Get Out and its Place in Horror
In 2019, AMC Theaters released an article on their website entitled, “10 Elements Every Horror Film Needs.” Among these ten elements, AMC included such features as “a showdown for the ages,” “proper theme music,” and “possibility for a sequel” (2019). Obviously, this list is not meant to be taken as a serious master list of horror necessities, but a quick ponder can produce several movies that fit within these conventions. Among these films one could include John Carpenter’s Halloween, Adrés Muschietti’s It, or James DeMonaco’s The Purge.
Interestingly, though, Jordan Peele’s Academy Award winning debut Get Out would not be so easy to define by these ten elements. This is largely due to the fact that AMC’s list ignores subgenres of horror, and particularly, in Get Out’s case, it ignores the conventions of psychological horror.
CRITICAL CONVERSATION
While there is plenty of scholarship discussing horror films, psychological horror films, and Get Out individually, there are few articles that discuss the intersection of these three things. Dr. Glenn D. Walters, forensic psychologist and professor of criminal justice at Kutztown University, discusses the allure of horror films within his paper, “Understanding the Popular Appeal of Horror Cinema: An Integrated-Interactive Model.” In this article, Walters claims that fear significantly drives the creation and viewership of horror movies, and, while movies built off of universal fears can be the most relevant to a broad audience, smaller, cultural fears can produce equally significant pieces of cinema. These cultural fears Walters define as “cultural relevance,” (Walters, 7). George Mason University’s director of the Center for Humanities Research Alison Landsberg builds off of Walters’s idea of cultural relevance within horror in her article, “Horror vérité: Politics and History in Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017).” In her article, Landberg claims that Get Out represents a new form of horror, which she has dubbed, “Horror vérité” or “truth horror.” Landsberg states that Get Out calls out the frequently covered-up racism of the politically liberal in the United States By this representation of Get Out, Landsberg is identifying the film within Walters’s definition of cultural relevance.
Veronika Hušková, professor of Philosophy and Science at the Silesian University in Opava, agrees with Walters in that universal fears are a driving factor for the creation of horror movies; however, in her masters thesis, “Female Characters in Psychological Horror,” Hušková specifies that the elements of universal fears in horror films are more than just horror elements, but they are specifically psychological horror elements. Hušková briefly references Get Out in her article and, while not necessarily denoting Get Out as truth horror, shares Landbergs assessment that Get Out is a film which discusses racism in an individual form. In this paper, I synthesize the sentiments of all three scholars in my analysis of Get Out as categorically a psychological horror; specifically, I endeavor to pinpoint elements of Get Out that root the film in psychological horror and how it uses those elements to reveal specific, cultural truths.
DISCUSSION
Film Inquiry published an article in 2016 that is quite similar to AMC’s “10 Elements Every Horror Film needs.” In this article, entitled, “Beginner’s Guide: Psychological Horror,” film journalist Ivy Lofberg details the conventions of the psychological horror genre and how these conventions function. While Get Out would be considered an outlier of the horror genre based on AMC’s list, the film neatly fits into the conventions illustrated by Lofberg. There are many conventions of psychological horror that Lofberg discusses within her Film Inquiry article, but one that specifically resonates within Get Out is atmosphere. According to Lofberg, psychological horrors don’t achieve scares through gore or jump scares. Rather, “They rely more on atmosphere, subtle creepy details, suggestion, and ambiguity” (Lofberg, 2016). The atmosphere of Get Out is accomplished through a combination of things, including the mise-en-scene, the staging, the use of camera angles and close ups, lighting, and more. Through the combination of these elements, Get Out succeeds at creating an atmosphere that is deeply discomforting. The mood is deceptively light at the introduction of the film; the initial interaction between Chris and Rose is wholesome and rather reminiscent of a generic romantic comedy. However, this calm is ruptured quite early in the film when the two characters nearly hit a deer running across the road.
