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It’s been remarkable to watch the emergence of Jordan Peele as a writer-director over the last six years, beginning with the smash hit Get Out (2017) which he won an Oscar for best original screenplay. This was followed by Us (2019), which explored many deep themes of systemic oppression, the duality of human nature, and privilege inside a horror movie. Visually, Us was a flexing of Peele’s filmmaking muscles, a trend that continues in Nope, his most visually impressive-looking movie to date. After two heady horror films, Peele set out to make Nope a spectacle movie, and in many ways, it is. Shot by Hoyte van Hoytema, Nope features some of the best nighttime scenes I’ve seen in movies.
Nope is pretty complicated but not impossible to decipher. I can best describe it as a thinking person’s blockbuster, a welcome relief these days. The film stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as brother-sister horse farmers for Hollywood, taking over for their recently deceased father, played by the legendary Keith David. Describing the plot is challenging because the film is about a bizarre set of spectacles and is a commentary on the nature of horror, tragedy, and exploitation. Amplified in Steven Yeun’s Ricky “Jupe” Park, a former child actor who bore witness to a horrifying event on a children’s television show involving a chimpanzee named Gordy who maimed his costars on the set of a sitcom (a truly eerie sequence) that left him unharmed. He exploits his past and runs an amusement show called Jupiter’s Claim. The film revolves around discovering Unidentified Flying Objects and how they’re sucking animals and people up and spitting out the inorganic matter. To further elaborate would be to ruin the many complexities of the film.
The performances are fantastic, led by a wonderfully subdued Daniel Kaluuya as Otis “OJ”, who doesn’t have to say much to convey a sense of world-weariness. He doesn’t have to say much because it’s Keke Palmer’s turn as Em to have the talking part. That’s her role in the duo, and she’s fantastic at it. They present themselves as professional service for horses used in movies and television, a proud past. The film references Eadweard Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion, “the very first assembly of photographs used to create a motion picture,” which happens to feature a black man riding a horse. Steven Yeung as Jupe is another central character in the film, and it’s good to see Yeung get some really good roles post-Walking Dead. Also turning up is Michael Wincott (!) from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves fame as cinematographer Antlers Holst, whom OJ and Em recruit to film the UFO, which has become a regular presence over their farm.
Peele’s film feels like it was made in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the unending cycle of dread and panic that it provided. Nope is about dread, and the film is a slow burn that eventually climaxes with several frighteningly original sequences. What also got me was the social commentary of commenting on spectacle and how we react to spectacle. The characters in the film see these occurrences as opportunities to profit from. This continues Peele’s trend of writing films questioning Capitalism and the morality of seeing everything as an opportunity for fame.
There’s a lot to unpack in Nope but that makes it all the more rewarding. I appreciated it more on the second viewing recently. I saw it back in the Summer but to be honest I had trouble forming an opinion on it. Perhaps I was a bit too stoned or just unfocused that day. Us had a similar effect on me as well.
The reward with Peele is always there though. Each film he’s made has become more unique and ambitious. There’s even a Spielbergian sense of awe to the alien revelations, while also recalling some of the horrors of Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. We get a terrifying inside view of the aliens sucking these humans up. The UFOs in the film are unlike any I’ve seen in another film before. I can’t recommend this enough for cinema enthusiasts. It’s worth the dive even if it requires multiple viewings.
***1/2 out of ****
