Get Out

Sketch comedian Jordan Peele (of Comedy Central’s Key and Peele) makes his directing debut with a horror movie that sticks closely to genre convention even as its ribbing of white liberals hardens into a social point. A young photographer (Daniel Kaluuya) travels to upstate New York with his white girlfriend (Allison Williams) to stay with her easygoing parents (Catherine Keener, Bradley Whitford) and meet their rich friends; plunged into this white world, he endures a series of awkward and condescending remarks and begins to suspect his hosts have sinister intentions toward him. Peele, backed by the cagey horror outfit Blumhouse Productions (Insidious, Paranormal Activity), demonstrates a fannish love for cliche, which gradually dilutes his idiosyncratic take on the perils of assimilation. With Caleb Landry Jones and Betty Gabriel, wonderful as the family’s spooky black maid.