Get Out (2017)

Tell a skeptic it's a horror movie and they'll groan; tell them it's about meeting your girlfriend's parents for the first time and they'll lean in. Jordan Peele's debut starts as an excruciatingly awkward weekend upstate and tightens into a thriller, with enough laughs along the way that it never feels punishing. It rewards attention without demanding it, and the final act plays like a crowd cheering at a ballgame. Peele won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, the first Black writer to win that category. Expect some violence near the end.