Get Out - comedy / thriller / horror. All that and more.

Took a rare trip to the cinema back in April (and rarer still these days that I am blogging about it - even if it is 5 months later).  I had a free weekday evening and so I did that thing that I do enjoy doing, watching a horror film in the dark at night.  Better still when one has to walk home at midnight in the dark.  All about there scares innit.

Get Out stars Daniel Kaluuya as Chris, a guy who has been going out with Rose (Allison Williams) for a few months.  Naturally Rose wants Chris to meet her parents.  However he is reluctant.  She is white, he is black; Chris is cautious about how they will react.  Rose's reassurances about her parents' ludicrous liberalism put Chris mostly at ease, but his nagging doubts aren't about to vanish at any point.  This is America after all, and race is as much an issue today as at any point in its history.  What could possibly go wrong?

The film continues into 3 acts, each with a very distinct tone.  We go from borderline cringe-comedy, to spooky mystery, to slasher horror, with the end of each act clearly signalling the transition to the next.  Everything is tied together with a playfully comic undertone as Chris stays in touch with his friend (comic relief) Rod throughout his entire time with Rose's parents.  From this we pretty much know that nothing can really happen to Chris as he navigates his way through the minefield of parental hyper-liberalism - Texas Chainsaw Massacre this is not.  One could criticise this as undercutting the horror elements of the story, but I think it actually helps create a playful tone that reminds us that horror films are meant to be entertainment.  Carefully done, it is possible to create a light tone around sinister ideas.  Black comedy is after all a thing, and Get Out is nothing if not that (but with a lot more horror).

I distinctly remember Kaluuya starring as the lead in the best episode of Black Mirror's original run back in 2011, but I can't recall seeing him in anything else.  A strong performance in both these roles surely sets him up for more work in the future.

My opinion is that this isn't quite the game-changing thriller is was billed as in some parts earlier this year, but it is an extraordinarily good horror / thriller.  Of particular note is the film's tone, which is shifting but well-crafted to great effect.  I await with great interest to see what writer / director Jordan Peele gets up to next.

Moonlight - a story waiting to be told

Took a bit of time to get around to it, but I have now kept up the record I try to maintain - that of making sure I see the Academy's Best Film award winner as soon as possible.  You may recall that Moonlight was eventually awarded this year's top prize at the Oscars after an envelope malfunction in which L A Land had originally been read out as the winner.  Cue the internet going wild for about 90 seconds as accusations of white washing were slung at the Academy on social media, and then going wild for days afterwards as everyone struggled to work out how something as well-co-ordinated as the Oscars ceremony could have managed to get the wrong name into the hands of the person doing the reading.

Whatever.  We are where we are.  Moonlight won the Academy award for Best Film this year, and rightly so.  It presents a story that feels like it has been waiting to be told for some time, a story of sexual awakening in the unforgiving world of the inner city druglands of urban America.

The film shows us three vignettes from the life of Chiron, at first a young boy, then a teen, and finally a man grown.  As a boy he is timid, confused by his sexuality and in yearning for a role model.  As a teen he is isolated, insecure and picked-on.  As a man he is physically powerful but deeply unsure about who he is and how he fits into a world that isn't sure how to react to him.

Marshala Ali won an Oscar for his performance in the first of the vignettes, when Chiron in a small boy living with his drug-addicted mother in the rough end of his home city.  Ali plays local drug dealer Juan, a character that on the surface we think we know from endless portrayals of people like him in the media and film.  The reality is that he is confused and powerless as everyone else trying to find their place in the world.  One particular scene sees Chiron join in with dinner at Juan's place, a scene that makes a curveball out of our expectations of the characters.  It's perfect in its simplicity, able to completely hold our attention through the power of words.

The film's themes are mutli-layered but perfectly woven.  For me the main thrust was about role models and expectations of ourselves and out lives.  We may have role models who are good, bad, right or wrong, but ultimately we become our own person as a result of everything we see and feel.  And crucially we might turn out to be someone no one ever would have expected - witness the dramatic change in Chiron from skinny kid to muscled young man by the final act, no one meeting him for the first time could hope to guess at the timid and confused upbringing he suffered through.

Yes it is slow, yes the camera lingers on at the end of scenes, yes the silence tells a story - all reasons many people might find Moonlight boring.  But I think this is what makes the film perfect.  It isn't an easy thing to use silence to your benefit, but here it is like an extra character, bringing development where dialogue would just muddy the waters.  A worthy Oscar winner.