Get Out: Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] Welcome back to New Rockstars, I'm Eric Voss, and this is the breakdown and analysis of Jordan Peele's Get Out, my favorite movie from 2017, and the movie that changed all modern social horror in Hollywood over the past decade. I love this movie, and I wanted to bring home this analysis to the New Rockstars channel,

[00:15] as part of our Halloween season weekend watch series, the video you're about to see I originally did on the Deep Dive channel three years ago. It's seriously one of my favorite film analyses I've ever made, and I hope you enjoy it. Before we begin, one of the best ways to support us on New Rockstars is to grab a shirt from our merch store,

[00:29] nerdride.shop like this one, The Faces of Fear shirt. I actually wore this design to Halloween Horror Nights this year, and I got some specific attention from Freaky Nicky that messed me up.

[00:44] Alright, here we go. Let's dive back into the sunken place of Jordan Peele's Get Out. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

[00:56] Now I'm in the sunken place. Yikes, talking about a deep dive. Director Jordan Peele created A Sunken Place as a horrifying metaphor for marginalization. But why specifically is it the sound of a stirring spoon,

[01:09] which Jordan Peele has just used as the logo for his production company, Monkey Paw? A stirring spoon that triggers our hero. I think I finally figured it out. And it's because Yarnacritz, sitting on the bed here, connects to a certain other character posed on a bed in the exact same way Rose.

[01:23] In the film's most analyzed and I would say most misunderstood scene, and Jordan Peele's Get Out is a perfectly constructed social horror packed with details that I thought I knew all of, but I just discovered dozens more upon this rewatch.

[01:35] I think Get Out should be required annual viewing, and hopefully this analysis will help you sharpen your awareness of the dangers around you so you know when to get out. Okay, the film actually opens in a peaceful suburb chosen by Jordan Peele as a nod at the setting of John Carpenter's Halloween,

[01:50] where the most horrifying things can happen in what Jordan Peele called the perfect white neighborhood. Andre, played by Lakeith Stanfield, talks to his girlfriend on the phone. You got me all here, creepy, confused, suburb.

[02:02] Yeah, he says suburb, and a stereotypically white voice to foreshadow how he will later have to speak in a white voice when his body gets taken over. I actually interviewed Lakeith Stanfield about the authenticity he brings to these type of scenarios when I interviewed him for Disney's Haunted Mansion.

[02:16] And he told me that he's just been in these scenarios countless times, and he didn't really have to do much transformative acting for it, unfortunately. and it's just so telling how he tenses up when the dog barks, something black men are especially wary of in white neighborhoods like this.

[02:28] Jordan Peele wrote dozens of drafts of this screenplay, shooting one draft and even further winnowing it down through a tightly edited one hour, 44 minutes. An earlier draft opened with a white family inside of the house they pass that's talking about going to Disney World

[02:40] and how Mickey is actually someone else inside. And this family does nothing while Andre is kidnapped outside. Peele opted to stay with Andre in this two-minute long take as his anxiety builds and builds and a place many of us see as a safe place.

[02:54] It also evokes the two-minute opening long take of 2014's It Follows, which also features a mysterious horror in a suburb. In the screenplay, Andre is actually talking to Crystal, who tells him, Stay put, we'll come get you. Crystal is actually Rose,

[03:07] and she tells him that, saying her brother Jeremy will actually come get him. Andre says to himself, F***, hedgeman. He'll confirm this was one of many nods to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, which ends with a case through a hedgeman.

[03:19] The car that Jeremy pulls up in is white, black interior, like how the cult claims to force black souls in defunct in place. Jeremy's car plays this creepy song, 1939, Run, Rabbit, Run, by Harry Biggood.

[03:32] Jordan Peele has said in interviews how rabbits terrify him, which is something he explored further in 2019's Us. In this context, Andre represents the innocent, sacrificial rabbit being told to run. Jeremy puts him in an MMA-style headlock,

[03:44] the same move that he puts on Chris later if he wears an antique pin-par helmet, which Grant later finds in the front seat. This is part of Peele's mythology of the cult, the Red Alchemist Society, which descended from the Knights Templar,

[03:56] which is why they all feature the color red in their clothes. The teal-blue title text, Peele said, was taken directly from the opening titles of the Chinese, which is also the text color in the Behold the Coagula video. Composer Michael Abel's strings transition into...

