Perhaps the best part of Get Out is how layered Jordan Peele's Academy Award-winning script really
is. From subtle references and hidden Easter eggs to tiny moments that only stand out upon close
observation, here are some of the things you only notice the second time you watch Get Out.
After a disturbing opening scene, Get Out cuts to Chris' apartment, where he is preparing for his
weekend getaway with his girlfriend, Rose. As Rose picks out pastries for the trip at a local bakery,
audiences hear Childish Gambino's "Redbone," and during the opening credits,
there's an incredibly ominous song playing, with lyrics in Swahili.
Once you've seen the film and know what is really happening at Rose's family's idyllic country home,
"Redbone" takes on a new meaning. The lyrics of the song remind listeners to
"stay woke" and "not close your eyes." As for the Swahili song?
If you take the time to translate the song into English, the lyrics tell you to
"listen to your ancestors," which indicates that something terrifying is just around the corner.
The song then reappears during the closing scene and end credits, just to reinforce the message.
Right at the beginning of the film, when Chris and Rose hit a deer,
Chris goes over to the hurt animal and seems like he's about to try and save it.
Later, we learn that Chris' mother was hit by a car and bled out on the side of the road
when Chris was young. As he tries to escape the Armitage house at the end of the film,
Chris' hang-up about hit-and-runs almost gets him killed when he hits Georgina with his car.
Rather than moving on, he stops to pick her up, which ultimately results in her crashing the car.
However, in the end, a deer comes to Chris' rescue in the form of an enormous
buck's head mounted in the Armitages' basement dungeon. As he escapes captivity,
Chris grabs the head and uses it to kill Dean, and in this moment, the deer gives Chris his freedom.
After Rose hits and kills the deer on the way to her family's estate,
a police officer arrives on the scene, demanding to see Chris' license, even though Chris wasn't
driving. Incensed, Rose criticizes the cop for targeting her Black boyfriend,
seemingly protecting Chris from unfair racial bias. Chris later praises Rose for what she did.
"That was hot." However, this moment hits differently after you
realize that Rose is bringing Chris to her family's home as a means to steal his body
and give it to a wealthy white person. Rose isn't standing up to systemic racism at all.
She's simply trying to avoid a paper trail, since she and her family don't
want there to be any concrete evidence that Chris was with them when he goes missing.
Though Rose's parents, Dean and Missy Armitage, are welcoming enough when
Chris and Rose arrive at their home, there's a sinister undercurrent to everything Dean
says when he takes Chris on a tour of the house. During repeat viewings of the film,
it's pretty easy to spot the foreshadowing present in nearly every sentence Dean utters.
Right away, when Chris and Rose say that they hit a deer,
Dean goes off on a rant about how much he hates deer.
"I do not like the deer. I'm sick of it. They're taking over. They're like rats."
If you take out the word "deer," his tirade is chillingly similar
to how racists have been known to speak about Black people.
Then, as Dean shows off trinkets he's picked up during his world travels, he says,
"It's such a privilege to be able to experience another person's culture."
Of course, later we learn that Dean and Missy are literally stealing Black bodies,
taking cultural appropriation to an entirely new and horrifying level.
Upon his arrival at the Armitage house, Chris and the audience are both shocked to
see that the family has two live-in Black employees, which is a pretty unsettling
discovery. Dean even admits how problematic it appears, but explains it away, saying,
"We hired Georgina and Walter to help care for my parents.
When they died, I couldn't bear to let them go."
It turns out Dean is being quite literal, since the film later reveals that Georgina and Walter
were actually kidnapped by Dean's parents, who took over their bodies. Dean has another
line that turns out to be disturbingly literal when he shows Chris the kitchen.
"My mother loved her kitchen, so we keep a piece of her in here."
Of course, that "piece" turns out to be his mother's brain in Georgina's body.
Throughout the film, Georgina and Walter occasionally reveal their true selves,
if you pay close attention. When Missy clinks her glass, Georgina becomes startled and is
quickly sent away, indicating that the noise of the spoon broke her hypnosis.
Chris later catches Walter sprinting through the house's grounds at night, proving that
he's really Dean's father, who's still trying to move past losing a race to Jesse Owens.
In the final act of the film, we learn the Armitages' true plan: every time Rose
brings home a new Black partner, the family imprisons the unwitting and unwilling donor
and steals their body for a white host. If it's your first time seeing the film,
this reveal will come as a huge shock. However, upon later rewatches, there's an easy way to
tell who's been stolen by the Armitages. All you have to do is look at their hairline.
Walter, Georgina, and Andre are living evidence of the Armitages' twisted endgame, and you can tell
each of them is hiding something because they all hide their hairlines. This covers up the telltale
scars they'd have after going under Dean's knife. Georgina disguises her scar with a wig,
while Walter and Andre are never seen without their hats, keeping up the ruse.
