Nope (2022)

I often find writer/director Jordan Peele's approach to film making is like and "elevated Twilight Zone" style where he tells us a juicy, chilling tale that explores some odd corner of our nightmares while planting the seeds of reflection about our culture into that narrative but in a way that allows them to slowly bloom into our consciousness, never hitting us over the head with them. With Nope he continues this tradition, taking a story we are all familiar with, the UFO trope, and transforming it into a meditation on the human folly of attempting to dominate nature and pursue spectacle, all while narrating his gory and spooky story that is gripping and satisfying. 

And like in his previous films, Peele draws out incredible performances from his cast. Kaluuya is magnetic to watch as he portrays his introverted OJ whose interior world is all playing out behind his incredible eyes. But for me it was Keke Palmer who dazzles as the extroverted Emerald, whose character is explosive and incredibly charismatic while also complex. Palmer reveals so much of who Emerald is through both her line delivery and her body's presence in each scene, taking up the spaces around her while he character's brother sinks into the shadows in her wake. 

Peele uses three interconnected story lines to explore his themes here. At first the pieces didn't align (sign of good story building) with one specifically tangential other than to provide some back story for one of the less central characters. But as the final act played out I began to see the threads they were each tying together. Each story explores the human foolishness in believing we exercise dominion over nature or animals in genera, as well as the accelerant nature of of entertainment for profit. Peele sets his story in a fantasy cowboy tableau. This is Hollywood, or at least Hollywood adjacent, and people pretend to be cowboys, a symbol representing the domination of a continent, the domination of land and people. But it is all pretend and the characters must learn to integrate what they have been taught about respecting the power of nature to survive and when they don't the consequences are terrible. 

Peele makes a bold choice to show a little more than I thought he would. There are scenes which explicitly explore those consequences which are quite disturbing but they do remain rather brief and often off camera slightly. The film's gore is mostly suggested but it is felt. It is very much felt. 

Nope does follow the typical horror film trope of which of the heroes survive til the end and defeat the "monster" but this is a tool he uses to get into the meat of his story. He sets up each of this payoffs earlier in the film so nothing feels like it comes out of nowhere. At some point you do start to figure out where it is going and the film doesn't surprise by the end but I was willing to role with that due to the film sticking to its mission in the final moments. The end shot confirms that perhaps we've only learned so much and won't be able to change who we are. An unsettling notion indeed. 

Nope

Starring: Keke Palmer, Daniel Kaluuya, Steven Yeun, Brandon Perea, Michael Wincott, Keith David

Writer/Director: Jordan Peele