The Viscerally Satisfying “Get Out”: My review

for America magazine:

Rarely have I seen a movie audience as viscerally satisfied as the audience with whom I saw “Get Out,” the new horror-comedy written and directed by Jordan Peele of the comedy duo Key and Peele. I saw “Get Out” in a downtown D.C. theater on a Saturday night, amongst a big and mostly black crowd, drawn in by the promise of a horror movie where the villain is racism.

You could describe several previous horror films that way. Think “White Zombie” or, to a lesser extent, “Night of the Living Dead.” But “Get Out” is made from a black perspective, unlike excellent but white-POV films like “Candyman.” And where films like “Tales from the Hood” were didactic, “Get Out” is angry and baffled and terrified. Its effect on the audience was electric.

more (I rarely remind people of this, but I don’t generally choose the headlines for my pieces!) Oh, also, due to a glitch on my end this bit didn’t make it–I’d intended to substitute this for the “hot NBA prospects” sentence: “There is cathartic violence: ferocious scenes in which people get a taste of what they deserve–with all the horror that phrase implies–as the audience cheers..”