Like comedy, horror has an ability to provoke thought and further the conversation on real social issues in a very powerful way.
I look at racism as one of the social demons. And, in its worst, it's violent and it's a systemic commitment to oppression.
The scariest monster in the world is human beings and what we are capable of, especially when we get together.
Sometimes blessings come in strange packages.
We need to break boundaries, so every time I feel like, "Oh snap, oh my God, I don't know how this is gonna be received," I also feel this validation, like, "All the greats, all my favorites have felt this."
A greater truth that I think we are faced with on a day-to-day basis as minorities is: We are the color of skin first and people second.
With a horror movie, you're making a metaphor. You're making a personalized nightmare for the protagonist.
I can fathom anything, man. I love biting off more than I can chew and figuring it out.
The conversation about race is inevitable. It's one that people know that we have to have and continue to have.
How we act with each other really reveals our most animal instincts.
If it's comedy, you taken an absurd comedic notion and you apply it to reality. If it's horror, if it's a thriller, you do the same thing.
There might be some sinister modern form of slavery going on.
I just think racism is within each and every one of us. It's everyone's responsibility to figure out how they deal with this kind of obsolete instinct.
I think that human beings are the most awful monster we have ever seen.
For me, the social thriller is the thriller in which the fears, the horrors, and the thrills are coming from society. They're coming from the way humans interact.
I've been very lucky to have a family who has welcomed me and not been hung up on anything racial, almost overlooking the fact that there was a racial difference. But I can honestly say I do feel like I missed out on some lessons of what the African-American experience is like growing up.
When people get together, we are capable of the most beautiful, amazing things. But we are also capable of genocide.
You hear it said time and time again by successful directors: You have to make a movie for yourself. Don't make it for anyone else. My style of filmmaking happens to be give the audience what they know they don't want, but they want. Ultimately I have to write and direct in a way that let's just say, you don't want to regret making a choice.
I didn't know my father very well; I only met him a few times.
I'd been taught from an early age that I was in the other category on the standardized tests. You know, I had to go down the checklist - Caucasian, African-American, Latino, Asian-Pacific Islander, and then, you know, at the bottom is other. So, you know, very early on I was taught, in a way, that I was somehow this anomaly.
I was raised that emotion was a good thing.
We can convince ourselves to do things in conjunction with one another that we wouldn't have been able to do as an individual.
'Get Out' takes on the task of exploring race in America, something that hasn't really been done within the genre since 'Night of the Living Dead' 47 years ago.
Race is a universal flaw in humanity. So yes, I've been in many situations where I've felt like the outsider because of the color of my skin.
Certainly, black horror movie fans have, you know, been particularly vocal. I mean, there's the whole Eddie Murphy routine about, you know, black people in a horror movie wouldn't last very long. Right? They just walk in - you hear get out. Too bad we can't stay, baby.
