Get Out, Film Review. Picturehouse@F.A.C.T., Liverpool.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel, Lakeith Stanfield, Stephen Root, Lil Rel Howery, Ashley LeConte Campbell, John Wilmot, Julie Ann Doan, Rutherford Cravens, Geraldine Singer, Jeronimo Spinx, Ian Casselberry, Trey Burvant, Richard Herd, Erika Alexander, Yasuhiko Oyama.

A man enters a world that is as strange as it is uncomfortable, one where alienation is dressed up in smiles, style and a welcoming handshake, this is the experience of many around the world, the stranger in a strange land, not one to fit in, but one whose very existence is deemed to be a boost to the community in a very different way than may have been expected.

For Daniel Kaluuya Get Out represents, for now at least, a pinnacle of performance, one that will undoubtedly become lost in the void of other films to come, but for now will sit highly in the hearts of cinema goers. To hold a film together with a flick of an eyebrow, a stare of contempt towards the action, the sheer magnetism to smile broadly despite understanding just how much the interpretation towards current race relations in the United States of America will be seen in this film, this is the measure of the actor is to be heralded in the performance of Mr. Kaluuya as the patient but unnerved Chris Washington.

The psychology seen in each frame of the film is perhaps one that has not been seen in a long while, and whilst not quite in the same league as Night of the Living Dead, the subtle characterisation held up by Mr. Kaluuya is a match for that offered by the superb Duane Jones in George A. Romero’s classic zombie film. It also has the feel of a human version of the original Alien film; the slow dawning of horror that your body is not going to be your own anymore, that the rich white people crowding round you are ready to infest your body with their own version of reality and Sunday afternoon middle class suburbia.

It is this psychology that marks Get Out as a tremendous narrative on American, perhaps even British politics at the moment. The monster from within, always glad to mention how many times they may have voted for President Obama but secretly wishing to dissect and study their African American cousins as if they were mannequins ready to wear their own clothes and be looked upon fondly as having joined a different set; this is how Get Out punches the air at releasing a terrible thought of control by stealth into the picture.

A fantastic film, one of candour and spirit but one not afraid to open up the debate of race relations, of asking just exactly how far America has truly come since the civil words of Martin Luther King.

Ian D. Hall