Summary
Get Out is Jordan Peele’s directorial debut, a psychological horror movie that also touches on serious and very important topics. After becoming known for his comedic works as one half of the groundbreaking comedy duo Key & Peele, Jordan Peele has now earned a spot as one of the best writers and directors in the horror genre, and it all started with Get Out. Released in 2017, Get Out introduced the audience to Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a young Black photographer dating Rose Armitage (Allison Williams), a young white woman.
Rose and Chris travel to Upstate New York to spend the weekend with Rose’s parents, this being the first time Chris meets them. However, once there, Chris slowly begins to notice strange things happening around him, and he ends up uncovering some shocking secrets about Rose, her family, and their closest friends. Get Out was a critical and commercial success, and it sparked a lot of conversation due to its twists, ending, and the themes addressed in it – and here’s what happens at the end of Get Out and the movie’s real meaning.
The Armitages’ Real Plan In Get Out Explained
Chris was initially nervous about meeting Rose’s parents as he didn’t know if they knew their daughter was dating a Black man, with Rose assuring him that wouldn’t be a problem – and she wasn’t lying, as Dean (Bradley Whitford) and Missy (Catherine Keener) were very welcoming of Chris, though perhaps a bit too welcoming. Dean was a neurosurgeon and Missy was a psychiatrist, who as soon as she learned Chris was trying to quit smoking, was a little too eager to help cure him of this habit through an unsettling procedure that involved sending his consciousness into an out-of-body state she calls “the sunken place.”
The following day, the Armitages hosted a party attended by all their (white) wealthy friends, and though they were also nice to Chris, they also behaved in just inappropriate enough ways by over-complimenting Chris’s physique, asking about the “genetic advantages” of Black people, and gushing about their admiration for Black celebrities like Tiger Woods. Get Out took a sinister turn while Chris and Rose went out for a walk, as the partygoers were shown playing a game of “bingo” that slowly revealed itself to be an auction where they were placing bids on Chris.
The Armitage family and their wealthy friends were part of a secretive cult called the Order of the Coagula, formed by white people only. The Order of the Coagula was founded by Rose’s grandfather, Roman Armitage, and with the help and knowledge of Dean, they developed a way in which they could extend their and their friends’ lives. For this, they kidnapped Black people to hypnotize them and subject them to a surgical procedure in which half their brain was left intact, but the rest was replaced by the brain of one of the members of the Order. By keeping part of their victim’s brain, the person kept their consciousness, but due to the hypnosis they were put into thanks to Missy, they were trapped in the “sunken place” while the member of the Order had full control of everything else.
Every member of the Armitage family played a role in this horrible practice: Rose and her brother, Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones), were in charge of finding suitable subjects (Rose seduced them and Jeremy abducted them), Missy prepared them through hypnosis, and Dean was in charge of the brain transplant. If that wasn’t disturbing enough, Dean’s parents went through this procedure and were still alive now in the bodies of Walter, the groundskeeper, and Georgina, the housemaid.
What Happens To Chris At The End of Get Out
Even though Chris was warned by his best friend Rod (Lil Rel Howery), half-joking and half-seriously, about going to Rose’s family home and meeting her parents, Chris went along with the plan, but he soon noticed a lot of strange things happening around him. After accidentally causing “Logan” (LaKeith Stanfield) to snap, Chris started to suspect there was something going on with the Black people associated with the Armitages and their friends.
As he prepared to leave, Chris found a box in Rose’s room containing various photos of Rose and her previous partners, all of them Black people, even though she claimed Chris was the first Black man she dated. Even worse, among those partners were Walter and Georgina, who were used to keep Rose’s grandparents alive. Rose eventually showed her true colors and Chris, thanks to Missy’s hypnosis, was knocked out and taken to the basement, where he would be prepared for surgery.
Chris scratched the chair he was tied to and used the cotton stuffing to plug his ears, thus blocking the hypnosis trigger as it was shown on a TV in front of him, and when Jeremy arrived to take him to the operation room, Chris fought back and bludgeoned Jeremy unconscious. Chris then impaled Dean with the antlers of a deer mount, knocking over a candle and setting the OR on fire. Chris came across Missy in the living room and stabbed her, but Jeremy suddenly appeared and attacked him again. Chris eventually overpowered Jeremy and beat him to death.
Chris took Jeremy’s car keys and started driving away, but after hitting Georgina, she attacked him and made him crash. Following an attack from Walter, who shot Rose, Chris was finally rescued by Rod, who after not receiving help from the police, decided to help his friend himself. Chris and Rod drove away and left Rose to bleed out on the road, and Chris became the only real survivor of the horrors of the Order of the Coagula. However, it’s unclear what happened next to Chris.
