Somewhere in the Sunken Place
Somewhere in the Sunken Place
Jordan Peele’s 2017 psychological horror film Get Out simply fucks with me more and more with each time I re-watch it. I’m not normally one to watch horror movies. At all. The only horror film I’ve ever seen in theaters was A24’s Midsommar, because I mistakenly thought that a horror movie in the daytime wouldn’t nearly be as bad as a regular horror movie (and my mistake was manifested in the entire bowl of popcorn I ate during the previews seeking to escape me during the entire duration of the film). There’s something about horror films that just makes me feel itchy and uncomfortable. However, Get Out is a film in which the uncomfortable is necessary, as discomfort is a point of departure into a conversation on post-racial America.
The plot follows Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a Black photographer, and his White girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams), who travel upstate to meet Rose’s family for the first time. However, upon arrival, the Armitages are not quite what they seem. One could chalk their behavior up to White ignorance, resulting in their ineffectual and odd mannerisms while speaking to and acting around Chris, but everything in the Armitage’s house and grounds suggests an intent that is much more sinister. The Armitages make tactless and passively racist comments about Chris, and the household staff (all Black, and all on the Missing Persons list…) have an odd manner and tell Chris to “Get out”.
This rewatch, there were a few scenes that stood out to me in particular. One of those scenes that personally spoke to me was ‘the Sunken Place’. From the very moment that Missy (Catherine Keener), the matriarch of the Armitages, pulls Chris out of the darkened hallway into the lit room that she uses for hypnosis, everything in the world was slightly off. Not that the world wasn’t already wonky, but everything in the scene suggests to the audience that something terrible is about to happen. Toby Oliver’s incredible cinematography illustrates perfectly how to make everything seem slightly out of place- the stark contrasts of dark elements with light elements made me feel as if I was a child sneaking around, avoiding the light, and that the light itself was what was off. Or at least, everything felt off to me, but that’s because hypnosis kind of freaks me out.
I feel like Chris’s full spiral into his own head is something we can all relate to, in a sense; traumatic memories that aren’t remembered in the first person, in an almost dreamlike, dissociative manner feel reminiscent of a post traumatic stress disorder induced panic attack. I used to get dreams like that, and have a few memories in my head that I fully can’t remember in the first person, which is why I think that the Sunken Place stood out and resonated with me so much on this rewatch.
Another scene that stood out to me was when Chris discovered Rose’s- and by proxy, the Armitage family’s- intentions and pieced together that something was truly wrong upon finding Rose’s secret little room with photographs of every Black person the Armitages had ever killed. Chris realizes all too late that he is next in line, but it’s Rose’s unfeeling reaction that stuck with me. The minute she dropped all pretenses was when I truly felt scared. That’s probably all credit to Jordan Peele’s masterful direction. Her lack of empathy and remorse felt, to me, almost like the ‘uncanny valley’ effect, and was a terrifying reversion of humanity.
Jordan Peele’s Get Out is a masterclass in discomfort in a post-racial America, and through cinematography and masterful direction he commands the audience to see through the eyes of Black Americans (in more ways than one). This discomfort makes Get Out a film that inspires change in modern society and is necessary to understanding post-racial America isn’t at all a good place, but a sunken one. With one clink of a spoon on a teacup, on this rewatch, I woke up.
