This critique reminds me of when people were complaining that Rickon Stark wasn't running in zig-zags to get away from his tormentor.
When in situations of extreme stress and with no time to evaluate all alternatives, regular people don't typically pursue the most ideal resolution.
It would be absolutely absurd to have the main character turn into Jason Bourne or Sherlock Holmes in that situation. The way it played out was 100% more realistic than the suggested alternatives.
It isn't a critique so much as it is a rationalization of the decision to have the scene play out as it did.
Everything that occurs in this film appears to have been deliberately designed for thematic purposes. Peele is smart, and he is careful about his attention to detail. Realism isn't the purpose here -- the themes are. The film's plot serves the movie's messages. This is what makes
Get Out worth close-examining.
Chris' escape from the house is as Bourne-esque as can be, which is in stark contrast to his interaction with Rose. He does not want to engage with Rose.
[spoil]The scene in question -- the post-closet exchange with Rose -- did not need to play out as it did. It was written this way for a reason, however. As soon as the closet photographs are revealed, we
know that she is guilty. The closet closes only to show that she has been watching him investigate the photographs. This would have been a fairly standard moment in a story's narrative for the character to turn after the twist has been revealed. At this point in most films, one character would try to incapacitate the other.
Instead, the film does something unconventional by having the exchange between Chris and Rose play out without conflict. Chris does not engage. He is shown throughout the film to be capable of engaging, and he is not only strong but clever -- his escape from the chair and the house is extremely clever. He successfully kills the father, mother, and brother. He realizes that he can plug his ears with cotton; he uses the deer to kill the father; he knows that he needs to smash the tea cup before engaging with the mother; he uses a screwdriver to kill the mother and the brother. He had a moment to do something similar to Rose after the closet revelation, but he does not. Instead, she continues her charade and he falls into her trap. He lets her off the hook and it proves to be nearly fatal.
The film purposely teases the audience with the idea that the characters in the film can be logical. It wants us to expect Chris to be as intuitive as his friend Rod. He is a logical person, but Rose successfully shuts him down throughout the film every time he confesses to her his clues. She defeats him. He loses every single debate he has with her in the film, from the moment he questions her decision not to tell her parents about his ethnicity to the ID scene with the police to the confrontations about the maid and housekeeper. She wins every time. On the other hand, he is fairly dismissive about everything that Rod has to say.
Ultimately, we are faced with Chris having to choose between committing to Rod or Rose. When he decides to give her the responsibility of finding the keys, we know that he has chosen to trust Rose despite everything that he knows.
If one wants to be even more clever here, they could suggest that he believes she is a victim -- she is the young, white girl of the film whose role is usually to be the damsel in distress. The role of the white girl in most horror movies is to be the one who escapes and survives at the end. The role of this apparent stock character is reversed, as she is the one who orchestrates the madness.
In the conflict over Chris' trust between the black man, Rod, and the white girl, Rose, the girl wins.
Peele's original ending, which was to have the police discover Chris strangling Rose and arrest him, would have further emphasized this as that circumstance tends to favor the white girl. The film ends instead with Rod rescuing Chris, which is to say that the protagonists have finally defeated the white girl.
One of the alternate takes in the TSA car between Rod and Chris features Rod yelling to his friend, "No more white girls for you!"
In the context of our current social climate, white girls and black men are unjustly considered to be on the opposite ends of a spectrum of trust and respect.[/spoil]
One SuperHeroHype member had this to say about their impression of Rose:
http://forums.superherohype.com/showpost.php?p=34863629&postcount=105
[spoil]
"I went from thinking that she was in on it, to she had no idea what was going on, to she to was hypnotized by her parents. I kind of wish the later had happened. When she was trying to find the keys it totally felt like she was lost" - Primal Slayer, SuperHeroHype!
The innocent white girl narrative is an issue that Peele critiques with this film.[/spoil]
