The first ceremony in the 2017 movie awards season — the well-regarded Gotham Independent Film Awards — has come to a close. And from the night’s big winners and losers, one name stands out as a now-solidified frontrunner for the coveted Academy Awards early next year. Get Out, the little horror movie that could, is well on its way to winning big at the upcoming Oscar Ceremony.
Get Out, the directorial debut for filmmaker Jordan Peele, is one of the year’s unquestionable masterpieces: a socially conscious horror movie in the vein of The Stepford Wives that depicts the seemingly well-to-do white residents of an upscale town abducting and implanting their brains into Black men and women who had the distinct misfortune of walking through the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time. It is a literal manifestation of the very real cultural appropriation occurring right now in 2017, as well as a justified depiction of Black paranoia at the well-seeming white community that is so often at odds with their well-being.
The film lead the competition with a total of four nominations at Monday’s ceremony: Best Feature, Best Actor, Best Screenplay and Breakthrough Director. Of those, it won two — Best Screenplay and Breakthrough Director — both going to Peele. Additionally, it won the ceremony’s Audience Award: further proof of its enduring popularity.
Even though it missed out on Best Feature, which went to Call Me By Your Name, its big wins at the Gotham Awards prove that it is a force to be reckoned with. Having earned $254 million on a $4.5 million budget, it is undoubtedly 2017’s most profitable film. It currently holds a 99% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes (where only two critics have given it negative reviews) and an 84 out of 100 on Metacritic: showing its universal acclaim among both critics and audiences.
The real barrier in Get Out‘s way to Oscar success is that a lot of awards bodies don’t seem to know how to classify the film. The Oscars have traditionally been a stuffy, conservative group that doesn’t give much credence to non-white experiences (something that has notably changed in recent years, culminating in last year’s well-deserved Best Picture win for Moonlight, a sprawling drama documenting the Black gay experience), and frequently ignore movies from the horror genre (where the exceptions to this adamantly prove the rule). The Golden Globes actually nominated the serious social thriller for Best Comedy, prompting writer-director Jordan Peele to soberly identify it as a documentary.
One thing is certain, however: Get Out is not a movie awards bodies can dismiss any longer. In the categories for which it was nominated — Picture, Director, Writing and Actor — it is an absolute contender. To suggest otherwise is to ignore both its extraordinary quality and its undeterred staying power.
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