Chris Tries To Save Georgina Because Of His Own Mother
While driving away from the Armitages’ home, Chris hit Georgina with the car and knocked her unconscious, but he got out of the car to help her and carried her into the car. Chris was unaware that Georgina was possessed by Rose’s grandmother, but this became clear when she awoke and attacked him, causing him to crash, with Georgina dying after the hit. Chris tried to save Georgina because of the guilt of his mother’s death, a traumatic experience that Rose and Missy used to better control Chris through hypnosis.
Chris’ mom was killed in a hit-and-run when he was 11, and he felt responsible for her death as he took too long to call for help, and instead, he kept watching TV. Hitting Georgina with the car was reminiscent of his mother’s accident, and in an attempt to make up for his past mistake, he did his best to save her.
Why Walter Takes His Own Life After Shooting Rose
After crashing the car and Georgina dying as a result, an armed Rose appeared to kill Chris, and asked her grandfather, who lived in Walter’s body, to take Chris down. Chris used his phone camera’s flash to snap Walter out of his trance, regaining control of his body. Walter took Rose’s rifle, supposedly to shoot Chris, but shot Rose instead. However, Walter then shot himself in front of Chris. As this was no longer Roman in Walter’s body, and after spending who knows how many years in the sunken place, Walter seized this moment of consciousness and decided to put a definitive end to his suffering.
Why Rose Smiles When Chris Is Choking Her
After Walter shot Rose, Chris approached her and she “apologized” to him and told him she loved him, but Chris knew she wasn’t sincere. Chris started choking Rose, and though she was shocked at first, she slowly started smiling. Rose knew Chris wouldn’t be able to kill her, but even more disturbing is the fact that, by choking her to death, Rose felt she was proving her and her family’s beliefs of Black men being animalistic, so either way, she would be winning – except that she had been shot and was left to die on the road when Chris was saved by Rod.
Get Out’s Alternative Endings Explained
Jordan Peele explored other endings for Get Out, but they are quite dark and depressing. In the original ending for Get Out, Chris was arrested after strangling Rose, and Rod visited him in jail. Rod asked Chris for information about the Armitages so he could investigate, but Chris refused by explaining that he stopped them, so everything was fine now. This ending was intended to reflect the realities of racism, but real-life events that happened during production, along with the reception of this ending at test screenings, made Peele opt for a happier ending, though keeping a moment when the audience thinks Chris is about to be arrested.
Another ending would have made a time jump to a couple of months after Chris’ arrival at the Armitages’ home, with Rod sneaking into a gated community looking for him. Rod would have found Chris staring at his own reflection in a window (very much like Georgina used to do), but when he called his name, Chris would have turned to him and said “I assure you, I don’t know who you’re talking about”. This would have meant that Chris was recaptured at some point and that the Armitages’ deaths weren’t enough to stop the Order’s horrific plans.
The Real Meaning Of Get Out’s Ending Explained (& What Jordan Peele Has Said About It)
Although Get Out addresses racism, it doesn’t do so in the “traditional” way Hollywood does, as these villains are Liberals whose obsession with Black people and insistence on their “non-racism” due to their admiration of Black people are precisely what show their racism. The Armitages and the rest of the Order admire Black culture, celebrities, and more, they don’t mind their children dating Black people, but they are obsessed with being in control of them in the deepest, most literal and disturbing way possible through the transplants. What the Order does is a new way of slavery, and interestingly enough, Chris was able to break free by picking cotton, a reference to Black slaves in the US.
Jordan Peele has said that even the character of Jim Hudson (Stephen Root), a blind man who was supposed to take over Chris’ body, still played a part in the system of racism despite not seeing Chris’ skin color (via Rolling Stone). Hudson wanted Chris for his eyes, as he believed the eye of a Black artist would give him an advantage, as he was an art dealer. Through this, Hudson reduced Chris to an aesthetic, which makes him no different from the rest of the Order and their shared mentality. Speaking about Get Out and its themes, Jordan Peele told ScreenJunkies that the point is to show that “any time we see color first” or “categorize one another as a race” an important part of what being a human should be is lost.
Peele added that the worst monster in a horror movie is “human beings themselves”, and that even though when people get together beautiful things can be made, they are “also capable of the darkest things”. Get Out perfectly blended social commentary with psychological horror, and it continues to make way for conversations on the themes addressed in it as well as for different interpretations of the story and its characters.
Sources: Rolling Stone, ScreenJunkies.
Key Release Dates
