Original subtitles

Is there someone inside you?

I love, love, love possession films.

Sink.

Possession stories

touch on our fear of losing control...

control of our bodies, of our lives, of our mind.

One day, we could be our normal selves,

and the next day be a raging lunatic

spouting arcane languages or obscenities.

The sow is mine.

both: The power of Christ compels you!

"The Exorcist" is held up as being the holy grail,

rightfully so, of possession movies.

I'm the devil.

The world was afraid of this movie,

and they were afraid of me.

"The Omen" is like my hands-down

favorite horror movie.

Look at me, Damien.

There's just something inherently creepy about kids.

Your loved one is not who you assumed they were,

and we saw that to wonderful effect

in both of the "Evil Dead" films.

You're bitten by your girlfriend who's possessed.

Your hand's gonna get possessed,

so your hand's gonna attack you.

Looks like something bit you.

"Paranormal Activity" was a game-changer for me.

It was a new way in.

Get out.

"Get Out" is a possession film.

It is a possession film.

A force that's evil.

They have nothing but bad intentions for you.

Oh, my God!

What am I seeing happen?

The fear that demons will enter our bodies

and make us do terrible things

has haunted mankind for millennia.

In recent times, it has inspired some of

the most frightening films ever made...

Fever dreams like "Night of the Demons"

and "Hellraiser"...

We'll tear your soul apart.

Fictionalized case histories,

such as "The Exorcism of Emily Rose"

and "The Last Exorcism."

The nightmare of being taken over by a sinister force

can be seen as a metaphor for mental illness,

but what if these films reflect a deeper truth...

a truth about the nature of good and evil?

In the name of Jesus Christ, the saints, and all the angels,

I command you to reveal yourself!

Demons are real.

We're so used to seeing the world

in just very few dimensions... time and space,

depth and appearance.

There is so much more at work in our universe

than that which just meets the naked eye.

Though our fears are ancient,

films about demonic possession

are a relatively recent phenomenon.

Hollywood's self-censoring Motion Picture Production Code

set strict rules on content

from the early 1930s to the late 1960s.

There is no room on the screen

at any time for pictures which offend against common decency.

Outside of the Swedish film "Haxan" from 1922,

full-on demonic possessions do not appear on screen

until 1973...

the year of "The Exorcist."

Obviously, "The Exorcist" is held up

as being the holy grail, rightfully so,

of possession movies.

"The Exorcist" is about a priest

that had his own demons

he had been following years prior.

Years later, he finds himself in the same position

with this same demon,

but this time, it's inside of a young girl.

The whole thing was to draw in Father Merrin

to get him to do war... battle one more time.

Captain Howdy?

Linda Blair's character, Regan,

becomes another person because this demon is inside of her.

- I'm Damien Karras. - And I'm the devil.

Now kindly undo these straps.

If you're the devil, why not make the straps disappear?

That's much too vulgar a display of power, Karras.

Satan plays the role of Satan.

I don't know if that's Satan

or a bunch of demons. Doesn't matter.

- Where's Regan? - In here with us.

The actor is really the one selling the idea of possession.

So you've got to have a great actor

to play somebody who's possessed.

- Ahh! - Oh!

Keep away! The sow is mine!

Billy Friedkin, the director, really wanted to make sure

that Regan was just any generic all-American little girl.

Her transformation from this very sweet,

very typical young girl...

Oh, Mom, can't we get a horse?

Into a monster I think comments on this anxiety

that the young people of the country were moving away

from the conservative norms of society.

It was 1973,

so we were recently out of Vietnam,

and the hippie movement was still in full swing.

There was definitely upheaval going on,

social upheaval going on, and generational conflict.

You have a mother who's trying to deal with a daughter

who has suddenly become something else,

and this is what a lot of parents felt like.

The horror stuff doesn't really come in

until, like, the second half,

but the first half is all sort of upsetting images

and strange depictions of medical procedures.

It isn't just that medical science is inadequate;

it's that medical science

is even kind of destructive toward the child.

Religion is really the only answer.

You ever heard of exorcism?

By the time the horror stuff happens,

the audience is pretty much desensitized.

