Get Out (2017) Script Review | #1 WGA 101 Greatest Scripts of the 21st Century

Peele writes one of the most original and memorable modern horror screenplays that is destined to be a classic.

Logline: A young African-American photographer visits his white girlfriend’s wealthy parents for the first time, but as the weekend progresses, a series of increasingly disturbing discoveries lead him to a truth that he could never have imagined.

Written by: Jordan Peele

Pages: 98

We come to it at last— the #1 screenplay of the Writers Guild of America’s List of 101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21^st Century (*So Far). Ironically, it also happens to be the only horror entry on this list!

Not that Get Out doesn’t deserve its place— it does. It’s original, scary, and has a heady dose of social commentary thrown into the mix; at the same time, it’s unafraid to get a little funny. There’s nothing quite like it. I’m merely observing the Guild’s bias towards horror fare, considering that there have been a few worthy contenders in these last two decades.

But that’s a story for another day. This is meant to be a celebration of the Get Out screenplay, and why it embodies all the elements that makes a good script stand out.

On the surface, the premise of Get Out is relatively straight-forward: A young man goes to meet and spend a weekend with his girlfriend’s parents. But it adds a twist: the young man is African-American, and the girlfriend is white. Now we’ve got a premise that shares some similarities with Stanley Kramer’s 1967 romantic comedy, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. But even this is still the icing; the cake that Jordan Peele has baked involves a disturbing conspiracy that holds ill intentions towards the young man, one that turns into a life-or-death situation.

This is what makes it brilliant. Meeting a loved one’s parents for the first-time is nerve-wracking enough; the idea that the loved one’s parents harbor dark plans for their daughter’s partner sets the stakes for a deeply horrifying story.

The script opens with seemingly innocuously. Andre, an African-American man, is trying to find his way out of a suburb at night when a car passes by… then turns around and follows Andre. It’s not long before he freaks out and turns direction but before he can get too far, the helmeted mysterious driver knocks Andre out in a chokehold and stuffs him in the trunk of his car. In three pages, Peele has delivered an opening sequence that manages to terrify and increase our curiosity. It’s also setting up for a big plot point that will appear around page 49, but more on that later.

Meanwhile, talented photographer Chris Washington is packing for his weekend away with Rose Armitage and her parents at their country house. This is the first time that he’s meeting them and he’s anxious to make a good impression. He’s also tense about how they will react to the fact that he’s a person of color, since he’s the first black guy she has dated. Rose assures him that it’ll be fine, and off they head to the Lake Pontaco area. Chris’s best friend and TSA Airport police officer, Rod Williams, has agreed to look after Sid, Chris’s dog, until his return. Along the way, the car knocks and kills a deer, an incident that spooks Chris and reawakens an old trauma.

At the estate, Rose’s parents seem nice. Dean Armitage is a neurosurgeon with an affable air, Missy Armitage is a psychiatrist with a soothing bedside manner. But there are a few oddities here and there. The housekeeper, Georgina, for instance, has a moment when she appears to disassociate while pouring iced tea…

Later that night, Rose’s brother, Jeremy, tries to practice ju-jitsu on Chris, dropping unwelcome microaggressions about Chris’s race in the process…

And that’s the least of it! Unable to fall asleep, Chris takes a stroll and ends up in Missy’s office, where she gets him to open up about the trauma of losing his mother in a hit-and-run accident— which is why Chris was affected by the sight of the deer. Then, without warning, she hypnotizes him to immobility, sending him to ‘The Sunken Place,’ in a scene that is genuinely unnerving.

When Chris wakes up, he has no memory of the hypnosis—but he has a strong aversion to the cigarettes he used to smoke. That morning, groundskeeper Walter exhibits unusual hostility when talking to Chris. As if that wasn’t enough, he has to deal with all of the Armitage’s friends coming over for an annual traditional party that was first started by Rose’s grandfather. This leads to a series of equally amusing and mortifying interactions in which rich white people display their ignorance in dealing with anyone who is non-white. In fact, the only person with whom Chris is able to have a conversation is with the blind gallery owner, Jim Hudson.

And it is around this point that Chris bumps into… Andre! From the opening! Except, he seems like a completely different person, and claims to be Logan.

Something is definitely wrong, and the first proper confirmation of this occurs on page 56.

