The less you know about Get Out before you see it, the better -- but even once you start watching the film, director/writer Jordan Peele intentionally wants to subvert your expectations.
The movie, which Peele describes as a "social thriller," starts with a simple premise: a young interracial couple goes to meet her parents for the first time. While Rose (Allison Williams) initially dismisses her boyfriend Chris's (Daniel Kaluuya) concerns that she hasn't told her parents that he is black, a trip to their upstate New York home reveals there's something much more sinister at play than just racial tensions. But even that short synopsis probably will cause you to make some false assumptions about what this film will be, which was something the first time director and former Key & Peele star wanted to take advantage of.
"I knew that the only way to make this movie work, besides getting the tone right, was that the plot would have to reveal the judgements and the presumptions we would have about the movie are in fact our presumptions," Peele told IGN. "The movie is in fact something you're not expecting it to be. When you do that, the audience is forced to look at themselves and say, 'Well, why did I assume this was going on when he's been setting up bread crumbs the whole time?' It's actually something different."
Read on for our full interview with Peele about why Get Out is a story he is passionate about telling, how he navigated the conversation about racial tensions without alienating the audience and why now is the perfect time for this movie to be released.
IGN: You're known best for your comedy, and there's a lot of humor in this film despite it being a horror thriller. How did you determine that balance for your directorial debut?
Jordan Peele: It's definitely a film that gets tense enough that I knew the audience would need relief from that tension. That when you have an audience in that space where they are engaged in the suspense, you can really pretty easily pull off a fun release and a laugh. I think of this movie as a social thriller but you're right, the tone and the alchemy of the different tones in the movie was absolutely the primary focus in executing the film. If I got that part of it wrong, the whole thing topples apart like a house of cards. My influences where the Stepford Wives and Scream. They're both legit thrillers but there's a satirical note overhanging that really makes the films fun and feel like popcorn films, not like what's traditionally considered horror.
IGN: I think it's an understatement to say that racial tensions continue to be high in the United States. You walk a very fine line with that in this movie. I feel like it would have been easy to make the main family just be complete and total racists and that's all their motivations were. How did you navigate that delicate situation, and what your intent was there with the sociopolitical commentary you have weaving through here?
Peele: I knew that this premise was a very tricky one and one that has a lot of potential pitfalls. Something we would do in Key and Peele a lot is bite off ideas that sort of skirt the edge, walk the edge, and you can pull something with that edge off if you make a concerted effort to sort of subvert the audience's expectations. In other words, I knew that the only way to make this movie work, besides getting the tone right, was that the plot would have to reveal the judgements and the presumptions we would have about the movie are in fact our presumptions. And that the movie is in fact something you're not expecting it to be. When you do that, the audience is forced to look at themselves and say, "Well, why did I assume this was going on when he's been setting up bread crumbs the whole time?" It's actually something different.
IGN: It would be very easy to not just alienate some sections of the audience but also antagonize them. I was able to relate to it even if I've never specifically been in that situation -- well, hopefully no one has been in the situation that is being portrayed here.
Peele: Thank you. That means a lot to me. Just to relate that to the Stepford Wives for a moment. That's one of my favorite movies and it's about gender. It's about men making decisions for women's bodies without their consent. When I watch that movie, I don't come out of the movie feeling persecuted as a man. In fact, I feel like I get a glimpse into the female performances, the protagonist and the fears that Katharine Ross is expressing with her performance. So that was a clue to me that you could make a movie where white people are the villains in the movie but you can do it in a way where everybody is with the protagonist and it doesn't feel like I'm pointing the finger in a very heavy handed way to say that white people are villains or something.
IGN: This is a project you've been developing for almost a decade now, since Obama first got into office. As someone who has watched a lot of Key and Peele in my time, I almost feel like this could have been a Key and Peele sketch if you added more comedy to it and didn't include the horror element. Was that ever a thought to do it there? Or did you always know you want to do this as straight horror and one day write and direct it?
Peele: No, this was always a horror film. There are Key and Peele sketches that deal with similar things. There's one in our, I believe, first season that we did with Ken Merino, where Keegan and I, we're just sitting at a bar and three different white people come up to us with their, trying to connect to us and let us know how not racist they are. There is a Key and Peele sketch that touches on this.
IGN: Get Out was a concept you conceived when Obama had just gotten into office, and now we're in a very different political climate with Donald Trump in office. What are you thoughts about having this movie come out now and the potential backlash it could have?
Peele: I think it is the best time for it to be coming out. When I first wrote it, we were in this time where we weren't supposed to talk about race, it felt like. It felt like, "Look, we've got Obama, we're in this post-racial world. Racism is over, right?" That's kind of what the movie is about. Now over the last two and a half years it's become quite clear that race is a centerpiece and always should have been a centerpiece of the American conversation. I feel like it's actually a better time for it. As for how it will be received, I think people both need and want to talk about race. I also think this movie serves as sort of an escape from the bummer that racial discussions tend to be because ultimately it's a popcorn film. It's meant to be fun. As far as the backlash, bring it out. I love pissing people off.
Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.
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