Get Out
[00:00:00] Hi, friends. Welcome to Charlie and Steve Watch Stuff, where today we are watching Get Out. My name is Steve Selnick, and joining me as always, he's got a very careful method for getting you to stop smoking, if that's what you want out of your life. It's my good friend. Charlie Peppers. Charlie, how you doing today?
Good. That damn teacup has haunted my dreams. I can't wait to talk about it.
ding. It's same here, man. It's, this is the, well, you know what? I'm going to say this is the penultimate episode of our spooky season because we did decide that we are going to be extending spooky season into November. We're not going to tell you what yet. That's all I'm going to say is that there's going to be a little bit of a spooky, if I may say nerdy cap onto our, onto our horror month.
But right now we're talking about arguably, in my opinion, the spookiest movie that I [00:01:00] watched in the last month of our time, the, I can, I think we can call it a classic at this
Oh, absolutely.
the, the classic, the Academy award winning. It was written and directed by Jordan Peele and it did win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
It had nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Daniel Kaluuya. It earned five nominations at the 23rd Critics Choice Awards, two at the 75th Golden Globe Awards, and two at the 71st British Academy Film Awards.
And it has been cited by critics as one of the best films of the 21st century. And Charlie, I gotta say, kind of lived up to it. And I'm kind of ashamed of myself for not watching this one. This is my first. time diving into Get Out and I'm, I'm ashamed of
Did you,
it's been the general theme
did you on some level avoid it because you thought it would be a bummer?
No, no. And [00:02:00] hopefully there's no edit there because I answered that pretty quickly. I'm just so bad at horror movies.
I think this month, Has proven that I don't need to be bad at horror movies because not only was I like totally good like this one freaks me out the most out of all of them barbarian was a tough watch too but I like had fun with both of these on a certain level this one I get out specifically I laughed the hardest at most genuinely because there were some just incredible comedic breaks we're going to talk about Rod shout out to Rod because the TSA we don't pay him Fuck around , the ts motherfucking a baby.
And so what a, what an amazing film. It, its budget was 4.5 million and it grossed 255 million at the box office. This movie did gangbusters all the way around. It is absolutely one of the best movies of the 21st century, and I'm so glad that we put this as our finale for our. our horror month. So Charlie, I'm going to give you the [00:03:00] stage.
I want you to just go in on Get Out and what you love about it and, and what this film means to you in general as, as a favorite in your favorite genre.
man dude. That's such a tall order because I love this film so damn much. I'll give you, I'll give you a tiny little bit up top before we get into it. I think that Get Out changed the game. It completely changed the game. On a level that's not even funny. The thing that it did with illustrating the tension that black people have when they're in predominantly white spaces blows my mind.
It holds up today. And what's interesting about it, and I'll get into it. I think that the Sociopolitical conversation, particularly around blackness, and how white people who claim to be more mindful move around black people has changed a lot since Get Out, so there are some parts of the film that Unintentionally do feel a little [00:04:00] dated just because this happened before BLM and before we had all of those killings push people onto the street and before the lockdown when people were really just chanting at the top of their lungs Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter.
I think that get out was an important pop culture. piece to have before that happened because I think it was almost a precursor. In a weird way, it was a cultural precursor to BLM and to people being a little bit more mindful of these issues. That's all I'm going to say for now, but let's dig into it.
All right, let's dig into this one. Indeed. For the sake of repetition, we are covering get out released on January 23rd, 2017 at Sundance, but the larger United States release was February 24th, 2017. It was written and directed by Jordan Peele, starring Daniel Kaluuya, Alison Williams, Bradley Whitford, shout out [00:05:00] Josh from the West Wing, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, and Catherine Keener.
Shout out 40 year old virgin. Isn't she the woman from 40 year old virgin? I'm pretty sure
I've never seen 40 Year Old Virgin.
Oh my God. We have to put that on the
I would be down.
that's, that's a different conversation. That's a fantastic. It's actually like a really fun and heartfelt movie. And Steven Carell's amazing.
It was the movie that convinced me that I didn't. Cause for some reason, everyone who went crazy over Miss Little Sunshine or whatever that movie was really annoyed me and I've never watched it because I just thought everyone went way too crazy about it.
am gonna
Miss Sunshine. That's the
I have a little crush on Steve Carell.
That's fine.
He's, he's a handsome man, especially now that he's gone gray wolf. Daddy,
are you kidding me? All right. So getting into it, and I want to start with this beginning scene because it really does have relevance way down the line.
We start on a suburban street at night where a black man is walking alone and is talking on the phone seemingly with his girlfriend and as he's walking [00:06:00] alone on this suburban street and he's he's talking about how he feels wicked uncomfortable like he's a sore thumb in this neighborhood where he feels like he doesn't belong there.
A car slowly. Turns around and just kind of like rolls up slowly behind him. And the guy's like, no, absolutely not a hundred percent going to get out of this situation. And as he's walking away, a person wearing a ham helmet that conceals their face tackles the man to the ground, kind of like. Subdues him and hauls him into the car, which drives off into the night.
