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With any film that features an earth-shattering twist ending, you find yourself questioning whether the movie as a whole will be as entertaining and effective second time around. In other words, does knowing the twist ending negatively impact the enjoyment of the film?
That’s a question you can pose for any movie that has a big twist. But the best – think of The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense – appear to get better with a second viewing. Why? Because the drama and tension are enhanced because of our knowledge of the story and where it is heading.
Get Out can safely be placed in the same category as The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense when it comes to twist endings. It’s one of the really good ones. But if you’re wondering, having seen and enjoyed the 2017 Oscar winner the first time, if it’s worth spending another hour and a half with Jordan Peele’s unsettling thriller, then the answer is “yes”. Get Out is even more entertaining second time around.
Does Get Out get better on second viewing?
Get Out’s success second time around is achieved because knowledge of the ending changes your reading – and therefore appreciation – of this brilliant suspense-horror. Knowing the ending puts the film in a completely new light.
Allison Williams is wonderful in the film. She plays Rose Armitage, the girlfriend of Daniel Kaluuya’s photographer Chris and daughter of Dean (Bradley Whitford) and Missy (Catherine Keener).
On first viewing she appears to question her family’s motives. She sides with Chris and seemingly pulls him away from annoying family friends and distant relatives during an event at her parents’ house. She even openly chastises her parents over their meddling in their relationship (such as stopping Chris smoking), and finally looks genuinely panicked when her boyfriend tells her they must hastily leave.
Then, having fondled around in her handbag for car keys for an agonisingly long time, her anxious expression drops and she reveals plain emotionlessness. She had the keys all along. She had played Chris. He was her victim from the beginning. And she had been helping her parents with their ruse the entire time.
An inventive, unsettling film just got scarier
What’s great about Get Out the second time around is seeing how Rose interacts with her boyfriend Chris, her brother Caleb, and her parents with the knowledge of her actual intentions.
The scene when she whisks Chris away from the family party after he’s shocked by Logan King’s behaviour seemed like benevolent behaviour on first viewing and now becomes the insidious act that it is, removing Chris so that the auction for his body and mind could take place.
Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener’s performances are also elevated with the knowledge of how it all ends. Neither appeared intimating yet both possess a calm, guarded authority that at first seemed like the natural disposition of parents meeting their daughter’s boyfriend for the first time.
Second time round it becomes a grotesque show of superiority from the hunters who have laid their trap and, despite the hideous crime they’re going to commit, relay no sympathy having removed their actions from any sense of morality or responsibility.
Peele’s use of Caleb as the aggressive, unhinged member of the family is a clever anti-red herring. We’re pre-conditioned to be wary of him. If there’s any threat to Chris, it would appear to be coming from him. What the character does is take our eyes off the other threats hiding away from Chris. It’s a brilliant ploy within the writing. Peele deserved the Academy Award he received at the 90th Oscars for Best Original Screenplay.
Furthermore, after we’ve learned that Rose’s parents are not to be trusted, just like her brother, we still believe her to be an innocent party. Allison Williams’ performance deserves to be applauded. Her fake sentiment is a cold-hearted hoax that hits so hard when she’s revealed to be a co-conspirator.
Get Out is a terrific film. Inventive, unsettling, and surprising. It’s brilliantly unpredictable for first-time audiences. But it finds a new kind of chilling monstrousness on subsequent viewings.
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