Five years in writing
Peele switches humour for horror in his debut as director
AFTER wrapping up the acclaimed TV series Girls, Allison Williams returns to the big screen in Get Out.
The horror film is a surprising turn for first-time director Jordan Peele, who is best known as one half of the comedy duo Key and Peele.
The film follows Allison’s character Rose, who brings home her African American boyfriend Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) to meet her family for the first time.
But Chris soon discovers things are not what they first appear at the family’s mysterious estate.
Williams chats about her role in a horror movie.
Q: When you read the script for Get Out, did the twists and turns throw you off?
A: I can’t remember if they threw me off. I wish I had a better recollection in my experience of reading the script and what became clear to me at what point. I think I fell for all of those and I think that is just in the quality of the writing. Jordan was so deliberate about everything and he spent what, like five years writing it up to a point where he got it. So, those moves are all very deliberate and we spent so long talking about it and working it out to my delight.
Q: What is your own relationship to the horror genre?
A: My relationship to it is that I did too much horror viewing as a young person and thus had a violent reaction against it in later years. Recently, I’ve rediscovered how profound it is. Once I got over my fear, I was able to recognise that some of the best film-making is done in this genre. When I was little, I read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark all the time. The illustrations were just as frightening as the words were.
Q: What were the themes that affected you?
A: I watched The Exorcist. I think that was my first horror movie, which feels right in theory, but it was actually terrifying in practice. We were at a slumber party, all of us pretending not to be scared even though we weren’t supposed to watch it. It kept me up all night and for many nights afterwards. But that put me into a phase where I watched more horror movies – like The Sixth Sense and The Ring. Then, I went into the pop culture deprivation of high school and college and then I didn’t see any
horror movies again for a while.
These days, I watch horror movies on planes, because they are not scary. You can see a lot in your peripheral vision, so it’s less engrossing. But, ironically, I don’t have that experience that I really want people to have for Get Out, which is to see it in a room full of other people. I don’t think it’s actually as scary as something like The Sixth Sense, but the experience of the communal viewing of Get Out is so crucial that it’s almost the other plot to the movie.
Q: Your character Rose doesn’t really deal with the race issue (of her boyfriend being black)?
A: No. It’s a very sort of naively post-racial way of looking at it, which is luckily no longer in vogue. People are becoming aware of the idea that saying “I don’t see colour” is dishonest but saying “I see colour but I don’t ascribe different value judgments as a result” is a move in the right direction.
So Rose is more the former category, like “Why do they need to know? Who cares?” And for Chris and his experiences, it does matter. He has been living in a black body for his whole life. Rose’s journey is becoming more sensitive to his experience in the world and starting to see things through his eyes with him. And the audience, other than the black people in the audience; are starting to empathise and experience the journey themselves. They are beginning to understand what is happening. They are able to see what it would be like to be Chris in this ecosystem.
Get Out opens on Thursday.