Nope - Movie Review

Critics Score - 8 of 10

General Audience Score - 8 of 10

I used to be a movie trailer junkie. As soon as the latest trailer would drop for a Marvel, Pixar, alien, sci-fi or pretty much any other kind of film, I’d be all over it. But the older I get, the more value and also the more fun I find in knowing as little as possible, at least for the films I know I’m going to see. After Get Out and Us, Jordan Peele has locked himself in as this generation’s M. Night Shyamalan and I know, no matter what his next few projects are, I will watch them no matter what trailers come out or what they show me. Peele’s new film Nope is flying into theatres this weekend and this is a shining example of a film I wish I’d seen and knew as little as possible about before setting foot in that theatre. Don’t watch any trailers if you haven’t yet. As a matter of fact, don’t read the synopsis of this review, unless you’re on the fence that this is a film for you. Peele clearly has the hang of the intellectual suspense and horror genre, his use of tone through the film really shows a great deal of command. His ability to turn the knobs and adjust the dials of tension and dread shows a truly impressive amount of control over his craft. But Universal gave away too much in the trailers, too many of the plot points can be deduced from the marketing material, I felt like I’d already watched most of the film I was seeing while I was watching it, which severely dampened any shock value. With that being said, in my humble opinion, while his latest is highly entertaining and well crafted, if you were to ask me if this offering surpasses either of his other two films, the simple answer is, Nope. 

SYNOPSIS - This alien probing adventure begins with some cryptic biblical text from Nahum 3:6 stating, “I will cast abominable filth at you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle.” We then see a creatively curious opening sequence of a shoe standing straight up on the floor of a TV studio set, we see a body lying beside it partially obscured by a couch as the camera pans backwards. We hear some banging before a chimpanzee eventually emerges with it’s hands and mouth covered in blood and wearing a party hat, he rips the hat off and stares at the camera right before the scene cuts. More on this later. Then we go to a small horse farm in the rolling hills of California, somewhere north of Los Angeles. In this more than one horse town, we meet OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya), a horse rancher who works alongside his father Otis (Keith David) and his fast-talking sister Emerald (Keke Palmer). They work on the outskirts of Hollywood and make a living lending horses to movie studios for films like The Scorpion King and other industry commercials. The Haywood’s claim to fame being that OJ and Emerald’s great grandfather was in the first moving picture, some photos stitched together of a black man riding a horse.

After the shy OJ and outspoken Emerald take a horse to shoot a commercial, we begin to sneak a peek at the chemistry that Kaluuya and Palmer share as brother and sister, they have some truly delightful moments on screen together. While Kaluuya is a terrific actor in his own right and coming off last year’s Oscar win, I felt his work in Nope was a tier lower than in Get Out and certainly from that in Judas And The Black Messiah. Within the first few minutes of the film, even before the commercial sequence, is when some mysterious events start happening back on the ranch. While OJ is outside watching his father Otis riding a horse, some small metal objects begin plummeting down from the sky. The sound design here is impressive, we hear a sound in between metal screeching and a human scream and then things start striking the ground, but we’re not sure if it’s hail. Then a house key strikes and sticks into the the backside of the horse and a nickel hits Otis in the head. We watch as he wobbles, then falls off the horse and OJ subsequently rushes him to the emergency room, blood splattering on the truck window. This event kicks off a chain of events that leads OJ, his sister and a surveillance camera installer named Angel (Brandon Torres) down the rabbit hole of flying horses, dust devil tornados and an old timey western theme park featuring Steven Yeun’s character in a delightful Wild West getup.

Jordan Peele as a director is unequivocally a master of modern horror and with both of his previous entries knocking on the door of being masterpieces or close to it, it’s easy to label Nope as his weakest film of the trio. What was almost surprising is how much action this film had to complement the suspense. The film uses the word Nope throughout and it was a little fun but one use was absolutely laugh out loud fantastic. Otherwise the humor that the film attempts wasn’t on point, I chuckled a couple times but ultimately I found his other films to hit the nail more on the head as far as it’s attempts to be funny. Humor is subjective, I laughed hysterically for Thor Love And Thunder (which many hated Taika’s humor in) but I found many of Nope’s attempts at humor to fall flat, while some in my theater laughed. Go figure. As I mentioned previously, Peele’s use of tone is excellent, but again, not quite as good as his other films. Throughout the film we’re constantly on our toes however we’re rarely jumping out of our shoes. There’s not sustained levels of scary reminiscent of Us, but it resides in that median area of unease, creepy and unsettling that Get Out had on lock down. Narratively, the screenwriting is good, but some plot pieces are left unresolved and I feel like Steven Yeun’s character was more or less wasted. The opening sequence of the bloody monkey I mentioned earlier, it blends well tonally with the film but doesn’t serve the final story at all, just an anomalous backstory that leaves the viewer with irrelevant questions at the conclusion. Unfortunately the film is somewhat predictable, despite the originality present in the ways Peele handles the UFO subject matter. I was able to deduce the function of one of the main props the film uses, they were splashed all over the trailers, without much contemplation. The original score by Michael Abels, the man who previously worked with Peele on the Us and Get Out scores is back and doing some great work with the music and sounds for this film. I’m giving Nope an 8 out of 10, I was teetering on a high 7 but I think it crept over the threshold to an 8.0 because in the end, it’s not the film’s fault that most of the story was handed out to anyone that watched the trailers.

SUMMARY - Don’t get me wrong. At the end of the day critics and general audiences alike will have a really good time and be entertained through the entirety of Nope’s two plus hour runtime, as I was. My interest never waned and I enjoyed most of the elements that Peele brought to the table, but this film is a prime example of why I avoid movie trailers like the plague whenever possible. When asked if you want to see the next Peele film’s trailer, just say . . . maybe later.