Arguably more so than any other artistic medium, filmmaking revels in making the impossible seem possible. Visual effects, cinematography, and impeccable direction are glued together with raw determination to create everything from epic seafaring battles to dinosaurs from a bygone era — even the inside of a black hole, something that eludes scientists to this day, has been rendered on-screen and in IMAX for audiences to digest. We call it spectacle: an event or presentation that demands attention, that demands eyes at all times due to its striking visual impact. Something that has to be seen to be believed. It can be sought out in the attempt of creating something of artistic magnitude but…what’s the line? In an age where cameras and phones have ensured that anything can become visual entertainment, what happens when spectacle shouldn’t be captured? What about when it doesn’t want to be?
Jordan Peele’s Nope, only his third film after the remarkable success of Get Out launched him into the stratosphere, just might be his best. It’s an adrenaline shot to the veins, an unsettling contemporary tall tale that chews on bits and pieces of sci-fi and Western classics in order to craft something unique, cleverly entertaining, and shockingly visceral. Nope deserves to be seen in theaters, as it takes its place amongst this year’s most unmissable cinematic spectacles, all the while interrogating our culture’s very obsession with the concept.
Each of Peele’s films is imbued with a dark irony, and this one starts with a reminder. After a somber opening teases the carnage left behind on a television backlot by a bloodthirsty chimpanzee (the star of a late ‘90s sitcom named Gordy’s Home), the film introduces us to animal wranglers OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and his father (Keith David), the owner of Haywood Hollywood Horses. Despite OJ’s family being descendants of the unnamed Black horse jockey who appeared in the very first “motion picture,” the ranch is close to failing financially, and there’s certainly some unfortunate humor in the fact that OJ’s father is killed moments into the film by a quarter hurtling through his face from the sky. OJ keeps the coin, a reminder to both him and the audience of the callousness of fame and the industry that decides who’s deserving of it.
On the other hand, OJ’s sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) is enamored with the idea of fame and success, and the dichotomy between her extroversion and her brother’s introversion is on clear display when the two of them are hired as wranglers on a film gig that quickly goes south. Palmer’s Emerald is a charismatic go-getter, energy always at 13, whereas OJ is arguably Kaluuya at his most stoic — trying to hide his sorrow at his father’s passing while also juggling his desperate attempts at salvaging the family’s meager legacy. The strained relationship between the two siblings forms the emotional backbone of the film, and it’s one of the movie’s greatest strengths, along with the warm comedic chemistry both leads share.
There’s a definite respect and kinship between OJ and his family’s horses, which brings him into the orbit of Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), a former child star turned carnival owner who has bought most of Haywood’s horses. Jupe is the lucky star of the infamous sitcom teased in the film’s prologue, and there’s a far-away look in his eyes when explaining the event that lets us know he’s still there, at least mentally. Jupe has witnessed front and center a dark cultural infatuation with the Gordy’s Home incident, and he’s one of the film’s most fascinating characters, serving as a conduit for the script’s interrogation of society’s obsession with horrific tragedies.
Of course, Nope isn’t a movie about a chimp — it’s about a UFO, and that’s precisely what OJ sees in the skies above his home one night while trying to lead one of the horses back to the ranch. Ominous, unsettling, and deeply foreboding, the UFO is just as much a part of the film’s main cast as anyone else, casting a long shadow (literally) over the narrative and drawing attention to its own unfathomable terror. When OJ and Emerald try to capture evidence of the phenomenon on video, they enlist the help of Angel Torres (Brandon Perea), a local tech salesman, as well as Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), a world-famous cinematographer, and once again Peele’s signature irony rears its head, morphing from a movie about aliens into a movie about a group of below-the-line hopefuls trying to make a movie of their own (don’t worry though, it’s still about aliens).
There’s a real, primal terror in Nope that’s not quite found in Get Out and Us; while one is a Hitchcockian thriller that opens the door into white suburbia, and the other disguises itself as a thriller before eagerly veering into a gonzo slasher paying homage to the great cinematic oddities of the ‘80s, Nope invites audiences to probe and interrogate the central mystery in the skies before smashing them with a stomach-churning answer, whether you like it or not. What frequent Peele collaborator Hoyte van Hoytema does with a camera here is simply remarkable, employing a unique visual language that uses stunning wides and brutally claustrophobic close-ups to horrific effect. You could write an entire essay about Hoytema’s use of negative space to inspire dread, and there will certainly be more than a few viewers with shredded nerves who will look at the sky in horror after leaving the theater.
Although Nope is decidedly less forthcoming about its social themes than Peele’s directorial debut, they’re still present as always, hidden behind the specter of a threat that can block out the sky. In making a movie that’s sort of about the culture of filmmaking, the script ties together disparate ideas of industry exploitation and the commodification of trauma in order to pose a question to its curious audience: why? Why are we so fascinated by the horror around us? Why can’t we let the unknown simply remain unknown? By wrapping these questions up in the veneer of a mysterious sci-fi horror blockbuster, Peele probes our minds and fills our eyes simultaneously, turning up the dial with each unsettling setpiece before driving it all home with a third act that’s so spectacularly crafted that any aliens monitoring Earth right now might be inclined to see it in IMAX for themselves. “What’s a bad miracle?” The movie never gets around to answering its own question, but one thing is certain: if someone were to ask the opposite, the answer would be a resounding Nope.
