"Fairer skin has been in favor for the past, what, couple of hundreds
of years? But now the pendulum has swung back.
"Black is in fashion.”
Anyone
who’s passingly familiar with my writing or has been to the Iguana more than
once would, in all likelihood, have noticed my preference for genre pieces that
have something to say.
That’s
the kind of genre material I’m deeply interested in, the ones that use the
tropes and the conventions and the form as a platform to delve into important,
vital matters. The kind of material that says something to its audience about
the world they live in.
And
if you’ve seen the trailer for Jordan Peele’s feature directorial debut, Get Out (which Peele also wrote the
screenplay for), it should be fairly obvious that the film is about race, and
its ugly, bigoted offspring, racism.
“Chris, you gotta get
the f*ck up outta there, man! You in some Eyes Wide Shut situation. Leave, motherfu--”
The Fades’ and Black Mirror’s Daniel Kaluuya plays Chris Washington, who is being introduced to--and
spending the weekend with--his girlfriend’s parents (played by the always marvelous
Catherine Keener and a vaguely unrecognizable Bradley Whitford).
And
when that happens in a Blumhouse film, you just know things are gonna get ug-leeee…
To
say anything more is not really my style here at the Iguana; it would also be a
frank disservice to the extraordinary piece Peele and company have brought to
the screen.
Suffice
it to say that if you, like me, have a taste for horror with a brain, then Get Out.
Now!
“I mean, I told you not
to go in that house…”
Parting
Shot:
For
those who know Jordan Peele as half of the comedy sketch duo Key & Peele,
note that at the age of 13, he knew he wanted to be a horror film director.
Apparently,
the whole comedy thing was a huge
detour, but he’s managed to find his way back to the dream.
A
few more things to look forward to from Peele:
The
4 other “social thrillers” (his term) that he plans to work on, of which he has
this to say: “The best and scariest
monsters in the world are human beings and what we are capable of especially
when we get together. I’ve been working on these premises about these different
social demons, these innately human monsters that are woven into the fabric of
how we think and how we interact, and each one of my movies is going to be
about a different one of these social demons.”
He’s
also teamed up with J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot to adapt Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country for HBO (it’s been
given a straight-to-series order).
Amazon.com
has this to say about Lovecraft Country:
[Ruff] makes visceral the terrors of life
in Jim Crow America and its lingering effects in this brilliant and wondrous
work of the imagination that melds historical fiction, pulp noir, and
Lovecraftian horror and fantasy.
Yes,
please. Some more of that…
(Get Out OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)