[04:12] This song is actually called Sigaliza Kwa Wahenga, and it incorporates Swahili lyrics that translate to Brother, listen to the ancestors run, which is meant as a kind of spiritual guiding a runaway slave, but in this movie's context, an escape from a northern plantation.

[04:27] Jordan Peele got the title of Get Out from Eddie Murphy's 1983 Delirious special when Murphy joked about the gullible white families in movies like Amityville Horror and how black families would respond differently. This is really nice.

[04:39] Too bad we can't stay, David. In Chris's apartment, we hear Chavez and Bino's Redbone, which has the lyrics, but stay woke. They gonna find you, gonna catch you sleeping. Another warning to Chris to keep his eyes open and avoid falling into the sunken place.

[04:53] We cut from Chris getting out of the shower to pastries at the bakery as Rose leans in to look at them. The editing makes it seem like Chris is one of those treats in the display case. Another snack in a row for Rose and Bower.

[05:05] I'm telling you, when you rewatch this movie, she's all kinds of creepy. Chris rubs shaving cream on his face, which Peele confirms is meant to be a kind of white face metaphor. the threat of Chris being abducted by another race, which is why, by doing this, he cuts his chin and draws blood.

[05:19] Rose uses her head to knock on the door like a very unwell person would do, but also notice throughout this apartment she never really touches any surface to avoid leaving any fingerprints anywhere. She tells the dog, You gotta pry something out of your dad.

[05:34] Pry something out of your dad? As in, my family has to pry his brain out and swap it with that of an old white man? Rose's hair throughout this movie changes. Like it starts down, carefree, nothing to hide, but as she reveals more and more of her true psychotic self, she pulls her hair back tighter and tighter and tighter.

[05:49] And when she has her hair pulled back like that, Peele and Allison Williams would call this identity of Rose, Ro-Ro. Chris is worried that Rose says she didn't tell her parents that he's black. I don't want to get chased off the wall with a shotgun. Well, Dean doesn't run him off with a shotgun, but Rose chases him off with a rifle.

[06:03] Rose says, My dad would have voted for Obama a third time if he could have Which Dean totally confirms later I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could This is something many white liberals have actually said This line was likely scripted between the father and daughter as part of this trade,

[06:18] but it rings as authentic because it comes from freaking Bradley Whitford, who played Democratic liberal warrior Josh Lyman on the West Wing. Rose hits a deer, which is a jump scare that, like, horror movies keep using nowadays. While Chris goes to check on it, haunted by the memory of his mother after her hit-and-run,

[06:33] Rose has no reaction because she has no empathy. The film from here likened deer with black people. I do not like the deer. I'm sick of it. They're taking over. They're like rats. Actually, the term black buck was a racial slur from the post-Reconstruction era,

[06:47] and around the Armitage home are stuffed deer heads, making it a powerful symbol when Chris uses these antlers of the deer head to kill Dean. You can actually see this deer as Chris's guardian angel, his mother trying to intervene and stop Rose from taking her son

[07:00] because Rose refuses to let the cop see Chris' ID. Sir, can I see your license, please? Wait, what? No, no, no. He wasn't driving. Yeah, at first it comes off as a heroic girlfriend defense, but she actually just doesn't want any record of Chris being in this area.

[07:15] They pull into the Armitage home, and the first thing Chris sees is Walter raking in the yard, making this look like a PlayStation home, like Candyland in Django Unchained. On the column are Omega symbols. Omega, the final letter of the Greek alphabet,

[07:27] a symbol of eternal life, as this cult has unlocked the secret of immortality by hijacking black bodies. The camera slowly pulls back to reveal this from Walter's point of view. There's something eerie about Dean's excite little hop

[07:39] and the way that he says, My man and we're hungry. The name Armitage actually comes from the main character of the H.P. Lovecraft story, The Dunwich Horror. The patriarch, Roman Armitage, takes his first name from Roman Cassavetes,

[07:51] the cult leader in Rosemary's Baby, which Get Out took its grace from as another allegorical social horror. Rosemary's Baby was about gaslighting and rape culture. Get Out is about gaslighting and modern racism, and how it has a particularly insidious, more

[08:03] accurate, but more subtle form in the 21st century, but it's still racism. Basically saying that whether you live in cities, or whether you live in a rural area, you still have the same kind of problematic notions in that noggin. Dean gives Chris a tour, showing Missy's psychiatrist

[08:16] office, and we later just a second longer on this red chair before we cut away, setting up this spot is where Chris will fall into the sunken place. Peele actually designed this whole tour to work the way the opening tour does in The Shining to give the audience a map of where all the scary stuff is going to go down later.

