(music) Welcome to the Kill Count where we tally up the victims in all our favorite horror movies. I'm James A. Janisse and today we're looking at Get Out, released in 2017 by writer/directer Jordan Peele in his directorial debut. I'm doing this movie back to back with Night of the Living Dead because Peele has cited Romero's seminal work as a major influence on Get Out. Both films feature a black man more or less isolated inside a house full of white people, and while that may be where the similarities end on the surface, both movies ended up being huge in what they said about race. Now, while Romero has said he didn't intentionally create Night of the Living Dead as a form of racial commentary, Jordan Peele definitely did with Get Out. This movie's got a whole lot of things to say about systemic racism, with Peele specifically saying it's about the "lack of acknowledgement that racism exists." But it's also a really well-crafted movie in general, with an amazing cast, some nice twists, and while we have to wait until the end to see them, some pretty great kills. Now I'm not 100% qualified to discuss all the sociological aspects of this film but I've pretty much got a PhD in talking about kills, so let's get to them! (music) The movie begins with a cold open where a black guy is walking down the street in a neighborhood he's not entirely comfortable in. "Confusing-ass 'suburb.'" Doesn't help when a car driving by pulls a U-ey and starts following him. The guy tries to turn around and cross the street but he's accosted by someone in a knight's helm who puts him in a headlock and knocks him out. He drags him away, puts him in the trunk of his car, and drives away as the credits start. There are a couple of cool songs over them, including Childish Gambino's "Redbone," and that's just one more reason you should probably go watch this movie for real instead of just Kill Countin' it up like I know so many of you do. After the credits we meet our hero Chris Washington, a photographer getting ready for his first visit to the home of his girlfriend Rose Armitage. They're a super good-looking couple and totes in love - he might even love her more than his adorable puppy Sid, but something is bothering him: "Do they know I'm...do they know I'm black?" Rose says no but that it doesn't matter because her parents are nice non-racist liberal folk. "My dad would've voted for Obama a third time if he could've." Chris is still nervous enough to want to smoke, even though Rose ain't having it since she's trying to get him to quit. Chris avoids that becoming an argument by calling up his buddy Rod, who works at TSA and is gonna be watching Sid over the weekend. Rod's skeptical of Chris's weekend plans "You never take my advice."
"Like what?" "Like don't go to a white girl parent's house." but Chris doesn't think anything of it. They end up hitting a deer that jumps in front of the car and while they're sorting it all out with a cop, things get a little uncomfortable. "Sir, can I see your license please?"
"Wait, why?" "Yeah...I have state I.D." Rose gets up in arms about the way the cop is treating Chris whereas Chris reacts like this is every day shit for him because, you know, it probably is. Doesn't stop him from appreciating it, though. "That was hot."
"Well, I'm not gonna let anyone fuck with my man." Aw they're so cute guys. I love them. They arrive at the Armitage estate where father Dean and mother Missy give them a warm welcome. Dean even says he's HAPPY they hit a deer. "I say one down, a couple hundred thousand to go. I see a dead deer on the side of the road I think to myself, 'that's a start.'" Man, he really doesn't like deer. I wonder if that's code for something? It's probably nothing, Dean seems to be just a goofy dad who's excited to give Chris a tour of the house, including a picture of his dad who just narrowly lost against Jesse Owens to qualify for the Olympics. In case you didn't know, Jesse Owens was a black sprinter who kicked ass at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and quote "single-handedly crushed Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy." You can already see there's gonna be a lot of symbolism in this movie. During the tour Chris also meets the Armitage's house staff, including Georgina the cook and Walter the groundskeeper. Dean admits that it looks bad, but that they hired them to help Dean's ailing parents and they just kept them on after his parents passed. Chris's mom has also passed away, as he reveals during tea time, wherein it also comes out that Missy is a therapist who could use hypnosis to help Chris kick his smoking habit. How 'bout Chris? Want these rich white strangers fuckin' around inside your brain? "I'm good actually." Good call dude. Rose's brother Jeremy arrives and that night they all sit down for a family dinner. Embarrassing stories are shared and laughs are had but some things seem a little off and I don't just mean Jeremy's hair hygiene. I'm talking about shit like Georgina's behavior - earlier she wigged out while pouring some drinks and now seems to be just kinda catatonic in the kitchen. And Jeremy's all kinds of creepy, asking Chris