They're already pummeled by the movie that they've seen,

and it was extremely manipulative,

and not a very nice movie

in the sense of being good to the audience.

Every time they track down the hallway to the door,

the audience did not... they wanted to but didn't...

"Yes, no, yes, no"... to go into that door.

It's a hard movie to watch.

What happens to Linda Blair is just... it's terrible.

The scene where I'm sitting up and down really fast.

Please, Mother, make it stop!

It's basically, like, a metal brace,

and then I'm tied in on each side.

Unfortunately, they didn't tie it in really good.

It fractured my lower spine, so that's what's on camera,

and the screaming and yelling is real.

Make it stop! It's killing me!

My mother had gotten a call saying,

"Can Jamie audition for 'The Exorcist'?"

And my mother said, "Uh, no. I don't think so."

And then it came out, and we screened it

for my 15th birthday.

"The Exorcist."

Your mother's in here with us, Karras.

Would you like to leave a message?

It freaked me so badly

that for the rest of my high school life,

my friends made fun of me, and they would taunt me.

"Dami. Dami. Dami, why you do this to me, Dami?"

Dami. Why you do this to me?

"Dami, why you do this to me, Dami?"

You're not my mother!

That movie scared me so much that I'm Jewish,

and it made me believe in the devil.

I would sleep with a rosary next to my bed every night.

I have full-blown "Exorcist" PTSD, so...

What an excellent day for an exorcism.

The whole thing about "The Exorcist" was, like,

it may be too intense for human beings.

That it wasn't just a horror film in '73

when it came out; it was...

You were experiencing the devil.

Yeah, and that people, like,

committed suicide after they saw "The Exorcist,"

or people were put in insane asylums

after they saw "The Exorcist,"

and every new issue of the "National Enquirer" had,

you know, "My son went crazy and is in a straitjacket.

How watching 'The Exorcist' ruined my life."

I dream of reviews like that.

People went back to the church in droves

after that film came out.

The world was afraid of this movie...

and they were afraid of me,

and they wanted to have answers about good and evil

and was the devil really coming?

There's no place to hide... your religion,

your relationship to God.

No, none of that. There's no safe haven anywhere.

Even the afterlife isn't safe. I mean, you're gonna get there

and be in hell like poor Father Damien.

I mean, it's this idea that there's literally no escape,

not even if you're dead.

That is, you know, to me the idea of pure horror.

No!

I think it's the greatest horror film ever made,

and that's the horror film that I think that will never

be duplicated, all right? I don't see...

I agree. I don't think it'll ever be beat.

"The Exorcist" drew on all the resources

of Hollywood in the 1970s,

one of the peak periods of American film.

Decades later,

a first-time director shooting in his house

proved you don't need a big budget or special effects

to bring a demonic possession to terrifying life.

I can feel it watching me.

In 2007, software engineer Oren Peli

decided to make a low-budget movie

about a demonic possession.

The result was "Paranormal Activity,"

the most profitable film of all time,

and one of the most unnerving movies ever made.

Oren made the movie for $15,000.

He shot it at his house.

He had a crew of about three people.

And the crew consisted of my girlfriend at the time,

and then my best friend, Amir, I told him,

"I'm gonna shoot a movie. Do you want to help me?"

And he said, "Sure. It sounds fun,

but I don't know anything about making movies."

I said, "Perfect. Neither do I."

All right, we're operational, babe.

Ooh.

Shot entirely in the found footage style,

the story follows Micah and Katie,

a young suburban couple who move into a new house

that seems to be haunted.

In fact, Katie is being tormented by a demon

that feeds off of negative energy.

both:

out there.

Aah!

There is a difference between a ghost and a demon.

Ghosts are simply the spirits of people who died.

They don't want to move on,

and they kind of linger around in their own dimension.

But demons are inherently evil,

want to possess people...

Feel it?

I feel it breathing on me.

But a demon is attached to a person.

Leaving the house doesn't really solve anything.

They're still gonna follow you wherever you're gonna go.

It's not the house. It's me.

You know, wherever I go, it goes.

Micah sets up cameras

to record the supernatural events,

which makes things worse.

It felt very much like what would happen to anyone

if they were going through that.