[08:31] Dean points to a photograph of the family, and Dean wears bright red pants in this photo, just as Jeremy will do when he arrives later. Dean talks about all of his souvenirs, talking about how he picked them up in Bali, and says this. Such a privilege to be able to experience another person's culture.

[08:45] Oof, the word privilege. Trophies he picks up from African countries, all while we see Rose lounging in front of a globe return so Africa faces us as she really is a modern slave trader. With his words, Dean

[08:57] states the deeper anxiety of this movie, colonial empathy. Get Out dispels the notion that American racism only exists in the American South. It's everywhere. Suburbs, northern rural areas, and yeah, Hollywood. Jordan Peele says, quote, the second place is a metaphor for the marginalization

[09:12] of the black horror movie audience. We are a loyal horror movie fan base and we're relegated to the theater, not on the screen. In this movie, Peele completely exposes the hypocrisy of white liberals. So Dean shows Chris

[09:24] a photo of his dad who lost in the qualifying round to Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics when Owens humiliated Adolf Hitler on his own turf. This is how Roman became obsessed with black people having more God-given advantages and combining them with a white man's determination

[09:38] according to Peel. It's why Walter sprints outside later and noticed that because there was put him in these same 1930s running shoes when he was outside that Dean brushes past the basement I just feel it up. Some black mold down there. Yeah,

[09:51] black mold, as in molds for the black brain matter that they lobotomize, or molds for black people with white souls that they're printing. And because every line in this creepy scene is a setup, Dean next says,

[10:03] My mother loves her kitchen, so we keep a piece of her in here. A piece of his mother's brain resides in Georgina. Peele said that he wanted this reveal of Georgina already staring at them to be like a reveal of the Grady twins around the corner, or Hannibal Lecter when Clarice arrives at his cell.

[10:18] Dean admits how bad it looks to employ Walter and Georgina. We hired Georgina and Walter to help care for my parents when they died. I couldn't bear to let them go. He literally didn't let his parents go by putting their brains inside these two people.

[10:31] It's horrifying. If you've thought about therapy but haven't given it a try, it might be worth another look. I've been partnering with our sponsor, Better Health, for four years, and they've made a big change. For eligible members, insurance options may now be available with an average copay of just $23 per session.

[10:45] There once was a point in my life when I felt like therapy would be helpful, but I couldn't afford it. I had just finished school, moved to a new city, and I was navigating being an adult. I was overwhelmed, and I didn't have a great set of coping mechanisms in place to help me process how I was feeling in a productive way.

[10:59] BetterHelp's new insurance options would have been so helpful to me back then, and I hope they're helpful for you now. Therapy gives you a safe place to check in, take stock, and deal with things head-on so they don't pile up. BetterHelp makes starting therapy easy.

[11:11] You take a short quiz, then get matched with a licensed therapist quickly. You can communicate however you feel comfortable, phone, video, or text. If your therapist isn't a good fit for you, you can switch at any time with no additional cost. Over 6 million people to date have gotten help through BetterHelp, earning a 4.8 out of 5 rating on the App Store.

[11:27] With insurance options, eligible BetterHelp members have an average copay of $23. Don't have insurance or live in the United States? You can get 10% off your first month. Click the link in the description or visit BetterHelp.com to explore your options.

[11:39] Over tea, they ask about his parents, and Chris reveals that they're both not in his life, which shows part of why Rose selected Chris, because he wouldn't have had a family to look for him when he disappeared. Then Missy makes her first move. Well, that's okay. We don't have to talk about that.