And we smash with, get out onto the title screen. Now, Charlie, I have to say, I was praising Amazon for it's a little fun facts that it puts on the screen. It technically spoiled a little bit of the movie for me in this first moment because it references the car as Jeremy's car. They like have a fun fact about the car and they're like, Jeremy's car.
And I'm like, who the fuck is
Oh, cuz they took it from the script. That's [00:07:00] why.
Because they take it from the script. And so when Jeremy shows up later, I'm like, Oh, okay. That's a bummer that it kind of ruined it for me. But what did you take of this opening scene? Because I, I think we're immediately getting some of those statements that are being made about the existence of being black in a predominantly white space, which is this quote unquote affluence, quiet, suburban Americano
Oh, absolutely. I think it's super clear. If he were to be killed in this neighborhood, it would be his fault. That's the fear of every black person, when we're in an area where we don't see people like us. It's, it's very interesting, because this small scene, it, it really sets the stage for the movie, because if I'm in an area, Where I know that I'm one of the only black faces around, I'm very mindful to not seem suspicious or to go up to anyone's door unless I know them [00:08:00] because they could just say, Oh, I thought it was trying to break in. I think that to be black in America is to, on some level, be guilty just by your pure existence and the scene brilliantly. I couldn't compliment it more. I think it's clean. It gets the point across. It's creepy because the car is going back and forth. It really chills.
Yeah, and it really struck me how brazen it was and how ignored it was, which I think proves like place to your point is this, this brazen and loud kidnapping happens in the middle of the street. And it doesn't even really seem like the neighborhood stirs at all. Not like the people in the neighborhood knows that it's a black person walking down the street, but it did strike me that I was like, Oh, so that's just, no one's going to notice this.
Very cool. Anyway, we move on. We smash over to 26 year old Chris Washington, AKA Daniel Kaluuya, a black photographer who is preparing to travel to upstate New York [00:09:00] for a weekend getaway to meet the family of his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage, who is Ashley Williams. He has well, before he has many uncomfortable conversations up at the house, I think the first uncomfortable conversation happens right here, where he asks Rose if her parents know that he is black. And Charlie, is, is that a conversation that you've had to have with a white partner who's introducing you to their family? Is that, is that something that you've had to like consider or is that just like more of a general thing?
I think it's a general thing, I haven't had, To many partners, aside from Cody, that I've gotten that far with. Also, I think that this is one of the areas where the movie does feel slightly dated. Because in the age of social media, I think that this question is a little obsolete. Because that's one of the first things that you do when you're meeting someone new, you What's their IG?
What that face do? What's [00:10:00] the face card? You know, what the body look like? At least on my side of it, when I'm dating someone new, that's how I want to show them off. And I think if this movie were happening today, Rose would just suspiciously never have an IG. Or social media. She just doesn't do social media. So as I was watching the movie, I was like, Hmm, this conversation would look very different in 2024. But if I were dating and it's so funny when I find myself dating, well, actually, let me take a step back. One of the things that annoys me the most as a queer black person who has dated. And it is in a relationship with a white man right now is the assumption that, Oh, that's what you like. It kind of gives me pause. And I'm like, elaborate when people say that, is it that you think that by somehow being with. A white person that I'm [00:11:00] betraying the integrity of what my identity is and what I stand for, you know, I think that that is always something that is a little eyebrow raise for me. And it's almost people's way of, even if they're unaware of it, kind of calling out a power imbalance societally and something it's like, Oh, you must not care about the power imbalance if you are going to be in a relationship with a white person. So that renders. certain viewpoints that you have obsolete because you are acquiescing to something that is perpetuated inside of our culture. So I think that that's also woven into the conversation that Chris and Rose are happening. That's something that I consider when I sort of choose the types. The types of white men that I do date, because I do have standards for certain white dudes that I would associate with, and give my time to, and certain ones that I won't. [00:12:00] For example, if all of your friends are white, I'm not dating you, because that just shows a lack of One, you being mindful of what your social circle looks like, and that's also a lack of diverse viewpoints. Forget diversity of race, like, diversity and just perspective is really important. Two, if you're a white person who isn't tapped into black culture, even on a minute scale, Level? I'm not fucking with you. Like, biggest red flag. Like, and that's why I think Beyoncé is such a hot button topic for black people because you can, based off of how certain white people will talk about Beyoncé, you'll pick up some subtext about how they kind of feel about blackness in general. it's there, but like, people say a lot when they tell you how they feel about Beyonce.
It's very, it's very interesting.
I [00:13:00] want you to dig into, I'm taking you down this road. I want you to dig into that a little bit. What do you, what do you, what do you look for? Like, what are the, what are the microaggressions, if you will, this movie is all about microaggressions. What are the, what are the microaggressions that you experience when you see people speaking on Beyonce and you see the red flags raise when, when they're talking
they'll start with, She's super talented, but why does she have to swear so much in her music?
