Summary
Later that evening, Chris and Rose sit on a bench overlooking the lake and Chris tells her about his mother's death, and his guilt about the fact that he didn't call 911. "There's nothing you could've done," Rose says, but Chris insists that he found out later that his mother had survived the initial hit and that she died the next morning on the side of the road. "There was time, but nobody was looking for her," he says, weeping.
He sits up and tells Rose that she's all he has and he's not going to leave her house without her. "Let's go home. This sucks," she says, and they kiss. Back at the house, the last of the guests are leaving, and Jeremy stands on the porch, plucking a ukulele. Walter and Georgina smile at Chris and Rose vacantly, and Dean and Missy smile at them as well.
Inside, Chris looks at the photo he took of Logan, before sending it to Rod. Rod calls him almost immediately, confirming Chris' suspicions that he knows him and reminding Chris that he used to date their friend and his name is Andre Hayworth. Chris tells Rod that Andre is completely different—"He came to a party with a white woman 30 years older than him!"—and Rod echoes his hypothesis from earlier, that Andre is a sex slave for kinky white people.
Rod urges Chris to get out of there as soon as he can, but their connection gets lost for some reason. Chris tells Rose that they have to leave immediately and she goes to get her bag. As he packs he suddenly notices a door in the corner that leads to a storage closet in Rose's room. He goes to look inside and finds a red box, inside of which are a number of old photographs of Rose with various black people. One of the pictures features Rose with Walter, another with Georgina. Chris is freaked out and closes the door to the storage closet. Rose is standing there and asks if he's ready.
As Rose looks for the keys, Chris urges her to hurry up and goes downstairs. Jeremy stands in front of the door, twirling a lacrosse stick, and Missy offers them tea, but Chris tells her they have to leave, as Rose recites the excuse that his dog is really sick and he needs to be at the vet early in the morning.
As Rose looks for the keys, Dean looks at a crackling fire in the fireplace and asks Chris, "In life, what is your purpose?" Chris is confused as Dean looks at the fire and tells Chris that fire is a reflection of mortality. "We're born, we breathe, and we die!" Dean says, and Chris gets more and more anxious. Dean keeps talking about how people are divine, how they are simply trapped in human form, but are gods.
Chris begins yelling at Rose for the keys, as Jeremy swings his lacrosse stick at Chris menacingly. Rose is crying, but suddenly, she stops crying, holds up the keys, and tells Chris she cannot give them to him. As Chris runs for the door, Jeremy blocks him and Missy taps her teacup with a spoon, rendering Chris unconscious.
Missy orders Jeremy and Dean to take Chris downstairs. We see Chris in the Sunken Place, floating through space as in his hypnosis with Missy, but able to see everything that is happening to him. Dean and Jeremy carry Chris downstairs as Rose whispers to Chris, "You were one of my favorites."
The next day, Rod tries to call Chris, but Chris doesn't pick up. Rod goes over to Chris' house to feed the dog and dials him again, but Chris still doesn't pick up. Suspicious, Rod stays at Chris' house that evening and looks up Andre Hayworth on the internet. The results show that Andre went missing recently.
The scene shifts to a large room in the Armitage's basement. Chris wakes up with a start, and finds he is strapped to an armchair with belts. He struggles to get out of the chair. On a wall nearby is a stuffed deer's head, and suddenly a television in front of the chair comes on.
A video plays in which Roman Armitage, Rose's grandfather, explains what is happening. "You have been chosen because of the physical advantages you've enjoyed your entire lifetime," Roman says in the video, "With your natural gifts and our determination, we could both be part of something greater. Something perfect." Roman stands beside the rest of the Armitages—Dean, Missy, Rose, Jeremy, and Roman's wife—and explains that Dean has developed a process called Coagula, which can merge black bodies with white identities through scientific means. Suddenly, the video becomes a video of Missy stirring the tea and Chris passes out.
Rod goes to visit a detective, Detective Latoya, whom he tells about his missing friend. He then shows Latoya the picture Chris sent of Andre Hayworth, who has allegedly been missing for six months. Rod explains to Latoya that he thinks that white people have been abducting black people, and making them "work as sex slaves and shit." Latoya looks concerned and calls in two other people to hear Rod's case. When he's done giving his theory, the three detectives start laughing riotously, not believing Rod's theory.
That night, Rod tries to figure out what happened and calls Rose. When Rose picks up, she pretends that Chris left two days prior in a cab. She feigns confusion, and Rod puts her on hold for a minute, while he turns on a recording device to record her. He thinks she's lying and wants to have evidence of it on tape.
Analysis
The visual and musical palettes used in the film heighten its horrific dimensions. Many of the jolts and jumps, the shocking punctuations that begin to add up while Chris is staying at the Armitages', is created with musical punctuations: dissonant string crashes and suspenseful plucking. Additionally, the way the film is shot raises the tension quite a bit as well. For instance, when Rose and Chris walk back towards the house, we see Georgina and Walter, then Missy and Dean, as if from Chris' perspective. They wear frozen expressions, welcoming smiles, but something nefarious lurks beneath their friendly affect.
Not only does the film blend the horrors of everyday racism with the tropes of a traditional horror film, but it also blends comedy into the mix as well. Chris' friend Rod is the primary comic relief in the film, a TSA agent with a big personality and a humorous take for every outrageous situation Chris finds himself in. In a film that leaves Chris seriously freaked out and the viewer at the edge of their seat, Rod truly puts the "relief" in "comic relief," both sharing in Chris' anxiety and confusion while also putting a jokey spin on darker topics.
Things really start to break down when Chris comes to the realization that Logan King is actually an old acquaintance of his from the city who has adopted an entirely new identity. This information is enough to send him running from the premises, but it is what he finds in Rose's closet that makes him even more frightened: a box of pictures of her with various black people, including Walter and Georgina. From this he gleans that there is something far more underhanded happening at the Armitage house, and his girlfriend, whom he thought he trusted more than anyone, seems to be part of it.
Rose's part in the conspiracy is confirmed when Chris tries to escape. Rose tells him she cannot give him the keys to the car, and then Missy, with two taps of her teacup, sends Chris to the Sunken Place. As he floats through space, unable to move, but cognizant of what is happening to his physical body, he sees the Armitages are all working together to impede his escape. What had seemed like a horrific but recognizable scenario—a "meet the parents" weekend gone wrong—becomes a full-blown nightmare, in which the parents are not only looking to scrutinize their daughter's black boyfriend, but to kidnap and control him.
The conspiracy, it turns out, is as far-fetched, if not more unbelievable than Rod's humorous theories about sex slavery seemed to be. In the Armitages' basement, Chris watches a strange documentary hosted by Rose's grandfather explaining that Dean has created a process by which black people are brainwashed and experimented on as a way of merging the black and white races. Roman Armitage talks about the "physical advantages" of black people in the film, and alludes to the fact that through some kind of eugenic process, Dean has developed a way to create a master human race.