[11:53] She has already begun hypnosis, constructing an association between Chris's painful memory of his mother with the sound of the spoon. Already Chris is fidgety with his fingers, which is something we know he did as a kid while stuck in paralysis

[12:06] when his mother did not come home. Dean interprets this as Chris jonesing for a cigarette. That's okay. We're not judging. It a nasty avatar They especially opposed to Chris smoking because it represents a health risk to the body they about to auction off The only reason Misty cures his addiction is because they wouldn be able to hypnotize that out of him when Jim Hudson took over

[12:25] Georgina tops off everyone else's tea, but refills Chris's last. Even though it's the only one that's actually empty because this grandmother revents him. Over dinner, Jeremy talks about Jiu-Jitsu. He talks about this. It's a strategic game.

[12:39] Later, when Jeremy has been headlocked, Chris applies this lesson, noticing that Jeremy always lifts his leg to kick the door shut, but then intentionally reaches for the doorknob so that Jeremy will lift his leg one more time so that he can stab it.

[12:55] Rose has a poster for Death Cheetah vs. Matter, perhaps a nod to the family's mission to cheat death by stealing bodies, but Chris mocks what Jeremy said earlier. You know, imagine anything like a shriveling old dog on the booth.

[13:08] Right after he jokes about Journey calling him beef, we cut to Rose's stuffed lion on the nightstand. Like the party guest later saying they know Tiger, as in Tiger Woods, this lion is like Chris being treated like hunted game by this cult.

[13:20] Chris turns the lion away from the bed, but later when he returns to the room, he finds Rose has turned the lion back towards the bed. Outside, Walter sprints toward him. Jordan Peele has said that he wanted to evoke North by Northwest, the famous crop duster scene saying somebody running at you or toward you just creates a

[13:36] visceral and physical reaction for the audience. This is also a freaky visual concept and it follows but at a much faster pace obviously. What's so effective here really is the lighting. Walter slips into the shadows of the trees and suddenly appears closer in the moonlight so it

[13:50] kind of takes us a second to see how fast he is moving. Missy hypnotizes Chris stirring the spoon in the cup. Again there is a deeper significance to this that I'll get to at the end of this video but many have pointed to Missy using a silver spoon as a symbol of her wealth and privilege.

[14:04] Silver spoon. But she never breaks eye contact, which Jordan Peele attributed to the face-off between Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, where he gets inside her head. When Chris flashes back to the night his mother died, the right of the TV is a camera,

[14:16] so his interest in photography really began on that night. There's a close-up of young Chris's hands peeking at the post, cutting to Chris's hand now peeking at the armrest, which will later be how he escapes. Missy sinks him into the sunken place, in which he can only see out of it through a square in the shape of a 90s television set,

[14:32] the same shape that he stared at when he didn't go looking for his mother. Peele was inspired by the moment he began to fall asleep, but jerked back awake, pondering, well, what if you never caught yourself? Where would you fall? The sunken place is Peele's metaphor for the way marginalized people feel stunned and paralysis

[14:46] when their oppressors rob them of control of the situation, saying, quote, no matter how hard we scream, the system silences us. Deleted scenes would have actually explored the sunken place further, where Chris would have pulled out his cigarette lighter and seen a ghostly skeleton of a deer.

[14:59] Chris wakes up from his experience having assumed it was a dream, a plot point from Rosemary's Baby in which Rosemary experiences a drug stink in which the cult had invited Satan to fuck her, and she initially was not sure if it was a dream or really happening.

[15:11] The sun's in place is that rate for Chris. A total loss of control, a psychological seizure of power, followed by gaslighting and doubt. Chris sees Georgina adjusting her wig. She wears this wig to cover up her lobotomy scar,

[15:23] for some reason Walter always wears his hat. And even Andre wears his hat. When the party guests arrive, they all hug Walter, telling us that they all have an intimate history with him. While all the members of this red alchemist society wear splashes of red,

[15:35] Chris wears blue, which you could see as a Republican versus Democrat thing. But to identify these white people as Republicans really misses the point of what Jordan Peele was trying to communicate with this movie. Because really, racism crosses political lines. So when Chris and Rose are paired together,

[15:48] their tops do kind of look like an American flag, blue with red and white stripes, which is Peel's way of saying, this is the full America that I know. Like the cult members partying at the end of Rosemary's Baby, they're not exactly trying to hide it anymore, which is just really creepy,

[16:01] because it means that they know they've already won, and there's nothing Chris can do. Also, like with Rosemary's Baby, the cult also has one random Asian guy. Hudson seems like the one sane person, which is something that Stephen F. Root just does really well, complimenting Chris's photography.

