Get Out Uses Wide Shots for Hightened Suspense and Emotional Distance

Early in Get Out, a young interracial couple discuss Chris's (Daniel Kaluuya) introduction to Rose's (Allison Williams) parents. Rose reveals that she has not yet told her parents that Chris is black. Despite Rose thinking the matter unimportant, Chris worries. How will Rose's white parents react to him being black?

Allison Williams of Get Out.

Daniel Kaluuya of Get Out.

This scene establishes some initial suspense. Because Chris is worried, we too are worried. Like him, we grow anxious to see the look on the parent's faces.

Yet filmmaker Jordan Peele denies us this opportunity. The entire initial meeting with the parents is a single long take, framed in a wide shot. So wide that we can't see the look on anyone's faces.

Chris and Rose arrive by car, exit, then go up to the front door. The door opens and the parents emerge from the house. We hear warm greetings and see hugs, but we can't see the expressions on anyone's faces.

This wide shot is a small thing, yet it's noteworthy. The parents likely had warm and welcoming expressions when they first saw Chris. Their voices sounded friendly. Yet by preventing us from seeing their expressions, by extending the moment until we get inside the house, Peele injects more suspense and tension into the scene than it might otherwise have had.

But before taking us inside the house, Peele further increases our suspense by widening his exterior shot, until we see a black man staring at the house. We don't know why he is there, but his presence, and the darkening music, suggest that all is not well inside.

Peele continues using wide shots inside the house to emotionally distance us from the parents, only slowly drawing closer to them. It's how the wary Chris might feel, only slowly growing to trust the parents' outward display of liberal acceptance.

Our first closeup in this critical "meet the parents" scene is of the young couple, listening to the father (Bradley Whitford) speaking. This further bonds us with the couple, so that we see and feel events from their perspective.

Bradley Whitford.

Catherine Keener.

Only after we are bonded with the couple do we get our first close look at the parents' friendly faces. Friendly -- or trying to hard? Either way, that we now see the parents in closeup suggests that Chris is finally allowing himself to be drawn in and trust them. Or at least, to give them the benefit of the doubt.

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For more information on framing shots in horror films, see Horror Film Aesthetics: Creating the Visual Language of Fear. This blog represents a continuing discussion of my views on horror, picking up from where the book left off.