problems are less with McAvoy and more with the script’s handling of mental illness which is incredibly exploitative and not clever in any way.

I am never opposed to a director changing their aesthetic and experimenting, however, what Shyamalan is doing in the last decade seems not to be moving towards a stronger mastery of his craft. His current work feels more amateurish than the films that initially garnered him acclaim. It’s hard to see what the future holds for Shyamalan, and a deep part of me hopes he can find some grounding because I believe he has a great talent for filmmaking.