An excerpt from my script review for Get Out which will be available 02/27/17:
SPOILERS AHEAD!
2.) Plot Stability
Before I go too far into this, I must state that I DID enjoy this script.
But part of me felt a bit like critics were handling their criticisms of this story the same way they treated Moonlight.
This story was spooky and entertaining, but by no means perfect.
My biggest criticism is there were missed opportunities that could have made this good script great.
Primarily, the fact that we KNEW Chris was in trouble once he showed up to Rose’s house.
Seeing Walter, and then Georgina, we never doubt for a moment that some strange shit’s in store for Chris.
What saves the story is the fact that we want to know EXACTLY what’s going to happen, so we’ll stick around to find out.
If I were giving notes or suggesting changes to the writer directly, I would emphasize the need to keep us in the dark longer, so we’re left wondering if Chris is just being paranoid or there’s some underneath the “too friendly” exterior of these people.
And it wouldn’t be hard, even with Walter and Georgina’s strange behavior…Dean is a fucking brain surgeon, and a simple explanation is they were past patients with a rare disorder that left them in an odd emotionless state, and not being able to return to a normal life, Dean and Missy made them part of the household.
That explanation not only makes more sense, it actually kind of makes Dean and Missy likable! But of course we’ll be given hints and omens that maybe they’re not quite what they seem…
Another smaller opportunity that was missed was giving Rose and Chris’s romantic gestures a hidden meaning, similar to her selfie before leaving Brooklyn.
At the end, when Chris finds the pictures, it would have been EXTREMELY cool for him to flash back to previous scenes in the script where she did something he thought was cute, but it was actually giving her information to help his “sale” to the group.
And one last criticism was the ending…
Dean with all the “vessel” monologue nonsense? It was pretty stupid.
“We’re using your body so one of our friends can be reborn.”
Creepy enough, and no need to go all biblical on us.
Still, it was a fun story overall.
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