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Kind of a breakout movie this year, Get Out was supposedly ripping the mask off of politically correct liberals. While the structure of the movie wasn't bad, and there were some great scenes (the hypnosis scene with Catherine Keenan), I just couldn't buy the premise.

I'm not afraid of seeing a director take a chance on this subject. White Man's Burden was an interesting film about a society where blacks and whites were in the exact opposite position: the whites were repressed, and the blacks were the oppressors. It got you out of your own skin when looking at prejudice. Godfrey Cambridge played a white bigot who wakes up to find he is now a negro in Watermelon Man. Pardon the pun, but a dark comedy.

I know that I'm in the minority on this. Obviously a lot of people think it was a great movie. Can anyone explain what it is that I'm not getting?

On one level, it's a satire of softer racism. Either that works for you or it doesn't, but it gets increasingly clever as it goes along. It's not laugh out loud funny, except for the explicit comic relief character, but there's wry observations in the beats that are fantastic. My favorite bit is the blind character's villainy. Then on the other level, it's a by the numbers horror film that is just rock-solid storytelling. When these two facets get woven together, it ends up being transcendent.

I hadn't heard of it until I was watching it on HBO in a hotel room with my wife a couple months ago. We weren't really watching it intently - we'd had a few drinks at lunch and were sort of late afternoon dozing and watching the show. Both of us, only giving it partial attention, thought it was cheesy. Neither of us are into horror flicks, though (I think horror flicks belong in the same bucket as musicals and porno - I can only handle them for about five minutes or so before wanting something else).

I guess my overall impression was it was trying too hard to say something meaningful in the midst of taking itself too seriously. If you're going to do a kind of supernatural horror, you better check seriousness at the door.

I did mention to my wife, however, that given how positive the feedback it's gotten lately, we should perhaps give it another try with clearer heads. I don't know... it kind of tries to be a horror flick, so...