Get Out

It was only a matter of time before the Black Lives Matter movement got its own horror movie. Several documentaries last year tied Black Lives Matter into a larger examination of the American civil rights movement, but no genre provides anxiety-exorcising catharsis quite like horror. By their very outlaw nature, horror films can go places other films would never dare—that’s why it’s a shame that most of them never go anywhere at all. Writer-director Jordan Peele’s Get Out, though, is a smart and stylish sociological horror movie with a healthy helping of What We Do in the Shadows-level belly laughs. Daniel Kaluuya stars as Chris, a young black man going to meet his white girlfriend’s family for the first time and realizing right away that something is dangerously amiss. Making his directorial debut, Peele manages to continually pique our interest, even when we know where the story is heading. D.B.