As the Armitages begin their annual party and secret auction,
Chris wanders off with his camera, eventually coming across Jim Hudson. A blind art dealer who's
friends with the Armitages, Jim tells Chris that he's familiar with Chris' photographs.
"I am an admirer of your work. You have a great eye."
It turns out that Jim means the compliment in a disturbingly literal sense.
When Chris is captive in the Armitages' basement before his surgery,
Jim explains why he was determined to win Chris in the auction.
"I want your eye, man. I want those things you see through."
Not only would Chris' eyes give Jim his sight back,
but he believes they will also give him Chris' talent as a photographer.
Cigarettes are bad for business
One of Get Out's subplots involves the fact that Chris smokes, much to the chagrin of Rose and
her entire family. On their way to the Armitage household, Chris reaches for his cigarettes and is
immediately chided by Rose. And when he arrives, Dean tells Chris that he also used to smoke,
but after Missy hypnotized him, he never wanted another cigarette again.
Missy offers to help Chris with his problem, but he demurs, uncomfortable at the idea.
Later that night, when Chris finds Missy drinking tea in the living room, she brings up his smoking
habit once again, telling him that it's not only bad for him, but that she doesn't like him smoking
around her daughter. However, the truth is that the Armitage family's concern for Chris' health
is entirely selfish and manipulative. They don't care about Chris personally, but they want to
ensure that his body is a perfect, healthy vessel for whichever white person wins the auction.
Right from the beginning, the Armitage party is a weird experience for Chris. Eagle-eyed viewers may
notice that there are a few key clues about what's really going on right as all of the guests arrive,
well before they make Chris uncomfortable with their strange conversations.
Upon arrival, all of the party guests arrive in similar-looking black cars,
which takes on a new meaning when you realize that every guest is there to vie for a Black body
to drive around. Then, each guest warmly greets Walter, which might seem odd, since he's posing
as the groundskeeper. However, once you learn that Walter is Dean's father, the original architect of
the entire experiment, it makes perfect sense. The party guests are simply greeting their old friend.
Throughout the Armitages' garden party, Chris is made extremely uncomfortable by the other guests,
who make awkward comments about race and ask him invasive questions that seem totally out of line.
"I do know Tiger!"
"Oh, that's great."
"Super."
"Gordon loves Tiger."
"Best I've ever seen."
It might just seem like these elderly white people simply don't have manners.
However, it turns out that they're each trying to
decide whether or not to bid on Chris based on physical and societal factors.
"Black is in fashion."
Beyond that, the color palette of the party has some significance. Many of the guests
are wearing red, black, or a combination of the two, representing both aggression and the Black
bodies they steal. Meanwhile, Chris is wearing a bright blue shirt, indicating a sense of calm
and a cool-headed nature, which is ultimately what gets him through this horrible ordeal.
Before Rose and Chris ever arrive at the Armitage house,
the two joke about the increased pressure on Chris when it comes to meeting her parents.
He asks her if her parents know that he's Black, worried it may cause a problem.
Rose laughs, saying her parents won't care, and brushes off Chris' concerns.
"I don't want to get chased off the lawn with a shotgun."
"You're not going to."
When Chris is getting ready to escape, she's the one who comes out the front door,
pointing a firearm at him. Ultimately, though, Rose is the one who is felled by the shotgun, when
a briefly awakened Walter uses his final moments to turn the gun on his captor.
Any horror fan worth their salt is probably a fan of Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror film
The Shining, and writer/director Jordan Peele is no exception.
Peele has made no secret of the fact that The Shining was a huge influence on Get Out,
which is unsurprising, as both are social thrillers about humanity's darkest psychological
impulses. And appropriately, Get Out is peppered with clever references to Kubrick's film.
Right at the beginning of the film, we see a man taken hostage by the sadistic Jeremy Armitage. We
later learn his name is Andre, and before he's abducted, he mutters that the suburban street
he's on feels like a "hedge maze." This is a reference to the Overlook Hotel's frightening
and ultimately deadly wintry maze. Later, when Chris' friend, TSA Agent Rod Williams,
tries to check in on Chris, a voice can be heard in the background announcing Flight 237.
"Flight two three seven…"
This is a clear reference to the Overlook Hotel's most haunted room.
Just when Chris' situation seems irreversibly dire,
he figures out a way to save himself. Trapped in the Armitage basement and tied to an armchair with
a recording of Missy meant to trigger hypnosis, Chris is initially helpless. Thinking quickly,
Chris picks wads of cotton from the armrests of his chair and stuffs them in his ears to keep
himself from being hypnotized. This allows him to keep his wits about him so that he
can seize the opportunity to overpower Jeremy when his restraints are removed.
The symbolism is pretty obvious, calling back to America's history of slavery.
Many slaves were forced to spend hours in cotton fields, painstakingly picking
cotton for their white captors. In Get Out, that dark history is turned on its head
when picking cotton frees a Black man from white captivity.
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