I met a lovely woman who happened to be white earlier this year, and She's great. She's great. I don't think that she has a malicious bone in her body. I don't think that she was trying to offend me.
I don't think that she was even aware of the framing, but I found it interesting that she framed it looking directly at me as, Beyonce's great, but then she like says bitch a lot and she says this. I look at somebody like Taylor Swift who doesn't do that, and I'm like, okay, why are we comparing these two [00:14:00] women against each other.
One, I will come right out and say, I like Taylor Swift. Am I a fan? No, but I've seen her in interviews. She's very intelligent. She's a hard worker. She cares about her shit. , if I were looking at her entire catalog, I fuck with an album's worth of songs. That she's done. Like, collectively. Collectively.
Like, she's fucking, she's fucking talented. Taylor Swift deserves everything that she has. But, when I get annoyed, is when people take Beyonce, the artist of my lifetime,
and put her next to Taylor Swift,
not seeing the levels. That Beyonce is working with in her work, talking about intergenerational trauma, talking about infidelity, talking about just the pressures put on her with womanhood, talking about miscarrying, talking about just seeing her parents [00:15:00] marriage, talking about getting into her body.
It's just, I think, Taylor Swift. Has a limited range of what she talks about and she does that well and it's still entertaining that doesn't make her a bad person But she's praised for doing that then beyonce does something super complex and people look at that They're like could you turn it down you're doing too much You're overexposed, you know, and I think Just let her, let both of them be magical, but also what really pisses me off is when they in the conversations between them, there's a lot of misogynoir in how people talk about Beyonce and how she moves creatively and musically.
It's very annoying, and it's one of the things that if somebody starts off with that talking point, I immediately kinda check a box in my mind, and that box says, Nope!
Are you ready for this? I'm going to connect this back to the movie because I think what I heard throughout all of this and something that we're going to see as we get through the plot of get out is that. Yeah. Yeah. [00:16:00] In the eyes of white people, blackness is valued to the point of white comfort.
And when you start, and when you start to push beyond the point of white comfort, that's when you start getting that pushback that you've, that you find annoying, that In my opinion is a moot points and that we should be talking about them completely separately.
And, and I think, and we'll get into this as we go through the movie itself. There's a certain statement about how blackness is valued very specifically. And in other places it's not valued at all and that there's a huge imbalance there. What do you think about
Yeah, I think a lot of people look at blackness like salt. It's a commodity, but too much of it is like, Oh my God, where'd all this come from? You know, I think like blackness is a resource blackness, and I'm not speaking about how I see blackness. This is my perception of how white people writ large, whether or not they're super conscious and aware and awake because [00:17:00] woke, I don't say that anymore, that's so dated, I don't think that you ever just become woke in one full swoop and you're suddenly tapped into everything.
I think. waking up is a constant process until you die. It doesn't happen until your life ends, but we're getting super in the weeds. I want to get back to the movie, but
Yeah, let's do it. So on the way up to the house. They're, they're having a joking conversation. We, we have a phone conversation with rod, Chris's best friend. Who's taking care of his very cute golden doodle back at home. They have a jokingly flirtatious conversation with Rose and all of a sudden the deer darts across and they hit it with the car and this.
awful sound that this deer is making as it's dying on the side of the road, which fun fact, those sounds were being made by Jordan
Oh wow.
the one doing the dying deer sounds. Chris and the deer have a little eye contact moment. And there's, there's almost like a little, like, This is like the first, like, get out [00:18:00] moment.
This is the first moment of the deer being like, you don't want to be here. You need to leave. I was trying to leave to heed my warning or else you're going to die too. That's what I took out of it. And so they're all shaken up. They get to the house and we meet Dean, the dad, AKA Oh my god, I keep wanting to call him Josh Lyman.
Cause that's what I know of as Bradley Whitford. And the mom, Catherine Keener. Now this is important. The dad is a neurosurgeon. And the mother, Missy, is a psychiatrist. And so they have all of the embarrassing conversations that Rose warned Chris were coming down the pipe without fail, Dean was very quick to tell Chris that Obama was the greatest president of his lifetime and he would vote for him a million more times if he could.
Charlie's rolling his eyes because that's exactly the kind of shit he doesn't want to hear. Oh, and we did skip over one thing that I, that is important, that is very important to this movie that I think we need to touch on in the conversation before they leave for the house. The reason why Chris asks if Rose's [00:19:00] parents know that he's black because to Chris's understanding he is the first black person that Rose has ever brought home to his parents.
This is very important. So hold on to this. She said, no, they don't know, but it's not a big deal. They're not fucking racist. Why would I put you into that situation? I'm giggling because a situation is, is being put into.
So they get to the house, they meet all the parents. It's super uncomfortable, but what's even a little bit more eerie and uncomfortable is that the yard keeper and the housekeeper are both black people who just kind of like steer at people. Chris, very eerily, they're acting very weird, they're acting very out of their body, and Dean is apologetic about them, and he calls them servants, which I found fucking weird, like, in 2017, we're not calling people servants.