real intently if he's ever done MMA. ""Cause with your frame and your genetic makeup, if you really pushed your body, then you'd be a fucking beast." He even tries to drunkenly engage in some ju-jitsu but the rest of the family shuts it down. At least Rose seems to be aware of how weird her family's acting, as she complains in her underwear to Chris that night and compares her family to the cop they faced earlier. Chris has a moment of I Told You So but they assure each other of their love and go to bed. Chris has a hard time sleeping that night so he heads out back for a cigarette, and it's the perfect time for the movie to dial up its weirdness. Walter cranks it up a few notches when he runs at Chris full speed like he's Groundskeeper Flash and Georgina throws it to 11 by doing glamour poses in the reflection of the window. To cap off Chris's evening of What the Fuckery, on his way back to bed he gets confronted by Missy who's chilling in this chair ready to grill him on his smoking. "Do you smoke in front of my daughter?" The conversation then moves into Chris's mother's death and Chris realizes that Missy may be starting her hypnosis. "Wait, are we-"
"Where were you when she died?" He doesn't want to go along with it but Missy keeps stirring her spoon and he seems unable to resist. Apparently his mom died on her way home from work while he was a kid watching TV and he feels guilty because he never called anyone to try to help her. To be fair though that would've been like prime Nicktoon era television so don't feel TOO bad Chris. This is just one of many scenes that exemplify the outstanding talent of Daniel Kaluuya, who, by the way, is British as fuck and is doing an impeccable American accent throughout this entire movie. He's eventually paralyzed by her hypnosis and then she sends him away. "Now..." (stirring spoon) "...sink into the floor." (Chris)
"Wa-wa-wait, wait, wait-" "Sink." and sink he does, falling into a endless void in a very memorable effect that makes him seem like he's floating in a mixture of deep sea and deep space. Physically, he's still in his chair, frozen , and Missy leans into his face and tells him where he is. "Now you're in the Sunken Place." That is a place I do NOT want to be. She shuts his eyes and he wakes up in bed the next morning, covered in sweat and pretty friggin' confused. Later that day he tries to make small talk with Walter who seems more than a little off in his mannerisms and especially the way he talks about Rose. "One of a kind. Top of the line. A real doggone keeper." (laughs) He also confirms that Chris was indeed with Missy in a session. Chris tells Rose about it and says that her hypnosis did seem to work, and that the thought of cigarettes makes him want to throw up now. And now it's time to get a party started! That's right, the Armitage's are having their annual collection of old white people over, some kind of tradition that was started by Dean's parents. All of them are super awkward around Chris, asking him about his golf form, feeling all up on his muscles, and telling him about how cool it is that he's black. "Black is in fashion." Chris understandably steps away and is relieved when he finally spots another black guy at the party, a guy named Logan. But this dude's pretty weird too and it's not just his Thurston Howell attire. He's also shacking up with this lady many years his senior and kinda rats on Chris to her. "Chris was just telling me how he felt much more comfortable with my being here." Then he goes over and models for the other partygoers. Beard guy approves. Seems like Chris is doomed to be entirely uncomfortable here until he runs into Jim Hudson, a blind art dealer who is familiar with Chris's work and tells him it's very impressive. Jim also tried to be a photographer but then he lost his eyesight. Both of them reflect upon how that shit ain't fair. When Chris goes inside to take a breather from the whole situation, this happens: (chatter) (silence) Yeah, just a little creepy huh? Also creepy is that he keeps finding his phone unplugged and he thinks it might be Georgina. She comes in later to apologize to him and he tries to be real with her "If there's too many white people I get nervous, you know?" but it uh...kinda seems to break her? "Ohhh, noooo. No. No. No nononononononononononono." She assures him the Armitages are good to them and treat them like family. Chris checks in with Rod and tells him about all the weird shit going on and Rod gives us the comic relief we expect from Jordan Peele. "I don't know if you know this: white people love makin' people sex slaves and shit." Rod's serious though, he doesn't trust the hypnosis that Chris tells him about and really thinks it's a sex slave ring going on. Downstairs, more of the partygoers grill Chris about his experience as a black man living in America and when he tries to pull Logan over to field the question, Logan starts going on about how great it is. Chris tries to snap a picture of Logan to show to Rod later but the flash goes off and this triggers something in Logan, whose nose starts bleeding as he reminds Chris the name of the movie that they're in. "Get out."