What is your quest?

The sounds, wanting to record it,

playing with the Ouija board.

Got something to say?

- That moment... - When he was talking to

- a Ouija board. - Yeah.

- You're like... - Oh, I was like,

"Run, mother. Run!"

As the couple grows more desperate,

the demon trying to possess Katie

grows stronger and stronger.

Just let's go. Please, let's go.

"Paranormal Activity" was a game-changer for me,

because it just showed, with a minimalist approach,

you can scare the out of people with mostly pacing...

- Mm-hmm. - And the way

you tell the story.

I mean, like, what happens in that movie?

A couple sheets come off, you know, the bed,

the girl gets pulled through the door,

and yet, when they come up on, like, day 28 or whatnot,

and you know some about to go down,

I remember the entire audience

going, "Ohhh."

Aaaaaahhhhh!

Oh...

There's something about the vulnerability

that you have while you're asleep,

and which I think is something very kind of

engrained in human nature from the days we were cavemen,

and you don't know if a tiger is gonna come into your cave

and kill you while you're asleep.

And the fact that that movie shattered that space and said,

"Well, when you go home tonight,

"you're gonna be thinking about what this couple

endured in that bedroom," it's incredibly effective.

"Paranormal Activity's" goal was simple:

to scare the audience.

Jen?

The horror/comedy "Jennifer's Body"

had a serious and uniquely feminist agenda,

using demonic possession

to comment on the hell of being a teenage girl

in a culture obsessed with appearance.

Hi, Jennifer. You look really pretty.

What up, Craig?

Jennifer is a alpha female bitch

who is beautiful and popular,

and Needy is her worshipful nerdy friend.

Jennifer is actually a really intelligent,

clever, interesting person, but nobody cares about that.

Jennifer is cursed before she is cursed,

because all people can do is look at her,

as opposed to engage with her.

It's an incredibly dehumanized place to be living in.

She does have this incredible power

that comes with her beauty. She uses it.

These are like smart bombs, okay?

You point them in the right direction,

and gets real.

But it's not nearly as satisfying to her

as when she actually gets these supernatural powers.

Jennifer is the victim of a demonic ritual gone wrong.

This rock band, in an attempt to become famous...

Do you know how hard it is to make it

as an indie band these days?

Attempt to murder her because they think she is a virgin

and that they are sacrificing a virgin.

But she is not a virgin,

and as a result, the spell goes haywire,

and Jennifer is possessed by a demon

and starts eating boys to satisfy the demon,

and Needy has to stop her.

I am rooting for Jennifer when I watch the movie.

This idea of just being, like, hot and invincible...

I feel so scrumptious.

Was about how teenage girls are objectified,

it was about female sexual appetites.

It was about the idea

of puberty being a transformative thing

and using a sort of a monstrous transformation

as a way of talking about that.

Are you scared?

The notion of the female as monstrous

in itself has been a central tenet of horror,

and that's what remains

profoundly meaningful to me about horror

is it's one of the few genres that's had the guts to say,

as a culture, we are terrified of women and girls.

Hi.

But it was so freeing for me

to be able to explore those themes in a completely

just heightened gory bananas atmosphere.

You know, they have this fight at the end of the movie,

and Needy stabs Jennifer in the heart,

and it's like my way of saying, like,

"You're all staring at this girl's breasts..."

- My tit. - No. Your heart.

But what this is really about is her feelings.

You don't get to do over-the-top stuff like that

in a more understated genre.

You can only do that in a horror movie.

You know what? You were never a good friend.

"Jennifer's Body" got a mixed reception

on its release,

but the director's cut is now a cult favorite.

You got a tampon?

Stylistically, it owes a debt

to one of the most influential cult movies of all time:

"The Evil Dead."

When it comes to demonic possession movies,

few can match the manic energy and no-holds-barred horror

of Sam Raimi's film, "The Evil Dead."

Hey, Scotty, what's this place like, anyway?

Well, the guy that's renting it says

it's an old place... a little run down,

but it's right up in the mountains.

"The Evil Dead" is about a group

of fairly dumb college kids who go out to a remote cabin

in the woods to have a fun little break.