So, to be like, yeah, having black servants for a white family, I'm like, honestly, the weirdest thing is that you just called them servants. there's just like, super eerie behavior happening from both of them.
Okay. [00:20:00] So I think it's really important to know, or important for our listeners to know, at least in listening to the audio commentary for Get Out, which I fucking love listening to. If you're listening to this, don't walk, run and listen to it because it peels back so many layers of the movie. The family has done this before, and you know what's really interesting? The dad is playing a character. This isn't really the dad, and even
his clumsiness with race is calculated. And you know why it's calculated? It's calculated, I think, psychologically, the mom Set the table for how they're gonna pull all these guys in because she's very sharp. Look at the way she stares at Chris versus the way that the dad stares at Chris. She's staring at him like a shark and you know why?
She's examining him. with every look because she knows that this situation is gonna make pretty much any black person uncomfortable. So [00:21:00] years and years ago, she figured out, okay, To intensify the intimacy that they're going to have with our daughter, because they've gone through so many black guys, we're going to make the dad seem like this lovable dude who means well, but keeps getting his foot stuck in his mouth.
I'm going to be the person who's just like, ah, dude, don't even so that I seem cool. And he seems like the
I'm so sorry about
I'm so sorry about him.
So one of us, It's kind of off kilter, but the other one of us is aware that in private, Rose can talk shit about the both of us to the black guy so that the black guy
feels seen. he feels validated for feeling uncomfortable, but at the same time, he knows that he's safe. You know, they're creating it's a game.
Yeah, the whole time Rose has been like, we can't, we don't have to like, we don't have to do this. Like they're being super lame. Like, there's two other things that come up and well, I guess something comes up at dinner. But the other thing [00:22:00] that we got to cover in this conversation is like, Dean goes really hard on the deer.
Mmmmmm.
conversation, because they talk about how
Which I never caught before! I never caught that. My jaw fucking dropped when I watched
it Saturday morning. Just hearing him like, Oh, I hate them. If we could just I was like Oh, shit! Wait,
wait,
Yeah, both of us kind of agreed we we harked back on this a little bit before we recorded and both of us kind of went, is he talking about black people in this moment when he's talking about wanting to like eradicate deer from the face of the earth and they're growing exponentially and taking over the population is taking over.
it feels like that's very not microaggression towards black people, but he, and then he started going too hard about it. And that was the moment that Missy was like, okay, like,
I'm sure, I'm sure he didn't
daddy got excited.
he was doing it either. It seemed
really
No, 100
He was like, Oh my God, they're just, they're everywhere. And I think it's jealousy. [00:23:00] It's fear. It's fear of being inadequate and not being superior. But the fact that white people have to frame anything in terms of you're not powerful unless you have power over anyone, ooooh, capitalism. But we'll unpack that later.
colonialism,
Colonialism and capitalism and white supremacy
Gotta,
all wrapped into each other.
That's, that's the father son and the holy spirit right there. Let's get to dinner where Jeremy, the creepiest mustache on the planet shows up. with his lacrosse stick and his macho attitude.
Now, Charlie, you and I have, I didn't say this yesterday when we were talking about it. Was it yesterday? Maybe it was two days ago. What is time but a flat circle. And you and I have different opinions on how we read Jeremy. So we're at dinner and Jeremy starts going like, really hard on telling embarrassing stories about his sister at dinner.
And then he starts like, I mean, it's [00:24:00] very clear that they've been drinking a bunch. And Jeremy starts asking him about sports and being like, you could, you could be a specimen, which is like such a fucking microaggression against black people. Such an insult. Yeah. To like basically being like you're, you, you were genetically predisposed to be great and you wasted it basically is what he said.
And then he asked him if he, he was like, what sports are you into? And he was like, basketball mostly. And he says, Oh, do you like fighting? And then he starts like, he basically wants to start demonstrating the headlock that he put the first person in at the beginning of the movie. And Dean now has to be like, Jeremy, stand down.
My read on this is Jeremy fucking lives for this shit. Yeah. And he wants to show off and he wants to get it on right now. He doesn't want to wait. He wants the party to start immediately.
That's a good read. I could also
Your read is the opposite.
My read
cuz I can see your end
My read is that he resents this whole process, and I'm going off of I'm biased because I'm going off of what Jordan Peele's [00:25:00] interpretation, or his impression,
what the scene went was. Jordan said, this character in the movie, represents somebody who knows deep down that what they're doing is fucked up, and is wrong. Unconsciously trying to sabotage it a little bit to make Chris more uncomfortable because everything that the family has done has been calculated and here he comes in, this wild card, which is why the dad barely speaks throughout the whole conversation because he knows that the kid's going off script and I think that the kid, on one layer, Jeremy does enjoy this, but on the other layer, underneath that, he fucking hates himself. He knows that
he's surrounded by monsters, and he kinda,
Yeah.
he's almost testing Chris in a way, like, Do you know what's about to happen? Let me push
myself on you right now. You know, he has been through this a lot of times. You know what? Jeremy's been through dinners like this so many times. He's [00:26:00] so bored. He's like, oh, we always do this. I'm almost curious if the victim we're about to ensnare in this trap has some feeling. About what's going to happen. So he's, he's really curious. I think if Chris would have taken off and started running, the family wouldn't have known what to do because he's
not hypnotized. he's not hypnotized.
