Get Out's Ending Was Originally a Lot Darker

CBR

By Brandon Staley

Published Mar 3, 2017

Writer/director Jordan Peele says the film’s conclusion is heroic compared to the original finale, which, in the end, had to change.

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the ending of "Get Out," in theaters now.

Director Jordan Peele’s horror film “Get Out” has been making waves critically and financially. The film enjoyed a perfect rating on score aggregator Rotten Tomatoes for the better part of a week and has already raked in $46 million domestically on a budget of $4.5 million. Heralded for its storytelling and unique perspective seldom seen in the horror genre, the film ends on a surprisingly triumphant note -- but that wasn’t always the case.

Peele originally envisioned a very different, far more bleak ending for his film in which the protagonist, Chris Washington (Daniel Kaluuya), a black man, nervously takes a trip to visit the family of his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams), who has not told them he is black. Events spiral out of control, and the film’s finale sees Chris escaping certain death only to be liberated from the crazed family by his friend, Rod Williams (Lil Rel Howery), a TSA worker, who arrives on the scene in a police car.

Speaking with ScreenCrush, the director recalled the finale’s original, dire tone, which saw Chris either slain or incarcerated by police, rather than saved by his friend. The ending was originally meant to speak to the false notion of a post-racist world:

“In the beginning when I was first making this movie the idea was, ‘OK, we’re in this post-racial world, apparently.' That was the whole idea. People were saying, ‘We’ve got Obama so racism is over, let’s not talk about it.’ That’s what the movie was meant to address. Like look, you recognize this interaction. These are all clues, if you don’t already know, that racism isn’t over. […] So the ending in that era was meant to say, look, ‘You think race isn’t an issue? Well at the end, we all know this is how this movie would end right here.’”

Peele ended up walking back from the ending when, during production, the national discourse about race changed dramatically in the wake of the shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown:

“It was very clear that the ending needed to transform into something that gives us a hero, that gives us an escape, gives us a positive feeling when we leave this movie. […] There’s nothing more satisfying than seeing the audience go crazy when Rod shows up.”

Currently screening in theaters, “Get Out” is a production of Blumhouse Productions written and directed by Jordan Peele, and starring Daniel Kaluuya as Chris Washington, Allison Williams as Rose Armitage, Bradley Whitford as Dean Armitage, Catherine Keener as Missy Armitage, Caleb Landry Jones as Jeremy Armitage and Lil Rel Howery as Rod Williams.