They see the cabin. They should be running

in the opposite direction to the nearest Motel 6,

but instead, they go in. They promptly find

a reel-to-reel recorder in the basement,

which of course they play.

It contains demonic incantations

that wake up the dead.

Shut it off!

Oh, my God!

Dead rise and proceed to possess these kids

one by one, and carnage and mayhem ensues.

Oh!

It seems like the simplest setup,

but man, oh, man, it was relentless.

And you're just, like, blown away.

Why have you disturbed our sleep,

awakened us from our ancient slumber?

You will die!

What is fascinating about the possession genre

of horror films is your loved one

is not who you assumed they were.

That's the most terrifying thing,

and we saw that to wonderful effect

in both of the "Evil Dead" films.

And it was this grainy, 16-millimeter movie

that you could tell was, like, made by amateurs

with that kind of, like, single-spotlight lighting

and everything else.

But at the same time was really scary,

and... I mean, Sam was trying to make a scary movie.

The first person had to get injured by one of these demons,

so we did it the first character's kneeling down,

and the demon gets a pencil and stabs it in the ankle.

That one got a big reaction out of the audience,

'cause I don't think they knew

how visceral the movie was gonna be until it started.

I fear that the only way to stop those possessed

by the spirits of the book

is through the act of bodily dismemberment.

So whenever you hear that you can only stop something

through bodily dismemberment, you know you're gonna be in

for a good show of gore and horror, right?

Ohh! Ohh!

There is always the standard aspect of the scream queen...

Sam wanted to up it.

He thought it was one thing to have a woman scream,

but what if you made a man scream like a girl?

Like, "I want it to be that horrifying."

There was also something else about "Evil Dead"

that made it particularly cool was,

well, you had to get it.

Not everyone could get it.

It was cheap,

so you had to be able to not just look beyond that;

you had to embrace it.

It is scary, but there is a really weird

sense of humor that, if you're not in line with it,

you're gonna think, "Oh, that's just a piece of junk."

In 1981, "The Evil Dead"

launched the career of its gifted director,

21-year-old Sam Raimi.

Six years later, Raimi returned with "Evil Dead 2,"

a wildly creative remake of the first film.

With "Evil Dead 2" in particular,

I think Sam Raimi just said,

"You know what? Let's just go for it."

Let's just embrace the fun.

You're bitten by your girlfriend,

who's possessed, your hand's gonna get possessed,

so your hand's gonna attack you.

It was just a long, grueling sequence.

It's like, get the Three Stooges,

but give them a chainsaw...

And see what would happen.

Groovy.

If you're a movie-mad young guy in your early 20s

and you see "Evil Dead 2,"

and you see that shooting style,

it's like, "Well, what's the point

of ever shooting any movie not like that?"

- I know. - All right? That seemed like,

"Okay, a new shooting style has been developed,

and everything else looks old-fashioned by comparison."

Every single thing just seems

old-fashioned and dated

unless you're doing that.

"The Evil Dead" pitted a regular guy

against a horde of demons,

but what chance do you have

when you're up against Satan himself?

Christianity teaches

that Jesus Christ was the son of God,

born of mortal woman.

What if Satan decided that he too

would father a child?

In 1968, Roman Polanski's film "Rosemary's Baby"

explored the links between pregnancy, parenthood,

and demonic possession.

You're pregnant.

"Rosemary's Baby" is a really interesting film,

because, artistically, it's one of the best films

to come out in that era and probably ever.

- I'm Rosemary Woodhouse. - Uh, we're in 7E.

That movie made $30 million

back when movies didn't make $30 million,

not in their first run.

I mean, if a movie made $12 million, "Oh, wow."

- That's a huge hit. - That's a smash.

- It's a phenomenon. - It was a phenomenon.

And the devil had never been dealt with

in that realistic a form before.

It's a hugely important film,

because it's portraying a woman

at the height of second-wave feminism.

It also coincides with a rise in interest

in all kinds of alternative religions and occultism

that was happening in the '60s.

It was a period where there was, you know,

questioning, you know, God, the existence of God.

I think it was even on "Time" magazine,

you know, "Is God Dead?"

No, you're not religious, my dear, are you?