So one other thread that I want to pull on that's kind of back from the initial car ride up is that Chris wants to smoke a cigarette and Rose is like, absolutely fucking not, not in my car.
She takes it, throws it out the window. She's like, that's a terrible habit. You got to quit. And at some point or another, Dean notices that Chris is tapping his hand on the table. And he's like, you Jones in a little bit, buddy. You,
you, you, you wanting a little bit of a smoky smoke. And, and that's when he's like, Missy is a psychiatrist.
She can help you with this stuff. And Missy's like, stop, stop that. Absolutely not. Which is, again, this is the script. Rose found the thing. They're going to dig into the thing. So in the middle of the night, Chris can't sleep. [00:27:00] He decides to sneak out for a smoke. I believe he does have the cigarette, but as he's having the cigarette, the groundskeeper is just running full speed at him.
Creepy, creepy shot, and he just goes turning and bolting the other direction, and Chris is freaked out. And he comes back in the house, and we get like Missy turns the light on, and is like, You know what time it is? You know how, how worried I've been? And she was just like, You're smoking that shit around my daughter.
I don't want it. Which is honestly,
That's so intense. I
it's super intense, but honestly, like, yeah, I don't want secondhand smoke around my daughter, fuck that shit. I get
mean, I get it.
it's a little, it's a little
It's, it's a little, like, it's very, like, you don't know me. This
is, this is my first night in your house. You were waiting up at night. I went outside
And also, she's an
She's an adult and Steve, this is me [00:28:00] coming to the defense of a smoker. I fucking hate cigarette smoke. I hate cigarettes.
I think it's nasty. I think kissing anyone who smokes is just, you know, but at the same time, they're an adult. Rose is choosing to date a smoker. Calm the fuck down. I think at this point, Chris was being too nice.
Definitely. I mean, he shouldn't have sat down. He should have been like, I'm going to bed, but he ends up sitting down at her behest and she very quickly tricks him into a hypnosis by using the noise of a spoon, stirring her teacup as the trigger. And she sends him into this place called the sunken place where, and this is such a cool Such a cool shot where he's like almost swimming in this black, deep void.
He's screaming, but it's weightlessness and he can't get any of this, the, the noise out. And it looks like he's looking through this distant TV screen, like way in the distance where he can hear everything. [00:29:00] And she eventually shuts his eyes and it actually closes him out from seeing out of the sunken place and in that hypnosis state, he wakes up the next morning, but suddenly he is cured from his addiction to smoking out of all that.
So he doesn't know how he got there. But the next morning he no longer feels a desire to smoke. And They're having the big Armitage annual get together, which Rose conveniently forgot was happening today, how convenient. And suddenly the house is full of just every flavor of white you can imagine.
Just all the different colors of the salt rainbow. And very specifically, and I noticed this right away, Charlie, all very, very old white men. With variations of younger to old white women who as rose is kind of like parading Chris round and introducing all of them [00:30:00] to each other. They're all saying like variously problematic things to him.
Some of them are more subtle, some of them are like, so it's like it's true. It's bigger. Right?
Oh my god. Yeah.
Okay. Let's take a step back. Let's go
yeah, do
Let's go back to the sunken place. Cause I think one, this is so brilliant. It's so brilliant.
I was reading an article about what the sunken place represents and the writer of the article. said that it just represents oppression, particularly the oppression of black people in America in the sense that no matter how loud you scream, it doesn't matter
because you might as well be screaming inside of your head because everyone is numb to your suffering because your suffering is interwoven literally into how the country runs.
Like
It's free black labor that got this country running so baked inside of everyone's mind is, oh, [00:31:00] this is the way that it's supposed to be, and when black people do speak out about something that they experienced, I think white discomfort, one, it's definitely discomfort with white people recognizing whiteness, but it's also discomfort that something that people get to live inside of every day and they find no problem or issue with, and that brings them great comfort and offers opportunities to them, offers nothing but suffering and pain and marginalization to others.