Mise-en-scene:
setting, costumes, makeup, actors (what's in the frame
Staging:
where the shooting of the film and its scenes take place
Close ups:
Full head and shoulders
Against a backdrop of sunny daylight, peaceful woods, and banterful dialogue, the shock of the deer scene feels like an omen for what is soon to come. What makes this scene particularly frightening is that viewers have the unique experience of watching the near collision from the perspective of the characters themselves. The scene is shot over the shoulders of the characters, so the shock and the scare of that moment feel much more authentic; the viewers get to experience it with the characters themselves. This scene upsets the prior mood of the film and sets an eerie tone for the remainder of it. This scene is the birth of Get Out’s atmosphere. The previous calm is never again achieved, and the rest of the movie builds on the shock and discomfort established by the near collision with the deer. The staging of the secluded house in the middle of the woods further helps to develop an unsettling atmosphere by establishing a feeling of isolation. Furthermore, Peele utilizes close-up shots of Chris’s face while he is hypnotized by Mrs. Armitage to stir within viewers a feeling that is uncomfortable and invasive, something to make them wriggle uneasily in their seats. To complement the other factors stacking together to build Get Out’s unique atmosphere is a slight green tinge used in the lighting of the film; it is not enough to be totally noticeable, but it is just subtle enough to make something feel off. Toby Oliver, cinematographer of Get Out, states in an interview, “...we started playing around with lighting to make it creepier…we used cyans and greens to give the light a slightly unusual texture and tone…” (Long, 2017). Through these various elements, Peele uses small, almost imperceptible details that nestle within the viewer a feeling that something is wrong even if they cannot quite put their finger on it.
Along with atmosphere, Peele is clever in his use of metaphor, which is another convention Lofberg asserts is essential within a psychological horror. Get Out is absolutely dripping with metaphor, so much so that a first watch of the movie is not quite sufficient to catch all of it. Like atmosphere, Peele is able to hide metaphor in the details where it can be quite easy to miss. A great example of this is when Rose is eating fruit loops. Rather than eat the cereal in the traditional way, she separates the milk from the cereal—she is literally separating something white from something colored. This scene is brief, and her practice of eating cereal this way is not remarked on at all, but it is incredibly impactful once one notices the significance of it as a symbol of segregation.
Chris utilizing the cotton of the leather chair to eventually save his life could also be included in the lengthy list of easily missed metaphors. Adaeze Nduaguba, student at Dartmouth College, analyzes the significance of the cotton chair scene within a blog post for Dartmouth’s website. In the post, Nduaguba says, “In resisting the family’s hypnosis, Chris picks and stuffs cotton into his ears, a racial irony that touches on the notable role that cotton picking played in the enslavement of black people” (Nduaguba, 2017). Upon a first viewing of the film, it would be easy for a viewer to dismiss this scene as another instance of Chris’s nervous habit of clawing on chairs during times of anxiety, which is frequently displayed throughout the scene. Much like the scene with Rose and her fruit loops, the metaphor of this moment is so intricately woven into the plot of the film that it takes an intentional, careful viewing to receive the impact of the small detail.
Interweaving metaphor in the details of the film helps prevent it from becoming too heavy handed; however, there are instances in Get Out where the metaphor could not be more in the face of the viewer if Peele tried. A couple instances of this come from Chris’s initial conversation and tour of the house with Mr. Armitage. Within their first conversation, Mr. Armitage says, “I don't mean to get on my high horse, but I'm telling you, I do not like the deer. I'm sick of it; they're taking over. They're like rats. They're destroying the ecosystem” (Get Out, 2017). Mr. Armitage’s comment about the deer is obviously meant to mirror the current politically conservative view about immigration—the metaphor is abundantly clear here. A couple of scenes later during the tour of the house, Mr. Armitage refuses to show Chris the basement of the house due to a case of “black mold.” When it is later revealed that the basement actually contains, among other things, kidnapped black people, the metaphor between black humans and an invasive, deadly mold becomes obvious. Peele is clever in his mixture of subtle metaphor and obvious metaphor to create a dialogue in which his point is impossible to miss; it is imbued into every facet of the film in such a creative way that it does not feel heavy handed but, rather, looming.
