Get Out (2017)

Film and Plot Synopsis

When a young African American man, Chris, and his white girlfriend, Rose, reach the meet-the-parents milestone of dating, she invites him for a weekend getaway at her family estate with her parents, Missy and Dean. At first, Chris reads the family’s overly accommodating behavior as nervous attempts to deal with their daughter’s interracial relationship, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he could have never imagined. (Courtesy of Monkeypaw Productions)

‘Get Out’ Movie Summary

The film begins with a lone African American man named Andre Hayworth (LaKeith Stanfield) wandering through a neighborhood late at night looking for his girlfriend’s house. While talking on the phone with his girlfriend, Andre observes a mysterious car that slowly follows him. Andre becomes a little scared and begins heading in the opposite direction, but the vehicle still follows him. Andre’s attention is briefly away from the car, but when he turns around, he notices that the driver’s side car door is open. Suddenly, a masked man attacks Andre and knocks him unconscious before putting Andre into the trunk of the mystery man’s car.

The film then jumps to Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya) who is a well-known African American photographer from Brooklyn, New York. He is preparing to spend the weekend with his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams), at her parents’ place in Upstate New York. Chris is nervous because it is the first time that he will be meeting Rose’s family. Despite Rose’s repeated claims that her parents are not racist, Chris remains uncertain about the trip. Before leaving, Chris makes sure that his best friend and TSA agent, Rod Williams (Lil Rey Howery), is set to watch Chris’ dog before he and Rose hit the road.

The trip is uneventful other than Rose hitting a deer with the car just before arriving at her parents’ house. Chris is disturbed by the dying deer but remains silent as to why. Once at Rose’s parents’ house, Chris is introduced to Rose’s neurosurgeon father Dean Armitage (Bradley Whitford) and hypnotherapist mother Missy Armitage (Catherine Keener), as well as her brother Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones). Rose’s family does nothing overtly racist and seems to be accepting of Chris. However, Chris remains uneasy. He is further disturbed by the strange behavior from the Armitage’s African American housekeeper Georgina (Betty Gabriel) and groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson).

The night of their arrival, Missy offers to conduct a hypnotherapy session with Chris to cure his smoking addiction. Chris refuses, but Missy conducts one anyways. While in a trance, Chris confesses that his mother was killed in a hit and run accident when he was a child. Chris carries the guilt from his mother’s death since he waited several hours to call for help because he was too busy watching television. If Chris had called earlier, someone may have found her before she died. During the session, Missy places Chris into a void that she calls the “sunken place.” Chris awakens the next morning in his bed next to Rose and surmises that he must have dreamed the whole session.

Please don’t lump me in with that, you know, I could give a shit what color you are. No, what I want is deeper. I want your eye, man. I want those things you see through. Jim Hudson (Stephen Root)

After he awakens, Chris finds that his cell phone has been unplugged from its charger. He then encounters Walter who apologizes for frightening him the night before which causes Chris to realize that he was not dreaming the hypnotherapy session. He confronts Rose as to what her mother did to him during the night, but comments that he no longer feels a desire to smoke.

Rose and Chris’ arrival coincides with the Armitages’ annual get together with some of their neighbors and friends. A vast majority of them are white although Chris does notice one other African American man at the party. Chris introduces himself to the man, Logan King, who is actually Andre. Logan is married to a much older white woman. Chris’ recognizes Logan, but he has difficulty remembering from where. Logan’s behavior is odd, and Chris is bothered by it. Chris attempts to take Logan’s picture to show to Rod, but the flash on the camera causes Logan to become hysterical as he screams for Chris to “get out.” The other party members restrain Logan, and Dean later claims that Logan had an epileptic seizure. Logan apologizes to everyone, including Chris, for his behavior. Chris also meets Jim Hudson (Stephen Root), an art dealer who has gone blind in his old age. Jim and Chris connect as Jim is more interested in Chris’ talents as an artist rather than his skin color.

A short time later, Chris gets Rose away from the party and tells her that he thinks they should leave. Rose reluctantly agrees to leave a little later that evening. At the same time, the party guests hold a silent auction using the disguise of a bingo game. Jim makes the winning bid for an unknown item. Not long after, Chris sends the picture of Logan to Rod who recognizes the man as Andre who disappeared not long before. Chris urgently starts packing to leave. However, he finds several pictures in the closet of Rose in prior relationships with several black partners, including Walter and Georgiana, which contradicts her prior statement to Chris that he was the first African American that she had dated. Chris hurriedly tries to leave with Rose, but she and her family lock him into the house and Missy uses a hypnotic trigger to render Chris unconscious.

A short time later and back in Brooklyn, Rod contacts the police to ask their assistance in finding Chris after his friend stops answering his phone. The police do not take him seriously and laugh off his claims. Back at the Armitage household, Chris awakens from his trance to find himself tied to a chair in the basement of the home. A video is played on a nearby television that shows Rose’s grandfather, Roman Armitage (Richard Herd), explaining that the Armitage family transplants people’s brains into the younger bodies of others. The original mind remains conscious after the new brain is implanted, but powerless to control their physical actions. After the video, Jim suddenly appears on the television and talks to Chris through an intercom. Jim explains that he was the winner of the auction for Chris’ body, although he wants the body for Chris’ eyes, not because he is black. Missy performs the trigger again and seemingly knocks Chris out again.

Nearby, Dean is beginning the surgery on Jim’s body and removes a portion of the skull to access the brain. He sends Jeremy to retrieve Chris, but when the younger Armitage unties the helpless man, Chris begins bludgeoning Jeremy with a bocce ball. It is revealed that Chris plugged his ears with cotton stuffing from the chair he was tied to, preventing him from being placed unconscious again. Chris goes into the operating room and impales Dean with the antlers of a deer that had been mounted on the wall. The attack knocks over a candle with starts a fire in the operating room. Chris leaves the bodies of Jim, Jeremy, and Dean behind and heads upstairs.

Once upstairs, Missy tries to trigger Chris, but he prevents her from doing so. She then attacks him with a knife, which Chris uses against her, stabbing and killing the older Armitage woman. Jeremy reveals himself to still be alive and attacks Chris as he tries to head out the door of the home. Chris overpowers an injured Jeremy and kills him, before taking Jeremy’s car. On the way out of the driveway, Chris hits Georgina with the car. Haunted by the memory of his mother, Chris stops, picks up Georgina, and places her in the car. As Georgina regains consciousness, she attacks Chris, revealing herself to be Rose’s grandmother, Marianne. The struggle in the car causes Chris to crash the car which kills Georgina.

A severely wounded Chris gets out of the car as Rose begins firing shots at him with a rifle. Walter tackles Chris and reveals himself as Roman. Remembering how Logan reacted to the flash on his camera, Chris uses the flash on his phone to temporarily stun Walter. When Rose walks up to shoot Chris, Walter turns and asks her for the gun so that he can finish Chris off. Rose gives the rifle to what she believes is her grandfather. Walter shoots her with the gun at point blank range in the stomach before shooting himself in the head, indicating that the original host temporarily regained control of their body. Rose and Chris both try to grab the rifle, but Chris gets to the gun first. Chris begins to strangle Rose but finds that he cannot kill her. A police siren sounds off nearby, and Rose begins calling for help and states to the unseen officer that Chris killed her family. However, the driver of the police car is revealed to be Rod who figured out where Chris was located. Chris gets into the car to leave with his best friend. The two men leave Rose to bleed out on the road. In the car, Rod tells Chris that he told him not to go into the house of a white person.