"Sorry, man." "GET OUT!" Missy and Dean try to explain it all away as a seizure and Logan apologizes for his actions and leaves. Chris and Rose go for a walk where he tells her it wasn't a seizure and that he feels like he knew Logan. "No, I don't know Logan. I knew the guy that come at me." They argue for a little bit until he opens up more about his mom and reveals that a phone call would have saved her life since she had lain dying for hours after her accident. Rose agrees to leave with him and they embrace, reaffirming their love once more. While this is happening, the old folks back at the Armitage estate are having a sort of silent auction with Chris's portrait on display. We're not entirely sure what's going on here but by the end of it, it looks like Jim Hudson has won out at an impressive price. It's a really interesting scene that manages to feel super sinister even when you don't quite know the import of it right away. Chris and Rose get back to the house where everyone stares them down with joyless smiles and Jeremy plays the ukelele like he's auditioning for Deliverence. Chris sends Rod the picture he took of Logan and Rod tells him it's a dude named Andre that they know and have met before - he was the guy in the cold open of the movie, actually, and he's been missing for 6 months now. Rod falls back on his theory "Sex slave! Oh shit!" but Chris's phone dies before they can talk further. Chris relays to Rose how urgently they need to leave and then he notices a little cubby door open. He peeks inside and finds a box of pictures of Rose with a bunch of different black guys even though she told him he was the first black boyfriend she ever had. Even weirder is when he finds pictures of her with Andre and then with Walter and Georgina. What the fuck is going on here, Chris? Chris goes to leave but the family isn't interested in letting him go, and Rose just can't seem to find her keys. The weirdness breaks out into the open now with Dean talking bout some heavy cryptic shit. "We are the gods trapped in cocoons." Jeremy even takes a swipe at Chris and then Rose reveals that she has the keys but Chris can't have them, na na na na na na. He finally goes to make a run for it but the hypnosis strikes, paralyzing Chris and knocking him to the ground. Falling into the Sunken Place, he watches as Dean and Jeremy carry him away. Rose feebly tells him that he was one of her favorites. Now we're gonna hang with Rod for a bit while he tries to call Chris and figure out what the hell's going on. He researches Andre online, revealing that he's the one guy in the world who uses Bing, then takes his findings to the police. "How can I help you, Rod Williams from the TSA?" He shows Andre's picture to Detective Latoya and reveals his ultimate theory about brainwashing and sex slavery. (laughs) "Ohhh Lord, Rod Williams, TSA." Yeah, needless to say, she and the two cops she pulls in to hear him out don't really believe him. Meanwhile Chris wakes up in a sort of game room bound to a chair and facing an old school television. It starts playing a tape of Dean's dad Roman Armitage, who looks like a spokesman for high-fiber diets and who explains to the viewer that they've been chosen due to their genetic gifts. He says the Coagula procedure will combine those physical traits with the determination and intelligence of white people to create a perfect being. Then a tea cup appears on screen and sends Chris back to sleep. He wakes up again to find Jim Hudson on the TV, able to interact with him via some sort of intercom. Hudson tells him he's supposed to prepare him mentally for the procedure they're about to undergo which involves pretty much a brain transfer, although a sliver of Chris will remain along with his brain stem. "You'll be able to see and hear what your body is doing, but your existence will be as a passenger." That's right. He's gonna be living in the sunken place. Fucking terrifying, right? Chris asks why it's with black people and Jim mentions how several people want the perceived physical superiority of their race, but that Jim's not like that, you know, some of his best friends are black. He just wants Chris's eyes. He signs off and Chris plays with some of the chair stuffing that he's torn out. Eventually the tea cup comes back onscreen and knocks him out. Dean gets going with the procedure, with nurse Jeremy assisting him. He cuts open Jim Hudson's head, and while the heart monitor keeps beeping steadily along, I'm going to add Jim to the Kill Count right now because spoiler alert, he ain't ever coming back from this situation. Weird that our first kill isn't until nearly an hour and a half into the movie but this film's about a lot more than just kills. While Dean's handling dat brain meat, Jeremy goes to get Chris's unconscious body. With Jeremy's back turned, Chris takes a bocce ball and nails Jeremy in the head with it, hitting him once more while he's on the ground for good measure. We see that he saved himself from hypnosis by literally picking that cotton out of the chair and stuffing it into his ears. That's some great reclamation, Chris. Dean comes out of the operating room to see where Jeremy is and Chris surprises him by impaling him with the antlers of a stuffed deer head for