While Lofberg asserts that true psychological horror will contain elements like atmosphere and metaphor, she furthers this assertion with the argument that psychological horrors are meant to utilize these elements in order to be challenging. By “challenging,” Lofberg means that psychological horrors upset the set values of people; they are supposed to be stimulating, and not always in a pleasant way. Get Out can be controversial in the way that it is challenging. The way that Get Out challenges its viewers is how the film cements itself as unique within its genre. There have been plenty of films that challenge the status quo of modern race relations, and, for good reason, there will continue to be many more. However, many of these films that challenge the current racial environment do not utilize the horror genre to do so. This is what makes Get Out unique: it discusses a heavy and relevant topic through a medium that accurately displays how scary it can be to be a black person in America.
In addition to stating that psychological horror aims to challenge its viewers, Lofberg goes on to say in her article, “These films offer the opportunity to explore the deep complexity of human nature in all its manifestations” (Lofberg, 2016). Get Out takes the message of racism and further complicates it: Get Out challenges the demographic of white people who think they are exempt from racism. Rather than critiquing all non-black people and their behaviors, Get Out punches up to address the hypocrisy of the “woke” elite: the people who think they are not racist because they have black friends or black partners or black coworkers. This punch up is what makes Get Out controversial. The conversations Peele opened with this movie are not easy ones to have, especially for those who identify as “socially aware white people;” conversations like these can be painful, uncomfortable, and, particularly, to reemphasize Lofberg, challenging. This unique form of challenge is what makes Get Out an individual not only in the horror genre but also in the psychological horror genre.
CONCLUSION
Get Out, while undoubtedly a horror film, cannot be appreciated in all its intricacies without an understanding of how it functions as a psychological horror, specifically. While the movie has elements of a conventional horror film, Get Out does so much more than scare the audience simply for the purpose to scare them. Get Out shrewdly utilizes elements like atmosphere and metaphor to craft a piece that cleverly challenges its viewers. Because of the intentionality of Get Out in its design and message, it is unfair to simply call it a horror. It can only truly be appreciated within its rightful genre of psychological horror.
WORKS CITED
HuÅ¡ková, Veronika. “Female Characters in Psychological Horror.” 2020. Silesian University in Opava, Masters of Philosophy and English.
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Landsberg, Alison. “Horror Vérité: Politics and History in Jordan Peele’s Get Out (2017).”
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, vol. 32, no. 5, Oct. 2018, pp. 629–42. EBSCOhost,
https://doi.org/10.1080/10304312.2018.1500522.
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Lofberg, Ivy. “Beginner's Guide: Psychological Horror.” Film Inquiry, 2016,
https://www.filminquiry.com/beginners-guide-psychological- horror/.
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Long, Kelle. “Get Out's Cinematographer Reveals the Methods behind Jordan Peele's Brilliant
Madness.” Motion Picture Association, 27 Dec. 2017,
https://www.motionpictures.org/2017/12/get-outs- cinematographer-reveals-methods-behind-jordan-peeles-brilliant- madness-2/.
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Nduaguba, Adaeze. “Feminist Guide to Get Out.” Journeys. Dartmouth University, 24 May 2017
https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/feministguidetogetout/2017/05/24
/cotton-chair/.
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Peele, Jordan, director. Get Out. Universal Pictures, 2017.
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Walters, Glen D. ““Understanding the Popular Appeal of Horror Cinema: An Integrated-Interactive Model.” Journal of Media Psychology, Volume 9, No. 2, 2004.
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“10 Elements Every Horror Film Needs.” AMC Theatres - Movie Times, Movie Trailers, Buy
Tickets and Gift Cards., 2019, https://www.amctheatres.com/amc- scene/10-elements-every-horror-film-needs.