Therefore, it makes them feel guilty by association. With whiteness and that's why they hunker down and they're like, oh, I don't like this feeling that you're bringing up in me So fuck you. You're being dramatic. You're being too much It really it's it's a mindfuck and I think that that's what the sunken place is Then you have black people who are then tasked with with being in predominantly white spaces and picking up on those feelings because black people [00:32:00] feel everything because we have to feel everything in order to survive in our surroundings to figure out who's a safe person versus who's an unsafe person, we're then tasked with, do we turn up or do we turn down or do we divorce ourselves from our bodies? To survive a certain situation. So I think it's Chris not knowing how to navigate the situation. I think the sunken place is him divorcing from his body because trauma is coming up and he can't handle it. It's also, can we talk about the fact that she brought up his fucking mom? Inappropriate,
we do need to cover that for sure. Yeah.
like Bitch, I just met you
and she uses that as part of the hypnosis where we get the story of how, when she was killed by a hit and run, he kept watching TV because he felt scared and too paralyzed to do anything, which is, you know, a [00:33:00] normal fucking reaction for a child to have when they are alone and
mm hmm.
She sort of blames him a little bit and Uses that to kind of like fuel that descent into the sunken place and really have the hypnosis take hold
jumping forward again to the next morning in this event, they say some wild shit.
Wild, wild shit to Chris.
I guess black is in these days.
Again, this it's a masterpiece, but you can still show and maybe I'm giving white people more credit, but I don't,
I think, no, I think with the cultural script has changed so much since
Get Out has come out to the point where some people hunker down and they're just terrible, and other people are just, I'm not gonna say this, I'm not gonna say this.
I mean, I agree with that. I think people have learned to be more conscious of the things that they say. But at the same time, [00:34:00] many people have not. So I think things that I find funny because it feels so blatant, I think. Other people, it's going to go directly over their head, or they say shit like that all the time.
And don't even realize it. I think that there's probably a large swath of white people who will watch this movie and go. I don't get
hmm, mm hmm. I went to a theater with a mixed crowd, and black people laughed at certain parts, and white people laughed at certain parts. And at the parts that certain white people laughed at, I would look over like, Why was that funny to you specifically? but yeah, it depends on where you are in your consciousness with this sort of stuff.
Chris is feeling uncomfortable, he steps away and he meets a blind art dealer. His name is Jim Hudson. He's stapler guy from office space. If I may interject my whiteness into this conversation
I've never seen Office Space, but that's I hear it's a good movie.
Wait, is Jennifer Aniston in that? [00:35:00]
Jennifer Aniston is an office space. Great. She's awesome in that movie. I love it. I think it's like kind of like peak of power is Jen Aniston too. Jim and Chris have a conversation that feels normal. Jim is actually like, I also hate all of these fucking people. They don't get it. I just love your art and I think you're great. sorry about all of these dumbasses.
By
By
design, baby.
he still wants something out of them. Chris is walking around still mingling. And he finally. Sees another black person there. And so he, he taps on the shoulders, this guy, Logan King, who he finds really familiar, but he's like Walter and Georgina Logan's behaving super oddly. He's speaking seemingly like very strangely.
He's married to a white woman. 30 years older than him, and when Chris tries to take a photograph of Logan, he pulls an absolute boomer move and accidentally has the flash on his phone. By the way, this movie, heavily sponsored by Windows, I need to throw that out there really quick. The Windows phone was such a 2017 throwback, I couldn't [00:36:00] handle it, and like the surfaces that everyone was using, I loved my surface back in 2017.
Um,
An iPhone. I didn't clock it. Creepy.
baby. Chris hits Logan with the flash and you see this thing happened in his eyes and all of a sudden Logan starts going hysterically crazy. He rushes at Chris and he's like, you got to get out of here. Like you got to get the, you got to get out. You have to get out.
And, and they drag him away Rose takes. Chris down by the water and two things happen here. Chris tells Rose about his mother and what really happened. And they seemingly have this big I love you moment. I'm with you. Like, I'm not going to leave you here.
And at the same time, Dean is holding a silent auction and they are auctioning off. Chris, like it's Chris's picture and you're slowly putting together what's happening here. And you see that the person who wins is good old blind, [00:37:00] Jim Henson. Chris sends the photo of Logan to his friend, the TSA officer, Rod Williams, who was one of my favorite parts of the movie, the absolute comic relief Dion waiters award winner of this one for sure, who recognizes him as Andre Hayworth, a man who went missing months ago that lived in Brooklyn.
And we're like, okay, this is bad. We, I'm not loving this. We gotta, we gotta get out of here. And in the act of them packing up and going and Rose is like, okay, yeah, we can, we can go like, I'll find the keys and, and whatever. Rose leaves a little closet in her room open. And Chris not being able to help himself.
This is a moment where I was like, Chris, don't do that. Why are you going into the little crawl space? Why are you doing that to yourself? And I'll ask you my question that comes up after I get through this point. Chris finds a box of photos that Show rose in prior relationships with numerous black partners.
So there's a lie that she, this Chris was not the first black man that she ever dated. And it [00:38:00] included Walter, the groundskeeper and Georgina, the housekeeper. So both of those people were previously in a relationship with Rose before they seemingly became members of the house. And Chris did have a pretty weird conversation with Walter about Rose, almost like he was jealous of their relationship in some way.