[16:13] The images you captured are so brutal. It's powerful stuff, I think. He says, I think, because he's blind, but also he's blind to the actual painting that Chris' photographic skill is rooted in. Hudson is incapable of true empathy because he thinks this kind of talent is a physical trait, when in reality, it's a psychological trait.

[16:31] Hudson says, one day you're developing prints in the dark room, the next day you wake up in the dark. Referring to his own blindness, but also foretelling what he plans to do to Chris. Georgina surprises him to apologize.

[16:43] On the wall behind him is another van poster, arranged so that it reads, Chris is dead. I was right! Get out! This exchange between Chris and Georgina is so unnerving, and it's because Peele has put the camera closer and closer to their faces,

[16:56] and at one point, he does a suchless dolly zoom on Chris, so we just completely lose it when Georgina breaks down. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[17:08] The amount of water coming out of her eyes is matched only by the gushing tears when Missy hypnotized Chris, Betty Gabriel, MVP of this cast. Chris's photography is most powerful when he flashes a photo of Andre and briefly wakes him up.

[17:21] We can totally see this as a metaphor for the game changer that mobile devices with video were to the protest movements in America because for the first time, people had a way to actually hold police accountable in real time. Peele does this really cool effect on Andre's eyes

[17:33] where they glow this pale gray color to show Andre surfacing from the sunken place for a moment, and as he screams, Andre's natural voice returns. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Jeremy is right there to put him in another M&A-style headlock, though.

[17:47] It's Rose who initiates taking Chris on a walk, while the rest conduct an auction with the bingo cards, essentially a slave auction. Jordan Peele kept the specific meanings of the numbers of mystery, but suggested it was part of the Red Alchemist Society's history with the Knights Templar,

[17:59] dealing not with financial transactions, but with antiquities and relics from their collections. Notice how Rose always seems to take Chris aside and calls out the racism before he does, and even here, verbally commits to leaving so that we, the audience, trust her,

[18:12] and the betrayal in the following scene stains even more. Chris finds Rose's photos, including one of her in a debutante gown, or maybe a stage costume, but either some creepy antebellum shit look at you Ellie Kemper or proof that she has some acting training We also flip past it quickly but there is one of her in some kind of ceremony with people in long white robes behind her

[18:31] Run, rabbit, run. And then several past boyfriends and Georgina, all taken with a selfie. She keeps these as trophies. True story here, folks. I had an ex-girlfriend who had the same fashion and style

[18:43] as Alison Williams in this movie. Think full Bo Burnham white woman's Instagram. And she would take selfies just like this. After we broke up, I found out that she took her next boyfriend on the same exact date that she took me on. And look, I listen to Olivia Rodrigo's Deja Vu, and I know this happens with a lot of people,

[18:59] but when there is photographic evidence of your predecessor and successor with the same girl, same smile, all in that same L.A. barcade photo booth, you're just kind of glad you got the f*** out. But now, with her villainy revealed, Rose's red striped shirt gives her major Brady Gruger vibe.

[19:14] What are those keys, Rose? You know I can't get these keys right, babe. That little f***ing wave that she does waving bye-bye since she thinks this is the last time she will see the real Chris.

[19:27] But now the movie jumps over to TSA Rod, which Peele likens with the part of The Shining when we jump to Dick Halloran, who makes his way from Miami to Colorado to save Danny. Peele directly nods to that if you listen closely.

[19:40] 237, the notorious hotel room from The Shining film. Chris is strapped down in front of the coagula video, which Peele based on a Dharma Initiative training video and lost, bruised in front of a TV, also forcing Chris back into the night his mother died.

[19:52] The video ends with, Which is actually a slogan for the United Negro College Fund, making this another example of white people appropriating black culture, which also just contributes to this being so wrong for these white people to do.

