Kevin Lau

A bit meandering with most of the first half feeling like it's being motivated more by world building than character, but the second half gets back into the groove of staying consistently compelling with fun sprinkled along the way.

This being so popular might be one of the best things to happen to pop culture. Yeah, it's an easy read that's meant to be fast paced, really catering to the ADHD mindset, BUT, woven through its silly premise and low-brow humor are great characters learning to hold onto their humanity in times of uncertain doom. Empathy fuels this book, and I can't wait to see it further explored.

Get Out is undoubtedly a 5/5 film with a 5/5 screenplay, but I'm knocking half a star off due to the presentation here. I would imagine that the main reason someone would pick up a screenplay book like this, which includes annotations by Jordan Peele explaining his writing decisions, is to learn how a script is written. This book commits a disservice to those readers by changing the screenplay format into a theatre script. Maybe it's due to making it easier to format (there's stills from the movie integrated throughout the book), or maybe it's simplifying the presentation for readers who would find it too challenging to read a properly formatted script, but I think it hurts both the lifespan and novelty of the book. If someone wants to learn how to write a screenplay from this book, they're not going to learn anything substantial here if it's the first script they've read.

That said, the actual content of the book is fantastic. Not only for the aforementioned annotations making economical use of its small space, but Tananarive Due's essay opening the book does an amazing job setting the tone of why Get Out is important enough to be printed and held in your hands. It's great memorabilia if you love the film and a great read if you're an intermediate writer. For novice writers, I would look for a PDF of the actual script.