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Tear Jerker / Get Out (2017)

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  • What the Sunken Place is meant to represent, which makes it equally terrifying and saddening. It symbolizes the systematic marginalization and silencing of oppressed peoples, stripping them of power and agency. No matter how much they scream and fight, they're forever trapped in limbo. It then comes as no surprise that Peele admitted to crying while writing the first Sunken Place scene.
  • Chris finding out that Rose was manipulating him the whole time they were together and was completely aware of her family's scheme.
    • Even beforehand, it's hard to watch him slowly freaking out when the family turns on him. Daniel Kaluuya's terrific acting in this scene shows so many emotions, despite the fact that he's pretty much only saying one line repeatedly (although with different variations based on how he's feeling). When he's initially asking Rose for the keys, he's visibly panicking and freaking out and probably begging Rose to find them. But as the family slowly turns on him, he's furiously screaming at her (with tears in his eyes) if she has the key, which is giving off the vibe that he knows something is up not just with the family but with her. Finally, before the reveal he tearfully asks for the keys one more time, trying not to break down and with his voice visibly breaking at one point, implying that at this point he now knows that Rose was in on it the whole time, but didn't want it to be true (which it sadly was). It makes his reaction afterwards all the more heartbreaking.
  • All of the people who were forced to undergo the Armitages' surgery. Ordinary people who had their lives stolen by people, often for the pettiest of reasons: Grandpa Armitage took Walter's body because he lost at the Olympics, Jim wanted Chris' photographic eye, and so on.
  • Chris is made to revisit the memory of his mother's death several times, first claiming that it's no big deal because he was too young to really remember it. The memory he does have — of being too young to know what to do when his mother doesn't come home, sitting in front of the TV frozen in inaction and finding out too late that his mother didn't die instantly and he could have been with her in her last hours — or she might even have lived — if he'd only done something — becomes the cornerstone of Missy's Mind Rape.
  • It's very easy to miss, but the film isn't completely devoid of sympathy for the conditions, or even the motives, of Jim or the Armitages' other elderly, disabled clients. While Roman Armitage himself was motivated by nothing more than jealousy of Jesse Owens, his customers include a paralyzed man who wants to make love to his wife again, a golfer who wants to play his favorite sport like he used to, and a blind man whose greatest passion is inaccessible to him. Even Andre's new "mistress" is implied to have just wanted her husband back young and healthy. It's made very clear that, despite their wealth and privilege, they're all just as mortal and vulnerable as the rest of us, and the lengths they're willing to go to to restore themselves are both unforgivably horrifying and deeply pitiable.
  • Andre being abducted in the opening scene is hard to watch. What makes this worse is that Andre was in a neighbourhood when he was abducted and no one was there (or didn't bother) to stop it.
    • And when he's snapped out of the Armitages' control? He has legitimate fear in his eyes while warning Chris to get out before being carried away screaming.
    • What makes this even sadder is that Andre was speaking to someone (who he addressed as "Baby") on the phone before he got kidnapped, which means that he has at least one person (possibly a girlfriend/wife) who would notice/care if he went missing. The fact that he's been missing for six months prior to the events of the story suggests that any potential efforts to find him have been abandoned.
    • It’s worse when you realize that he may have been one of Rose’s exes and was talking to her before he got kidnapped. She was literally leading him to his own doom.
    • What's worse is that Andre is still trapped by the end of the movie.
  • Walter killing himself after shooting Rose. Sure, he's finally free from his situation and he saved Chris' life, but it's still sad to watch. It's made worse by the sad, silent expression he gives to Chris before pulling the trigger.
    • Even worse, since his prints would be on the gun, it'll likely be him who catches the blame for the Armitages' deaths — he died free, but he'll probably be posthumously Convicted by Public Opinion.
      • He probably knows this, too. When he says "Let me do it," he may have been reaching toward Rose, but he didn't code-switch or even attempt to disguise his voice to say it. Between this and the look, he may well have been talking to Chris, determined he wouldn't escape one dehumanizing imprisonment just to end up in another. If this interpretation is accurate, it makes the original intended ending where Chris gets arrested anyway infinitely more heartbreaking.
    • Earlier, there's Georgina's death. Chris tries to save her, only for Grandma Armitage to take control of her and attack Chris as he's driving, which results in Chris crashing the car. Georgina is killed on impact.
    • Was there any way for Walter and Georgina and Andre and all the others to be free? Most of their brain has been scooped out and literally thrown in the trash and a new brain grafted onto theirs. It will never be gone. They can't take it out because then there's nothing but the brain stem. They can't go around having light flashed in their eyes every few minutes for the rest of their lives.
  • At the very end, Chris withdrawing his hands from Rose's throat — even after everything she's done to amply deserve it, she's still the woman he fell in love with. Before the Armitage family put him through the wringer, Chris felt deeply guilty about even accidentally harming an animal, and now all the heavy cultural baggage about scary black men harming frail white women is pressing in to make Chris feel like the monster for fighting his way through people who are trying to kill him or worse. Even with Rose's creepy Too Kinky to Torture subtext and how satisfying it would be to the audience, he just can't do it.
  • The alternate ending is bleak and utterly devoid of comedy. Just as Chris is strangling Rose, the police arrive and arrest him. The final scene is Rod talking to Chris in prison urging him to try and remember anything that could help exonerate him since the fire got rid of all the physical evidence. Chris doesn't want to bother with it, and apparently is satisfied enough that he stopped the Armitages from claiming him or anyone else, and he's resigned himself to living in prison. He looks and sounds like he's got no will to live anymore. After hanging up, Rod is utterly silent afterward, and it ends with Chris being escorted back to his cell. As bittersweet as the regular ending is, the original ending is a lot harder to end with, particularly due to the real life subtext it had and still has to this day.
  • Another alternate ending Jordan Peele revealed had Rod breaking into the Armitage household trying to find Chris. However, when he does find him, Chris assures that he has no idea who he's talking about, implying that the hypnosis and possession actually worked. This means that not only has Chris been successfully added to the Armitages' list of victims after his desperate yet unsuccessful attempt to escape, but Rod essentially loses two of his friends (Andre and Chris,) meaning that his journey to rescue Chris was entirely pointless. Just try to imagine what's going on through poor Rod's mind at this moment. Also, he's now in a house with them; who knows what they're going to do with him?

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