Black photographer Chris Washington reluctantly agrees to meet the family of his white girlfriend, Rose Armitage. During their drive to the family’s countryside estate, they hit a deer. After calling 9-1-1, the white policeman that arrives at the scene asks for Chris’s identification, despite the fact that Chris was not the one driving. Rose intervenes and the incident goes unrecorded.
At the house, Rose’s brother Jeremy and their parents, neurosurgeon Dean and hypnotherapist Missy, make discomfiting comments about black people. Chris witnesses strange behavior from the estate’s black workers, housekeeper Georgina and groundskeeper Walter. Unable to sleep, Chris goes outside to smoke a cigarette and sees Walter sprinting on the grounds while Georgina prowls through the house. Missy pressures Chris into a hypnotherapy session to cure his smoking addiction. In a trance, he recounts the death of his mother in a hit-and-run when he was a child, expresses guilt, and sinks into a void Missy calls the “sunken place”. The next morning, he assumes the encounter was a dream, but cigarettes now repulse him.
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Stephen Root, Lakeith Stanfield, Lil Rel Howery, Catherine Keener