Not only that, Chris thinks Georgina unplugged his phone from the charger. As he shares his discomfort with Rod over a call, Rod declares that Chris is in some “crazy sex slave shit.” He’s wrong about the sex slave, but he’s not wrong about the crazy shit part. On page 63, Chris tries to surreptitiously take a video of Andre/Logan but the flash accidentally goes off, triggering this reaction:

Chris is appropriately freaked out and wants to leave. What he doesn’t know is that on page 66, Dean is conducting a silent auction. The prize? Chris. It seems like everyone is in on the conspiracy, except Rose, who agrees to drive them back.

As Chris packs, Rod identifies Andre’s identity in the video that Chris managed to take. He tells his friend to leave at once, but Chris’s phone dies. As he prepares to leave post-haste, however, the closet door in Rose’s room opens. Curious, he takes a peek. There’s a shoebox. Inside, there’s a pile of printed photos. All of them of Rose… with different black guys. One of them is Walter.

Suddenly, the tension mounts. Is Rose in on the conspiracy? Chris goes downstairs, where the rest of the Armitages block his exit. Chris demands Rose for the car keys. And… this happens.

Chris is incapacitated, his mind dropped into the Sunken Place, while Jeremy and Dean carry his body to the basement.

From page 78 to 83, the script momentarily breaks away from the Armitage estate to focus on Rod. Anxious about his friend not answering his calls, he goes to see Detective Latoya and explains what he knows. Which leads to this.

That night, Rod tries calling Chris again—only this time, Rose answers the phone. She pretends to be upset and lies that they got into a fight two days ago, and Chris left his phone. But Rod isn’t buying her story. He tries to record the call in the hopes of tripping her up and getting her to incriminate herself but unfortunately, Rose gets the upper-hand, and leaves Rod stymied.

Around this point, on page 86, we return properly to Chris’s story. He discovers that Roman Armitage, Rose’s grandfather, perfected a medical procedure by which they could transfer themselves into the bodies of black people, while remaining in control. The blind gallery owner, Jim Hudson, has paid for Chris— not out of racial prejudice or anything, but because he wants to see the world through Chris’s eyes. At first, Chris is helpless. But when he finds that he’s scratched the leather arm of the chair to expose the cotton, he uses it to cover his ears. This prevents him from succumbing to the hypnotism, and allows him to escape and systematically dispatch the Armitages one by one, until only Rose is left.

Get Out draws from several influences to create its unique brand of horror. The obvious ones are the works of Ira Levin, such as The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby, blending social commentary with horror. Chris’ profession as a photographer is an homage to Joanna Eberhart from the former Levin classic. Other influences include the Stanley Kubrick classic, The Shining, Gremlins, Jaws, Halloween, The Silence of the Lambs, and Scream. Yet another crucial influence comes from Peele’s own years spent on the sketch comedy series, Key & Peele, where he had the opportunity to practice mixing humor with horror.

Symbolism plays an important role, too, enriching the script. As mentioned, the deer that Chris and Rose struck reminds the former of the circumstances in which his mother died; this notion is reinforced when Dean seems to compare the deer with black people, and makes this comment.

It’s also the reason why Chris can’t leave Georgina behind, though going back for her almost gets him killed. Likewise, Chris ‘picking’ the cotton in the chair is a reference to the cotton-picking horrors of slavery in America. Another piece of symbolism is the use of smartphones in the story. The ubiquity of smartphones allowed many African-Americans to record and distribute footage of crimes and injustice inflicted on them, especially by cops. The phone flash helps to snap Andre, and later Walter, out of their hypnotized states; as if snapping them out of apathy. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.

Speaking of phones, though, Get Out manages to successfully pull off something that few scripts are capable of doing: It turns phone conversations into interesting cinematic scenes. Consider this: there are five phone call scenes in the screenplay. The opening scene, in fact, is a phone conversation, though one-sided. But the next four— three between Chris and Rod, and one between Rod and Rose—intercut between the characters. Indeed, it’s only when you pay close attention that you realize: Chris and Rod don’t share a scene together in person until the final scene! How does Peele turn phone conversations into compelling cinema?

For one, he makes Chris and Rod’s friendship feel real. When they talk, you can sense the years of history between them. Disguised in the banter is a swapping of vital information. These moments also serve as comic relief. Most of all, though, the phone actually serves a purpose: Rod and Chris are separated by distance. When Chris goes silent, Rod loses a connection to his friend, building suspense over the protagonist’s fate, and compelling him to find out what happened. Steven Soderbergh declared that “cellphones are the worst thing that’s ever happened to movies,” because it’s challenging to “manufacture drama when everybody can get a hold of everybody all the time. It’s just not as fun as in the old days when the phone would ring, and you didn’t know who was calling.” This is extremely accurate, and in a way, this is precisely why the use of phones work here. Rod can’t get in touch with Chris. This could offer a valuable way for screenwriters to think about how to incorporate cellphones into their stories.