So Chris decides to, I guess, be like, Rose, we got to go. Even though I think at that moment, you got to be like, all right, get like, I will find the keys and I'm going to
That's where me and Chris are different. I would've saw
that, I would've left way before that. I,
Yeah, you gotta get Rose out of
yeah, I don't know if the sex was that good? But, I
just, apparently.
apparently, I, no. The
pictures,
hit that cool whip, man.
cool whip, stop. Once he saw the pictures, I couldn't, I couldn't.
I couldn't.
No way. No, you gotta be out of there. Especially when it's two people that you [00:39:00] recognize. Plus, wasn't, isn't Andre one of
Mm hmm.
The guy that, yeah. So it's all, it's all kind of coming together. The family is like stopping them. Jeremy takes a swing at Chris with his lacrosse stick. And Chris is like, Rose, where are the keys?
Where are the keys? And Rose is like, you know, I can't give you the keys. They've been on her finger the whole time. And, Jeremy blocks the door and Missy uses the hypnotic trigger of tapping the teacup to send him back to the sunken place where he awakens Missy. Strap to an armchair in the basement, which was sealed off because they had some black mold down there.
That was a big red flag to during the tour. I've, I've, I've kind of skipping
mean, during the tour, it was all so brilliant because he casually slipped it in and I bought it.
Chris gets an old timey FaceTime from Jim Hudson and we get kind of like the lowdown of what's been going on. The family transplants wealthy white people's brains into others bodies, granting them their preferred physical [00:40:00] characteristics.
The host's consciousness will remain powerless in the sunken place. So they were They're just going to kind of stay there in the sunken place forever, which is sort of why Walter and Georgina were having those crazy moments of like the tears coming out. Because you saw when Chris was in the second place, he was crying uncontrollably, but he couldn't get anything else out.
And that in this case, this has nothing to do with Chris's race. He just wants his eyesight and his ability to see photos again, like Chris could.
I don't give a fuck. Kill that dude. Yeah,
And so that Rod, who's been trying to contact Chris incessantly, suspects a conspiracy and goes to the police to report Chris
good. So good. Oh, God.
for a, you think for a second that the woman officer is, has like, takes him seriously and she brings, no, I actually do it for a second. She's like, no, wait one second, I'll be right back. And it's like, I don't know how you do [00:41:00] it. This is how we do it at the TS motherfucking A over here. And so the, the officer's laughing up due to his fixation on sex trafficking, which is technically true, which is technically true, but they, they laugh him out of the building.
And, they're not gonna help. Of course, the police are not gonna help a missing black man. What a fucking surprise there. Missy Attempts to hypnotize Chris again, but this time he's able to block the hypnotic trigger by plugging his ears full of the cotton stuffing that he was able to pull out of the armchair.
And you know what else was brilliant is every single time he passed out, he passed out to his right. But when Jeremy came in to wake him up, he was passed out to his left. And I was like, he's awake. Fuck. Yeah.
That was a Small detail.
that they wouldn't have noticed. But I love how him grasping on the couch arms came full circle with him pulling out the cotton
and plugging his ears with it. I thought that was super
Oh, yeah. [00:42:00] Where, where his reaction to the sunken place came back to kind of bite them in the end. And so when Jeremy is pulling him out to get him on the gurney to go for the surgery. He picks up one of the pool balls and bludgeons Jeremy, you think to death. Spoiler, he's not dead yet. He kills Dean with a deer!
Fuck you, Dean! Gettin stabbed through the throat with the
Ironic, ironic.
super ironic. Killed by a black person with the other thing that he claims to hate. And he also he also is able to kill Missy, Jeremy tries to keep him from going out the door, and Jeremy holds him back, he's trying to hold him back from getting out in his headlock, and Chris now gets one on Jeremy, where he has some scissors, he gets him to go towards the door one more time, knowing he's gonna put his leg out, and he manages to get a stab into Jeremy's leg, and kill him as well.
Now, [00:43:00] Rose is upstairs in her room the whole time, doing what I can only qualify as grade A psychotic shit, listening to I Had the Time of My Life, while eating Froot Loops dry and sipping milk on the side.
Separately,
separately.
is that the not the most psychotic shit you have ever
I mean, it's
and, and, in specific, and, and she's sitting there, and I couldn't with this, I lost my mind, when she just sits there and types into Google, Top NCAA prospects, and I was like, no, not that.
Not that. flowers to Ashley Williams, dude. She, she was a plus acting in this movie the whole time. She was absolutely
Was it acting? I'm kidding. I'm just playing.
She, hey, listen, she grew up in New Canaan, Connecticut. That is basically like a carbon copy of what this town was based off of. So maybe she [00:44:00] has some identifying with this role already.
Rose, sort of nonplussed that her entire family is dead, just grabs a rifle and starts shooting, accidentally hits Georgina and who is, who you find out is at this point is like, Oh, he has grandma.
my God, that, was horrifying
that Georgina is, was their
Can we pause? Can we double click
yeah, yeah.
