Bloody Perfect: New World Order
Isaura Barbé-Brown brings us the next post in her monthly column, Bloody Perfect.
It is rare that a film shifts how we view a whole genre, but every now and again a filmmaker creates something truly unexpected and executes it perfectly.
Get Out (2017), the astonishing debut feature from director Jordan Peele, follows Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a successful photographer who is preparing to meet his girlfriend’s parents for the first time in the secluded, country home. His girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) is white and assures Chris that her totally not racist parents will have no issue with her bringing a Black man home.
There are far too many twists and turns in the plot to lay out in a single column, but needless to say, lots of racism happens and Chris finds himself in mortal peril. After fighting Rose’s brother, father and mother; crashing a car; being tackled; and being shot at, Chris is finally on the way to freedom. Rose has taken a bullet to the stomach and lies dying in the middle of the road, but not quickly enough for Chris who, understandably, wants to make sure she is dead. Mid strangulation we see the unmistakable lights of a police car and hear the single ‘whoop’ of a siren. A smiling Rose immediately calls for help, since she knows exactly how this situation looks and how it will play out…
But instead of a cop, Chris’s loyal friend and proud TSA officer Rod (Lil Rel Howery) steps out of the car, ready to rescue Chris and to leave Rose and her family's terrifying white nonsense behind them.
I saw this in the cinema with a predominantly Black audience and there was a collective holding of breath when the ‘police’ turned up and an exuberant exclamation of relief when Rod stepped out of the car. In a film that includes low level racial tension at its calmest moments and The Sunken Place, weaponized antlers and mind-swap surgery at its wildest… the police turning up was still the scariest moment.
In those few moments, my stomach sank. The thought that everything Chris had gone through, everything he had done to get away, could all be for naught was too much. The fact that everyone watching knew how Chris would be perceived, how he would not be believed by the people who should be there to protect and serve him in his time of need, would not hesitate to shoot him dead or put him in handcuffs was bone-chilling.
Even viewers who may have previously denied that police brutality is rooted in white supremacy, knew exactly what the optics would mean for Chris. It was undeniable. In any horror film, the police turning up is usually a good thing, they are the cavalry arriving to end our protagonist’s nightmare . In one simple ‘whoop’, Jordan Peele deftly described the all too common experience between the police and Black people. It is highly unlikely they would be here to save us in our worst and most desperate moment and in the immortal words of NWA… “Fuck the police”.
There is an alternative ending that I am forever grateful Peele decided against, because all it would have done is confirm what we already know to be true, and Black audiences deserved a survivor, a hero and a glimmer of hope. Something female horror fans have been able to get from the final girls who defeat the monster, escape from the clutches of evil, and live to fight another day.
I started this column talking about Sally from Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) who went to visit her grandfather’s house and ended up having to fight to survive with everything she had. I’m finishing it (for now) with Chris and Rose. Rose who lives in her grandfather’s house and uses everything she has (whiteness, wealth, womanhood) to act without consequence. The granddaddies of horror films usually feature mostly white on white violence (due to all white casts) but Get Out marks one arm of the future of horror; with scares coming from whiteness operating in film, the same way we experience it in real life. The difference is, Black men and women are not only front and centre, but get to survive, not just their captors, but the police too. And someone that looks like our typical final girl has evolved from the hunted to the hunter. Are Roses the daughters of the Sallys they couldn’t burn? Maybe. While the evolution of horror and all twisting of all expectations is fascinating, I’m most excited to see the evolution of the Chrises and Reds and Adelaides.
In whatever way the (multiple, I hope) future Black horror protagonists progress, may they always have a friend like Rod. May we get (multiple, I hope) delectable, stunning, sensational and absolutely perfect horror scenes from them, and (multiple, I hope) places where people can share just how bloody scared they were.
Isaura Barbé-Brown is a Hackney born and based actress. She studied at AADA in New York and BADA in Oxford. She has written for The BFI, Black Ballad UK as well as The Final Girls/Bloody Women and been a guest on The Final Girls podcast and the Evolution of Horror podcast. She has done talks at the BFI for their Squad Goals event and during their Love season with the Bechdel Test Fest on race in romantic films. Isaura has also been on panels for BFI Future Film, The Watersprite Film Festival and The Norwich Film Festival. Her acting work covers theatre, film, tv and voiceover. She has also written for short film, TV and theatre as well as short stories and poetry. You can find Isaura on Twitter and Instagram.
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