The Get Out screenplay is lean, without an ounce of fat or filler. One of the reasons for its brevity is that Chris being invited to the Armitage Estate has already happened before the story begins; as a result, the script immediately launches into going away; whereas in a different scenario, the entirety of Act 1 would have been spent on receiving the invitation, and Chris debating whether or not to go, while Act 2 would introduce us to the Armitage family. Instead, Act 2 focuses on the weird things that start happening around, starting with the hypnosis. The faster you can get the story off the ground, the better it is in keeping audience attention engaged. Especially when it comes to horror.

The origins of Get Out date as early as 2013. Peele pitched the idea to producer Sean McKittrick, who was fascinated enough to accept right away. Peele wrote a draft in two months; though halfway through, he realized that he had to direct it, too. Early versions of the script offer interesting insights as to how the story came to its final form. For one, the opening actually featured Andre as a jogger who gets tranquilized just outside the house of a white family.

In fact, in the final version, there’s a blink-it-and-you’ll-miss reference to this draft when Andre reappears on page 49, where he is referred to as “the jogger from the first scene.”

Another difference is that in prior versions, Jeremy was set as the final Armitage that Chris had to defeat instead of Rose.

Likewise, the scene in which Rose tears into her family over their treatment of Chris on the first day was different in the earlier version; in that, it was Chris who pointed out the problems. Peele changed this because having Rose attack her family got the reader to like her, setting up her eventual betrayal to sting even more.

Moreover, these drafts also included the original ending in which Chris was arrested and imprisoned. But even though it was filmed, test audiences did not react too well to its bleak and realistic conclusion.

Peele was forced to reshoot, but he also wanted to have his cake and eat it, too—so he changed it to imply that the police had arrived… only to reveal that it wasn’t the police. It was Rod in his TSA car; he turns up in time to save Chris. Remarkably, this makes it a rare horror film with a happy ending. Somewhat.

Although the film came out shortly after Donald Trump was elected as the American President, the script was written earlier to reflect the ‘post-racial’ lie of the Obama era, declaring that racism was ended; when, in reality, it was thriving more than ever. But Peele isn’t targeting openly racist conservatives— he’s going after white liberals who claim to support equality are probably as racist as white supremacists. This is illustrated nowhere better than Dean claiming that he’d have voted for Obama for a third term if he could. Sure, man!

Though the writing is brief, Peele gets the job done. By blending comedy with horror, he proves that laughter and fear are two sides of the same coin. By taking a situation that anyone can relate to (meeting your partner’s family for the first time), adding a dose of social commentary (he’s black, she’s white), then dunking it in a terrifying prospect (the partner’s family is really a cult targeting black people), Get Out works on multiple levels. It became the first horror film since The Sixth Sense to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay¹ — and the only one to win in this category! It also won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay, and well-deserved, too. People will be talking about and unpacking the Get Out screenplay for many years to come. It earns its crown as the best screenplay of the Writers Guild of America’s List of 101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21^st Century (*So Far)!

Notes:

Elias, Naomi (November 16, 2019) | ‘Get Out’ the Book: Read Jordan Peele’s Notes On His Iconic Film (Film School Rejects)

Mendelson, Scott (October 5, 2016) | Jordan Peele Talks 'Get Out' And His Love For Horror Movies (Forbes)

Yuan, Jada; Harris, Hunter (February 19, 2018) | Jordan Peele’s Get Out: An Oral History (Vulture)

Crow, David (October 10, 2023) | Get Out’s Original Ending Was a Lot Bleaker (and More Truthful) (Den of Geek)

Excerpt from Get Out: The Complete Annotated Screenplay (Film Comment)

Schimkowitz, Matt (June 12, 2023) | Steven Soderbergh, of all people, thinks cellphones are the "worst thing that's ever happened to movies" (A.V. Club)

1. Other contenders in the Best Original and Adapted Screenplay categories that made it on the WGA 101 Greatest Screenplay List: Lady Bird, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Original); and Call Me By Your Name (Adapted)