the second kill of the movie. Even more fun symbolic stuff here, since "buck" is a term historically used against black men in post-Reconstruction America. On his way out, Chris runs into Missy, who reaches for her teacup but doesn't make it before Chris smashes it to pieces. They have a short stand off before she takes a letter opener and tries to stab him with it, but he takes it through the hand like a champ and turns it back around on her, stabbing her in the head or maybe even the eye there just off screen. Hey, Missy, stop stabbing yourself. Almost out the front door, Chris is attacked by Jeremy who's come back into consciousness and is eager to finally get his ju jitsu match on with Chris. He almost puts Chris to sleep with a headlock but Chris stabs him in the leg with that letter opener and then kicks him down, ultimately killing him with a series of super violent, super squishy kicks to the fuckin' head. Get out of here Jeremy, you nasty little racist weasel. Next time try dry shampoo. Rose hasn't heard all this because she's been too busy listening to white people music and cruising the internet for her next potential victim, all while eating Fruit Loops in an overtly symbolic way - notices how she separates the white milk from the colored cereal? Outside, Chris takes Jeremy's car, which is shown to be the one from the cold open that drove away with Andre in the trunk, but before he can get away he hits Georgina. Feeling remorse from his mother's death and Georgina's earlier breakdown, he saves her and takes her in the car with him, but when she comes to she attacks him and causes him to crash the car. This accident kills Georgina, who is revealed to be housing the brain and soul, or whatever, of Dean's mother Marianne Armitage. Not anymore though, cause now they both dead. Rose has finally gotten savvy to the situation and hunts Chris down with a rifle. She sicks Walter on him, who is housing the brain and soul or whatever of Dean's dad Roman, but Chris pulls his camera flash trick again, triggering an awakening in whoever's sunken inside Walter. He asks Rose for the gun to finish the job himself but shoots her in the belly instead. He then turns the gun on himself, killing the Roman/Walter combo for the sixth kill of the movie. Rose is still alive and she tries to grab the gun but Chris beats her to it and slides it away from her. He starts to strangle her but a cop car shows up and holy shit guys, this could be the darkest fucking ending I've ever seen. Like, we just watched Night of the Living Dead, we saw that racist cop in the beginning, and we know the historical context surrounding this moment as Chris puts his hands up in a gesture that says don't shoot. I was all ready to have my heart broken but out of the cop car steps Rod Williams, TSA. Chris gets in the car and Rod has his own moment of I Told You So before Chris asks him how the hell he figured everything out. "I'm TS-mothafuckin-A. We handle shit. That's what we do. Consider this situation fuckin' handled." With the situation fuckin' handled, they drive off leaving Rose to die in the middle of the road for our 7th and final kill of the movie. Turns out the original ending DID actually have Chris arrested for strangling Rose to death but Jordan Peele felt like there was just too much real shit going on and that his protagonist needed a win. Also, for everyone who kept commenting that this movie wouldn't have enough kills, it had just as many as the first Scream. Don't believe me? Let's go to the numbers. (music) It gets a little tricky what with the Sunken Place and all, but I'm gonna say seven people died in Get Out. My apologies to whoever was chillin' inside Grandma and Grandpa Armitage. Of those seven victims, four were male and three were female, a nearly even split between genders. At a run time of 104 minutes, that comes out to a kill on average almost every 15 minutes, even though in actuality there weren't any kills until the last 20 minutes of the film. I'll give the Golden Chainsaw for coolest death to Dean. I can't say I've ever seen anyone killed with a mounted deer head before, so that's points for originality. Add in the symbolism and the blood and it's clearly the standout kill of the movie. Dull machete for lamest death will go to Georgina, who caused herself to get killed in an accident. And that's it! Get Out was released earlier this year and set a few box office records for black filmmakers. It also held a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes for a while and I'm glad it got such a good reception because I'd be happy to see plenty more horror from Jordan Peele. Up next we're starting another big series with Child's Play, but until then I'm James A. Janisse. This has been the Kill Count. Hey guys, thanks a lot for watching the Kill Count for Get Out. I wanna thank some of my patrons like Eryn Slattery, Calvin Smith, Wrong Ticket, and AlexMcCloud1. If you guys wanna join the Patreon family and help this channel, you can click that button right over there and support this channel for as little as $1 a month. We also have official merchandise out now, Dead Meat pins available at deadmeatstore.com And if you can't afford to do any of that just keep watchin' and sharin' the videos.