[20:04] Hudson appears on the screen to confirm what they are planning. Hudson's possession is especially creepy, because he did more to try to empathize with

[20:16] Chris and the others, and it seems like he wants that sliver of Chris as a passenger that he can maintain a connection to. Ugh. But Chris pulls cotton out of the armrest that he will use to stuff his ears, which Peele said was intentional irony, because Chris faked himself from slavery by picking

[20:29] cotton. Peele said originally the chair was polyester, but he insisted that they search Mobile, Alabama, where they shot this movie, for a chair with a cotton-stuffed armrest. Dean begins the operation, and Jeremy pushes a wheelchair to get Chris.

[20:41] Have seen this photo. This is a fascinating detail. It's the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court, the Fuller Court, infamous for the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that established these separate but equal doctrines that sought to legitimize racist Jim Crow laws in the South, and that ruling would not be overturned until 1954's Brown v. Board of Education.

[21:00] So, yeah, we're seeing the Armitage family celebrating the 1896 Fuller Court. Are we surprised? No. After a striking journey, Chris notices the deer on the wall. The Swahili Whispers return

[21:14] Listen to your ancestors And Chris now will not let himself become a mounted trophy on the wall Chris goes to the door Jeremy jumps out behind him An homage to the frame in one of the all-time greatest jump scares The Nurse and the Exorcist 3 Jeremy counts the headlock

[21:30] I mean, it's definitely going to feel like I'm reading into this one But counting with Mississippi instead of 1,000 At least in this context, I mean, come on. And finally, we arrive at Rose, binging NCAA prospects.

[21:44] And now on the wall behind her, all her banned posters have been taken down. Replaced with framed photos of her past trophies. Rose's head is perfectly framed in the middle of all these past trophies. She eats Froot Loops like a complete psychopath,

[21:56] piling nibbles of the dried cereal, and then three big gulps through a chocolate straw. Now many have made hay out of Rose, segregating the white milk from the colorful cereal. Jordan Biel actually denied that was intentional, but I believe there's something deeper to Rose eating cereal here.

[22:13] She sits on the edge of her bed. Who else in this movie was posed in the exact same way? Chris, on the night of his mother's death. Now, we can't see what's directly in front of young Chris in this shot, but what does any kid have in front of him between him and the TV when his parents aren't home to make dinner?

[22:28] The one thing every kid knows how to make themselves, cereal. It's gotta be cereal, right? The one other context you'd hear the sound of a spoon scraping on porcelain. That's why I believe Missy's trigger was so effective on Chris.

[22:40] She brought him back to the sound that he would make when he guiltily ate cereal while his mother was dying. Now, Chris gets away. Rose chases with her deer-punching rifle. But Walter shoots her, and as Chris chokes her, police lights flash and Rose whips up some alligator tears.

[22:54] In the original ending, Chris was going to get arrested, and Rob was going to visit him in prison. Pissed off. Peele wrote that draft during the Obama era as a response in part to civil rights protests, and he initially wanted to end with that gut punch of mass incarceration.

[23:07] But when they moved the film to be released in February 2017, the election three months earlier changed the tenor of the country, and Peele felt then that he just couldn't strike the same momentary fear of Chris's arrest with him going for that hands up, don't shoot pose,

[23:20] and so instead, he delivered one of the all-time best cathartic releases at the end of a movie, and it totally works. I'll never forget the opening night reaction to this moment.

[23:32] Shit. So we hear a happy ending, but the Swahili music returns again as a drive-off, which frames this ending as a cochlear entail for all current and future viewers. Listen to your ancestors, the ones who escaped to tell the tale,

[23:44] who followed their anxieties to claw their way to freedom. And when everyone around you is draped in literal red flags, get out. Thank you so much for joining us on this week in Watch Us Get Out. We hope you subscribe to New Rockstars, and if you haven't already,

[23:57] join New Rockstars as a channel member to get early access to some of our videos. A special thanks to one of our members, Frederick Price, for supporting us at the executive producer level. Big thanks to studio tech Brian Kim, New Rock Stars editors Joshua Stephen Hurd and Abby Friel and all of our supporting editors for their work on this video.

[24:11] Follow me at E-A-Vox and hit that subscribe button. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time. Bye!

[24:30] Thank you.