I was brought up a Catholic. Now I don't know.

In "Rosemary's Baby,"

the heroine is drugged by Satanists.

Then the devil literally enters her through rape.

- She's awake. She sees. - Can't see or hear.

She's like dead. Now sing.

Rosemary becomes pregnant with Satan's child.

This is no dream. This is really happening!

"Rosemary's Baby" was a possession movie.

It was about someone carrying the seed of Satan within her

and giving birth to Satan's child.

This is actually how Satan or his minions

can infest each of us

and draw out the evil within us.

It, to me, remains a metaphor

about domestic violence,

about emotional violence in relationships

between men and women,

largely inflicted by men onto women.

I didn't want to miss baby night.

You... while I was out?

And a couple of my nails were ragged,

and it was kind of fun in a necrophile sort of way.

When I saw "Rosemary's Baby" when I was very young,

I don't think I thought, "Oh, this is female consciousness,"

but obviously, there aren't that many movies

from within a young woman's point of view.

We know Polanski's guilty of all these things

in his personal life, but as a filmmaker,

he's incredibly sympathetic to the female point of view.

And the relationship between Rosemary

and her husband is fantastic.

John Cassavetes' amazing performance

as the desperate actor

who will do anything to get that big break.

Let's have a baby, all right?

Rosemary's very much the lovely,

submissive wife who is there to help her husband out,

and what that gets her

is getting impregnated by the devil.

Her husband basically sells her to Satan

in exchange for a Broadway hit.

Oh, I got the part.

It was a hell of a way to get it.

One of the things I really love about horror

and the nightmares that it touches on

are the idea of security and a stable, normal place

that turns out to be a place of danger,

or a person who seems to be a friendly person.

And, of course, one of the greatest things

in "Rosemary's Baby" is the neighbors.

The central figure in this patriarchal crush

is Ruth Gordon.

Hi there! We're not bothering you, are we?

I heard you come in. It certainly wasn't very long.

- Ta-da! - Who comes in with her

multicolored scarves and her accent

and delivers a series of death blows

to everything that poor Rosemary stands for.

- Here. - What is in it? Tannis root?

A little bit of that, a little bit some other things.

They're the kind of neighbors you kind of... all right...

You sort of want to avoid them...

- Yeah. - But you're nice to them.

- They're nosy... - They're harmless.

They're harmless, and that they are, you know,

essentially agents of the...

- of the devil. - The devil.

We're your friends, Rosemary.

There's nothing to be afraid of, Rosemary.

Honest and truly there isn't.

Another thing that I think young women

really can relate to in "Rosemary's Baby,"

- no one believes her. - One thing is for sure.

They have a coven, and they want my baby.

Certainly seems that way.

To me, there's no scarier moment in the movie

than when you realize her doctor is...

has turned on her.

That feeling of the person

that you've put your ultimate trust in,

like your obstetrician, this guy who's,

like, tending to your body and your femininity,

and he is handing you over to the satanists.

We're gonna go home and rest.

That's all it takes.

Nothing supernatural happens, actually,

for the entire course of the movie.

You know, she could just be paranoid.

She could be suffering from some weird pregnancy delusions.

What have you done to it?

What have you done to its eyes?

He has his father's eyes.

It's not until she actually says,

"What have you done to his eyes?"

that there is finally a physical manifestation

of what she's been talking about.

- God is dead! - Hail Satan!

Satan lives!

I made the mistake of showing it to my wife

after I got her impregnated.

Oh, God!

She's like, "I've never seen it."

"What? You've never seen 'Rosemary's Baby'?

We're watching 'Rosemary's Baby. ""

I didn't think about how weird

that might be for someone who was pregnant,

and it really played on her fears

that we were gonna have the antichrist as a child.

Uh, it was a bad call.

"Rosemary's Baby" is a movie

about the dark side of pregnancy.

Richard Donner's film "The Omen"

takes things one step further

with a violent vision of parents

at the mercy of the ultimate problem child:

the spawn of Satan.

When the Jews return to Zion

"and a comet fills the sky,

"the Holy Roman Empire rises,

and you and I must die."