The fact that Chris is about to get away, but he has to grab Georgina was such a great beat. That was such a great beat because we know what
he's thinking. He's like. Fuck, I didn't say my mom, I need, which shows that the mom character, the white mom character did get to him and
did make him feel really guilty and I think that if he hadn't stopped to grab Georgina, he would have gotten away without all of the interference,
the rest of it wouldn't have happened
Yeah.
Georgina attacks Chris and makes the car
Mm hmm.
but it also, but it also kills her in the process. So Georgina grandma is now [00:45:00] dead, which sucks, but I think as we see. By the end of this scene, there was no saving them,
probably.
You know
there was a way to bring them out of the sunken
I mean, the camera
brains transplanted?
flash helped them get out of the sunken place, and I love
that it, I love that a device that is meant to make people feel seen, because if you're in the sunken place, you're not seen, so the
flash, breaking the hypnosis with like, I see you, was the moment that they became conscious.
I wish that Georgina would've gotten the flash.
You know, just to give her that moment, but it was really terrifying of her screaming and clawing at him,
so the car crashes, and Rose walks out with a rifle and Walter's standing next to her. And he goes, Go get him, Grandpa! And he runs out into the woods to go get Chris. And Chris manages to get his phone out and flash the flash in Walter's eyes before he's able to subdue him and [00:46:00] choke him out.
And Walter stands up with the flash. So now, you know, he's out of the sunken place and Rose walks up with the gun and Walter's like, no, I'll do it. And for some reason, Rose trusts him because she still thinks that she has this enthralled husk of a person basically. And he chooses to shoot Rose with the rifle and then chooses to turn the rifle on himself and kill himself much to Chris's chagrin.
Chris gets on top of Rose and starts choking her and like she's still playing the act, still playing the act, still playing the act until she's not anymore. And she stops pretending like she's in pain and she just starts sinisterly smiling up at him being like, yeah, that's right. And then you see the police lights flash up on
Mm hmm.
And I don't know about you, but I went, Oh, no.
everyone did. Everyone
Yeah,
every everyone who has a brain should be going, Oh, no, the police are not. This is not the right situation for the police to be rolling up on. Like to [00:47:00] one dead person, another person mostly dead, actively being choked and a blood soaked black person on top of all of them.
Like, not good. Not a good situation until you see the door slowly open. And it's a TSA car and it's rod here to Rescue Chris and they drive off into the night as Rose slowly expires and Rod says I told you not to go up in that house
ha.
and that's where we fade out and that's get
Yeah. Oh, what a wild, wild ride. Wild ride.
Wild.
oh my god, I love discussing this film with you. I think that the look in her eyes, for me, that was her saying to herself, if you strangle your white girlfriend, Your life is over. That was some Othello shit. Do you know Othello?
I
Yeah, she was Desdemona in that part.
Yeah, man, great film, in my top
five, in my top five, and now you know why.
Oh, [00:48:00] 100 percent and I think we can, we can wrap up on the film and do kind of, I would love to do some final feelings and thoughts on horror month if you're open to that. But I think Charlie in this movie, especially, and Even in like, the more horrific body horror ones like A Barbarian, but I, I think that you have Very gently, but firmly taught me that there is more to horror than just being scared out of your brain.
And as you said, in one of the first ones that we covered in scream is that there's almost always a deeper meaning to things here. And there are a few other genres where you can be. overtly telling people something without actually
Yes, that's why horror is, so good.
I'm a hundred percent with you and I, and who can say if I have changed for the better, but I have been changed for good.
Now when I just look at [00:49:00] movies that are straight up dramas, I'm like, why? Why?
Buh.
beheadings. No bludgeonings. You know, I look at it, I'm like, You could do this exact same movie, but with stabbing and like cha
Needs more machetes.
that's a drama could be made into a horror film.
So when it's not, I'm kind of reluctant to go into it except for Sing Sing, which I want to cover. With you, because I think it's going to be
up for Oscars next year. Brilliant
Great. Let's do it. So, for our ratings on this one, I feel like we, we need to go with teacups Charlie, I feel like, This answer is obvious for the both of us. Do you want to just go on three? You ready? 1, 2,
3,
5 teacups, 5 teacups, 5 teacups. We would have to actually, we'd have to end the podcast if I, if, if I said anything different than
Yeah, yeah, it, I would send you to the second place.
No, man, what a brilliant, this [00:50:00] was my easily my favorite of all of the spooky movies that we watched. And it was easily the scariest in my opinion too, although barbarian had some, has some things to say about that, but really, really well done.
Really amazing, deserved all of the flowers it's ever gotten. Well, Charlie, I've had so much fun doing Spooky Season with you, so I am very much so looking forward to doing Spooky Season again next year with you. Long live the pod, long live Spooky Season, and long live us.
So for myself. Steve Selnick and my good bestie of a bestie, Charlie Peppers. We will look forward to seeing you on the next one. Happy Halloween.
Happy Halloween, babies. Bye.
