Summary
Chris tells Rose that he thinks Missy hypnotized him the night before, that he can barely remember what happened, but that he now is disgusted by the thought of having a cigarette. Rose apologizes as Chris tells her he had some bad dreams about being in a hole and not being able to move. "What's Walter's deal?" he then asks, "His whole vibe is hostile." When he suggests that maybe Walter has a crush on her, she teases him about this hypothesis and offers to talk to her dad about it, but Chris tells her she doesn't have to.
Guests begin to arrive for the party. When they go downstairs, Rose tells Chris to "just smile." They approach an older white couple named the Greenes and Mr. Greene asks Chris if he's ever played golf, as he was a professional golfer. He then tells them he "loves Tiger," referring to Tiger Woods.
Inside, Chris and Rose talk to Nelson and Lisa, and Lisa touches Chris's muscles before asking if it's true about black men having better penises. Outside, another man tells Rose and Chris that fairer skin has been in favor for many years, but "the pendulum has swung back. Black is in fashion." Chris excuses himself, and takes some pictures, first of Missy talking to Georgina, and then of Dean, who waves to him.
Chris takes another photograph, when he suddenly notices a black man at a table nearby. He goes over to him, saying, "Good to see another brother around here." The man turns around with a vacant expression, and then his white wife walks over and greets Chris. Her name is Philomena and the man's name is Logan King. Logan turns to Philomena and says, "Chris was just telling me he felt much more comfortable with my being here." Chris puts out a fist to fist bump, and Logan shakes it, before going to talk to a group of white people.
Disappointed, Chris walks over to a man sitting in a cluster of chairs near a gazebo. The man, who is blind, starts talking immediately as Chris approaches, talking about how ignorant the party goers are, how "they mean well but they have no idea what real people go through." He introduces himself as Jim Hudson and tells Chris he admires his work. Chris then recognizes him as the owner of a gallery, and Jim tells him that his assistant describes works of art in great detail to him so that he can assess whether it is good. He compliments Chris' work, calling it "so brutal, so melancholic."
Jim goes on to tell Chris that he used to take photographs, mostly of the wilderness, but that after submitting to National Geographic, he realized he didn't have an eye, and shortly after he began to lose his vision. "Shit ain't fair, man," Chris says sympathetically.
Chris then goes inside, walking past a group of partygoers. As he climbs the stairs, they all fall silent and listen to his footsteps on the floor above. In Rose's room, Chris is surprised to find his phone unplugged and dead. He plugs it in, then goes to peek in Georgina's room. As he sees Georgina folding some clothes, Rose comes up the stairs and Chris pulls her into her room. There, he tells Rose that he thinks Georgina unplugged his phone because she doesn't like the fact that he's with Rose.
When Rose leaves the room in a huff, Chris calls Rod, complaining that he's at a weird party and that it seems like no one has "met a black person that doesn't work for them." He then tells Rod that he got hypnotized by Rose's mom and he's no longer addicted to cigarettes. Rod warns Chris that they could have made him do all kinds of things while hypnotized, telling him about Jeffrey Dahmer.
Chris then tells Rod that even the black people there are deranged; "It's like all of them missed the movement," he whispers. As Chris hangs up the phone, Georgina comes in the room abruptly, startling him and apologizing for accidentally unplugging his phone. She speaks in a stilted, formal manner, and when she apologizes, Chris tells her he didn't mean to snitch. "Oh, I can assure you, I don't answer to anyone," she says. "All I know is sometimes, if there's too many white people around I get nervous," Chris says.
Georgina gets a pained and stretched expression on her face as she hears this last comment, smiling and laughing creepily with tears running down her face. "No no no no!" she says, laughing and weeping, "The Armitages are so good to us. They treat us like family."
Downstairs, Chris runs into Dean and a large group of people. One of the guests, a Japanese man, asks Chris, "Do you think being African-American has more advantage or disadvantage in the modern world?" Chris laughs and says he does not know. When he spots Logan King walking up, Chris poses the question to Logan. Logan tells the group that he finds being black to be a good experience, although he admits that he does not leave the house much, as he does a lot of chores at home.