Released in 1976, Richard Donner's film

"The Omen" revolves around every parent's secret fear:

that their sweet young child is a demon in disguise.

"The Omen" is the story of an American diplomat,

played by Gregory Peck,

who takes a child home from the hospital

that is not his own and sets up shop

and seems to have this beautiful life in England,

and then the whole thing starts to unravel,

and we discover that the child

is actually the son of the devil.

"The Omen" is like my hands-down

favorite horror movie.

It's intellectually a little bit above par

than the average thing you would watch

at the video store, right?

Right. It was a big-budget movie.

Richard Donner. It was a huge deal.

Yeah, and Gregory Peck is great in it.

Lee Remick's great in it.

So I just thought it hit on all... you know,

the quality was really high on all the different facets.

Gregory Peck in a horror movie.

That was kind of a big deal,

having an actor of his stature.

It was a '50s-era,

established older Hollywood legend

that was now appearing in this horror film,

and he gave it, along with Lee Remick,

gave it this patina of class.

Peck was going through a terrible time in his life.

His son was found dead.

He was so devastated,

and his agent said, "I got to get him out.

"I got to get him up on his feet.

I got to get him working."

We pitched him, "Greg, it's a strong mystery,

the suspense is incredible,

and on top of it, it's a thriller."

Damien, the adopted boy in "The Omen,"

does not seem to be aware that the devil is inside him,

but as he grows older,

Satan's agents begin infiltrating his life.

They send a sinister Rottweiler to protect him,

and, in an infamous scene,

they possess his nanny at his fifth birthday party.

- Look at me, Damien. - "Damien, this is for you."

- It's all for you. - Like...

she kills herself at the kid's party.

In "The Omen," we don't really know

that Damien is the antichrist.

Neither does Gregory Peck. It's not until somewhere

towards the beginning of the second half

that you really come to terms with the fact

that they're harboring the antichrist.

So the movie has a story to tell,

and then it's gonna be, "What do they do about it?"

They cast it well. They cast the son of the devil well.

- Mom! - Damien... stop!

When you can get, like, a good performance

out of children in a horror movie,

there's, like, nothing more effective.

There's just something inherently creepy about kids.

Even my own children,

if they wake me up in the middle of the night,

and they're just standing motionless next to the bed,

I'm briefly scared, and I made them.

Casting that child, we did one scene where I said,

"I'm gonna grab you, and you want to get away."

Grabbed this kid, went rolling,

and he kicked me in my privates...

Oh!

So hard that I just threw my hands up

and said, "Cut! Hire him."

Aaahh!

After Damien nearly kills his mother,

Peck's character searches for the boy's true parents.

His quest triggers an avalanche

of violence and death.

Aaah!

The spectacular staging of these scenes

is one of the reasons

"The Omen" is considered a horror classic.

I wasn't prepared for how scary it was gonna get.

Forget about the gore and everything.

That... didn't see that coming at all.

- You know, just the... - The dog, the music.

The Rottweilers surrounding them

in the graveyard was, like,

"Oh, my God, what's gonna happen?"

But then, the decapitations.

I mean, that just... that was very scary.

I never saw that coming.

At the end of the movie, we dropped the camera,

and it revealed the back of the kid,

which I was right behind the camera.

Kid turned and looked at me,

and he had this severe face on,

and I said, "Don't you smile. Don't you dare smile."

And he started to fight the smile,

and then he couldn't fight it anymore, and he kind of lit up.

It was like, blow up, the end of a movie.

Was this real? Am I really the devil?

Did this really happen? And it changed the whole movie.

I never had children. They scare the hell out of me.

At their core, possession movies are about

the fear of losing yourself,

of a demon taking control of your body and your mind.

I can't move.

In 2017, Jordan Peele's "Get Out"

took that idea and used it to hold a mirror up to America.

Good to see another brother around here.

A young black man meets another young black man.

Ah, yes. Of course it is.

But something is very wrong here.

Jordan Peele's "Get Out" is by turns a social satire

and a genuinely horrific tale of demonic possession,

but the demons here aren't from hell.

Get out.

Sorry, man.

Get out!

I love, love, love possession films.

- Hello. - Hi.

