Warning: massive spoilers from Get Out are in play. If you don't want to be spoiled, bookmark this piece and come back to us when you're current.
Jordan Peele's Get Out is, quite frankly, a triumph of storytelling. Not only is it a visually stunning film, with well-placed moments of humor that help advance the film's cause, it also has some interesting usage of foreshadowing throughout the entire film. But in particular, there are five gigantic clues to the fates of our five central characters that are laid out in Act I, only to completely unfurl in Act III.
The Ending
After two acts of mounting panic, Chris discovers the truth about the Armitage family: they've been transplanting their wealthy white friends into young, healthy black bodies. This is all thanks to the entire family playing their part in Grandpa Armitage's special process known as "The Coagula," in which the subject is conditioned, and ultimately subverted, by the personality of the transplanted brain tissue. But Chris, in a fit of crafty behavior, starts to pick members of the family off one by one, and in thematically appropriate ways foretold by the film's dialogue and soundtrack.
Clue 1: Music And Pastries
Right from the opening of the film, Get Out lays down its mental tracks to lead you, the audience, down the path to its twisted finale. And this first giveaway comes from a particularly inspired music choice, complete with accompanying visuals. While we see Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) shaving in the mirror, Rose is seen at the bakery, sizing up the pastries that she'll eventually choose to take home. All the while, Childish Gambino's "Redbone" is playing through this sequence, with the following passage in particular warranting notice:
But stay wokeNiggas creepin'They gon' find youGon' catch you sleepin
The song has a very paranoid vibe, which plays as if the song is warning Chris he's in danger while his girlfriend is choosing pastries. Because he too has been chosen towards a more nefarious end.
Clue 2: Jeremy's Obsession With Fighting
During the first dinner between Chris and the Armitage family in Get Out, Jeremy (Caleb Landry Jones) starts to size Chris's fighting prowess. This is done through asking whether he's into MMA fights, if he'd ever gotten into street fights as a kid and almost ends with Jeremy demonstrating a headlock on Chris at dinner. Right from the get go, Jeremy is a total creeper who's interested in physical strength, maintaining that with the right training, Chris could be a total beast.
As it turns out, Chris is quite the beast when put up against the wall, and his finishing move on Jeremy looks and feels like the end of an MMA fight. If MMA fighters are allowed to stomp each other out in the ring, that is. Still, a beast is what Jeremy wanted, and a beast is what Jeremy got. He should be thrilled he was allowed to die fighting.
Clue 3: Dean's Hatred Of Deer
Dean Armitage (Bradley Whitford) is not shy to let people know that he hates deer. In fact, he thinks that one dead deer is "a good start," and the way he talks about them almost sounds like he's using deer as a substitute for a certain ethnicity that the Armitage family has been having problems with since the Munich Olympics. The connection could be deepened when you realize that Chris's trauma over the female deer hit towards the beginning of the film reminds him of his mother, another victim of a hit and run.
Seeing Dean impaled by a deer's antlers, at the hands of Chris, almost feels like the "deer" becoming the hunter, as the kill not only shows him besting his captor, but also, in a sense, getting revenge for the deer that died at the hands of Rose. So, I guess, this means that the first dead Armitage in Chris's rampage of justice is, indeed, a good start.
Clue 4: Missy's Study
Be careful around Get Out's Missy Armitage (Catherine Keener), because if she gets into your head, you're sunk! Chris learns this the hard way, as her hypnotic powers lull our protagonist into his "sunken place," a state of mind where he is basically locked in his mind. This leaves his mind free to any suggestions Missy wants to plant in there, and she does just that - more than likely causing him to have an aversion to tea cups and spoons. The study is her center of power, and from there she rules supreme.
At least, she did...until Chris broke the tea cup, leaving her powerless. While she may have put a letter opener through his hand, he put that same opener through her eye. While the method isn't as direct a correlation as cutting her with the tea cup would have been, taking Missy down in her domain is still pretty appropriate, as the room that she's molded so many minds in has ultimately become the place where she lost hers for good.
Clue 5: Chris's Shotgun Fears
Oh Rose. Dear, dear Rose Armitage (Allison Williams). You were the one we hoped would make it out clean from all of this mess, but some of us still suspected you from the moment you walked into frame. One moment, you're lying in bed with Chris, listening to his fears about your family chasing him off the lawn with a shotgun, and the next you're allowing your father and brother to do some unnecessary surgery on him while you scout NCAA players to bring home.
But, as we stated before, every member of the nuclear Armitage family meets a fitting end, and Rose is no exception. Not only is she the one with the shotgun pursuing Chris through the tail end of the movie, but she dies due to taking a shell to the gut thanks to "Walter," the gardener/vessel for her grandfather's consciousness. Chris promised not to leave you, but trying to help your family sell off your boyfriend changes things. Which makes his walking away from Rose in her final moments of life all the more fitting, closing Jordan Peele's horror masterpiece with an ultimate sense of ending.