As Logan speaks, Chris pulls out his phone to take a picture of Logan, but he has left the flash on. When the flash goes off and it becomes clear Chris is taking a picture, Logan falls silent and his nose begins to bleed. He suddenly changes his demeanor and runs towards Chris, warning him to "Get out!" The party guests pull Logan back as he screams at Chris to get out of the Armitage house.
Later, Dean tries to explain what happened, telling Rose and Chris that seizures can cause anxiety and aggression. "It was your flash, that's what set him off," Dean says. Missy comes out of her office with Logan and announces that he's doing much better. Logan is back to his usual affect and apologizes to everyone. "I know that I must've frightened you all quite a bit," before excusing himself and saying goodbye to Chris.
Rose and Chris go on a walk, where Chris tells Rose that Logan's episode was not a seizure. "My dad's a neurosurgeon, and that's what he said it was. I'm inclined to trust," Rose says. Chris is unconvinced, citing the fact that his cousin is epileptic and telling Rose that when Logan came towards him, "It felt like I knew him." Rose is confused and Chris tells her, "I don't know Logan. I knew the guy that came at me."
Chris tells Rose that he thinks her mother got in his head and now he's thinking bad thoughts. "I just need to go," he tells her, giving her the option to come with him if she wants. In the yard, the party guests play bingo, but it looks more like they are auctioning off Chris. Dean plays the role of auctioneer, standing beside a large portrait of Chris. As the auction ends, Jim Hudson ends up winning.
Analysis
A great deal of the horror in the film comes from the uncanny images and elements of the plot as they contrast with more familiar or pristine scenarios. For instance, the beginning of the annual party at the Armitage house is signaled by a parade of black luxury vehicles, as though it's a fancy funeral. No one comments on the cars, but the image, seen out Rose's bedroom window, is a striking and spooky one, and seems to foreshadow the darkness to come. Everyone is acting as though it's a normal garden party, yet the images Peele assembles betray the fact that it's far from normal.
Yet another horrific dimension of Chris's stay at the Armitage residence emerges at the party, when he approaches a black man, Logan King, hoping to find some solidarity in the lily-white affair. Instead of understanding how alienating the party might be for Chris, Logan is formal and stilted, mimicking the sanitized cocktail party small-talk that surrounds them. We can see the disappointment on Chris' face as he goes for a fist bump with Logan and is met with a handshake. Not only is he one of the only black faces at an overwhelmingly white gathering where he can hardly find a conversation that doesn't include racist assumptions, but even the one other black man who might understand is in on the conspiracy of whiteness.
Images of real life becoming slightly off continue through the party sequence. In one of the more chilling moments in the film, Chris walks past little clusters of partygoers in the Armitage house, chattering away. After he goes up the stairs, they all fall silent at the exact same moment. The sequence is simple, but strikes such a haunting tone as the viewer wonders why and questions their motives. While the casual racism of the party guests has already been unsettling and alienating for Chris, this moment seems to confirm that there is a bigger conspiracy taking place.
Things only get weirder when Chris tries to have a moment of understanding with Georgina, the black housekeeper. After she apologizes for accidentally unplugging Chris' phone, he attempts to bridge the gap by mentioning that sometimes being around a lot of white people makes him nervous. Jordan Peele shoots the actress, Betty Gabriel, in a tight close-up as she registers this information. At first, it is difficult to tell whether she is laughing or crying, and her expression has an almost inhuman tension in it, as she computes Chris' innocuous statement. Her lips pull back into a tight smile and she begins to laugh, but tears stream down her face in an iconically creepy image of emotional dissonance.
The titular line, a warning to escape, comes, rather unexpectedly, from Logan King, the repressively formal sole black party guest at the Armitage gathering. When Chris takes a photo of Logan, Logan goes berserk, drops his proper affect, and grabs Chris' collar, imploring him to "Get out!" As if shaken out of a spell, Logan abandons the facade and tries to break through to Chris, who stares at him in confusion and fear.