My mother used to do this thing to me,

play this little joke on me. Every now and then, I would go,

"Mom, Mom, can I get this candy?"

or whatever, and she would look at me,

and she'd go, "Mommy's not here anymore, Jordan,"

and I'd be like, "Don't do it," like, "Come on. Mom."

And she'd be like, "I'm serious. Mom isn't here."

- Who was she? - Right. That's the question.

That's the question I've never answered.

All I know is sometimes if there's too many white people,

I get nervous, you know?

"Get Out" is a possession film.

It is a possession film.

Instead of the devil possessing you,

it's literally the white devil possessing your body.

I'm into it.

Oh, no. No. No.

And there haven't been a lot of movies

that deal with race straight on in the genre space.

Do they know I'm black?

No.

And I wanted this movie to be,

"You can't do this movie with a white guy."

My dad would have voted for Obama a third time

if he could have. Like, the love is so real.

In a nutshell, it's a story of a black guy

who meets his white girlfriend's parents

and kind of gets more than what he's expecting, in a nutshell.

I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could.

Best president in my lifetime, hands down.

- I agree. - Yeah.

There is a genuine mystery going on

in the case of "Get Out." The audience knows,

okay, there's something weird about this family.

There is definitely something weird

about those black servants.

There's something weird about this whole damn place.

But exactly what, you don't know.

But now you're really watching,

because now you're watching a mystery.

Jordan Peele knows exactly what he's doing,

and we're gonna just have to wait for it.

Do you find that being African-American

has more advantage or disadvantage?

Being black in America,

there's certain dials you're sort of tuned into

to not walk into a - up situation.

I got hypnotized last night..

Get the out of here.

No, yo, yo, yeah, yeah, to quit smoking,

but Rose's mom's a psychiatrist, so...

Bro, I don't care if the bitch

is Iyanla Vanzant, okay?

She can't fix my life. You ain't getting in my head.

Chris always thinks he's got the situation in hand...

- Yes. - Because they're, like,

a bunch of white people. What are they gonna do?

We're kind of like, we can forgive him.

Oh, he's not being dumb.

Is he really going to jump to the conclusion

that this family is literally evil, physically threats?

Like, that's crazy.

Now... sink into the floor.

- Wait, wait, wait... - Sink.

The minute Chris is sent into the sunken place,

I realized that this movie was not just going to be scary

and not just going to be interesting

but also going to be important.

Because he created a metaphor

that now gives so many of us language to explain

what a state of suppression looks like and feels like.

Now you're in the sunken place.

When you're in the sunken place,

you can still see what's happening.

You're not unaware.

It's just that you feel there's nothing you can do about it.

Someone or something has taken control over you,

so therefore you're powerless, and it doesn't matter

what color, where you come from,

you can be in the sunken place just by not having a voice.

In a pivotal scene in "Get Out,"

we discover all the black people

Chris has met on the estate have been sold at auction.

Their bodies have been taken over by white people

who desire their youth and physicality.

They are trapped in the sunken place, yearning for freedom.

It's really a Trojan horse

for telling a much more important story.

Where the country is certainly helped propel

the success of "Get Out," and also made "Get Out"

a particularly important movie for its time

in a way that, you know, it wouldn't have been,

and, you know, I wish that that weren't true, but it is.

I mean, at the end of the day,

the movie is about how racism is horrifying.

It's the most horrific thing in our world today,

is just people just hating

other people for whatever reasons they do.

What is your purpose, Chris?

What?

- In life. - Is there a better statement

on race relations in America? I don't think so, you know?

And that's totally pushed the bar on satire and horror

and cut very deep,

at the same way is being entertaining.

And that's what genre movies do at their best,

especially great horror movies.

It gives you a way to discuss the undiscussable.

- Yes. - It gives you a context

to talk about subjects

that are just awful and painful for everyone...

- Yeah. - But you can put it

in the context of a scary movie,

whether it's a zombie movie, whether it's a "Get Out" movie,

and it's like you're suddenly allowed to talk about it.

And everybody needs it.

Even if it's not in the package of a horror movie,

everybody has this dark side that needs to be filled.

I mean, I told you not to go in that house.