Get Out Review

Peele's screenplay is an engineering achievement: every gag in the first act is load-bearing, from the deer struck on the road to the bingo cards to the way Georgina's smile keeps sliding, and the reveal recontextualizes all of it without a single cheat. That is why it survives rewatching, which most twist horror does not. The Sunken Place is the rare genuinely new horror image, a body falling backwards into black while the world plays on a distant screen, and it operates as metaphor and as scare at the same time.

Daniel Kaluuya carries the picture with those wet, still eyes, and Betty Gabriel's single-take breakdown, mouth insisting no while tears keep coming, is the most frightening thing in it. Catherine Keener's teacup is a perfect prop. The photography is competent rather than distinctive, flat suburban daylight doing exactly its job, and the comic register in the airport-security subplot pulls against the dread at the worst moments. The script, though, is close to airtight.