Get Out (2017) mixes social commentary, horror, and comedy in a way that was entirely novel to me when I first saw this film in theaters.
It was Jordan Peele’s directorial debut, followed up expertly by Us (2019), Nope (2022), and soon HIM (2025) (sports horror!).
People ask me often enough why I like horror movies that I’ve given it a great deal of thought. In my opinion, there is no other genre which so actively excavates and confronts our deepest fears, without becoming preachy or moralizing. In fact, the horror genre is so spacious in its treatment of culture and society that it even finds room for plenty of laughter as it provokes and unsettles.
Laughter is heard farther than wailing, as the Yiddish say. And I say: give us both.
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