Get Out (2017) * * *

Directed by:  Jordan Peele

Starring:  Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Catherine Keener, Stephen Root, Keith Stanfield, Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel, LilRel Howery

Get Out is a suspense thriller coupled with sharp racial satire.   There is an obvious Stepford Wives influence at play here, but it all fits together nicely.    Writer/director Jordan Peele isn't making a sendup of horror films with Get Out.    He is serious, but carefully inserts racial politics into his story, which fuels the tension and ultimately the dastardly plot hatched by the villains.     One of the joys of watching Get Out is the eerie feeling that anyone in the film could be a villain...or a friend to our hero Chris (Kaluuya).

As Get Out opens, Chris is living with Rose (Williams), who is loving, sweet, and who can't wait to introduce Chris to her ultra-liberal parents upstate.    Things get off to a gruesome start when Rose hits a deer while driving.     The interaction between the responding police officer and Chris sets our spidey senses off.     The cop isn't being overtly racist, but we can't help but feel tense at the exchanges.

Rose's parents are Dean (Whitford), a neurosurgeon and Missy (Keener), a psychiatrist with a heavy interest in hypnosis.    They are welcoming, to be sure, but something about them is off.     You can't put your finger on why they seem off.     Chris should be warmed by the fact that Dean would have voted for Obama a third time if he could.    Maybe it is the Stepfordish Georgia (Gabriel) and Walter (Henderson), who work on the property but behave so properly that it causes Chris to be skittish.    It's like they are pod people.    Chris' friend Rodney (a funny LilRel Howery) warns Chris against meeting Rose's parents so soon.    When Chris tells Rodney about the weird things he is seeing, Rodney theorizes that the white people in the suburbs kidnap black people and turn them into sex slaves.      Such a thought is preposterous...or is it?

I wouldn't dream of revealing the details of what is afoot.    You have to know that something is.    Otherwise, why would there be a movie?     Get Out isn't schlock and doesn't go for cheap scares.    Its strengths lie in the suspense.     What exactly is going on here?     We find ourselves quickly absorbed.    The performances all serve the film well, especially Kaluuya as a sympathetic hero who only wants to get along, but soon finds that impossible.    Veterans Keener and Whitford are great at suggesting the malevolence that lies just beneath their welcoming exterior.   

Fortunately, the payoff is worth the buildup Peele creates.    Peele's atmosphere is of genuine eeriness.    There is an efficient coldness to the master plan that depends on racial stereotyping in almost a Nazi-like manner.     Because of this, the human stakes are high.    If Peele, who has appeared with his comedic partner Keegan Michael Key in their own show, Fargo (the first and best season), and 2016's underwhelming Keanu, wishes to forego his career in front of the camera for one behind it, he is off to a very promising start.