“Nope” is a Horror of Spectacle

What feeds humanity’s morbid curiosities?

WARNING: This review contains spoilers. 

In 2017, Jordan Peele emerged into the world of directing with his wildly successful film Get Out, allowing audiences to experience the largely unexplored world of social horror. In 2019, Peele perfected his craft with Us, providing viewers with another example of this newly emerging genre, this time with elevated metaphors and an incredibly satisfying climax. Peele initiated a string of directors attempting to critique social conventions and horrify audiences, but most of these knockoff-Peele films have been widely received as wholly unsuccessful. Now, Peele returns with his most enigmatic and ambiguous story yet, a classic flying-saucer sci-fi that examines the extent of human dominance in relation to the natural world. 

While I saw Nope weeks ago, I hadn’t found myself able to put the film into words until now. It is a massive movie to unpack with an immense and daunting scale. Nope’s budget was over four times that of Us and fifteen times that of Get Out, meaning this was his first real opportunity to create a blockbuster spectacle - and he did not disappoint. 

Peele does an incredible job of conceptualizing a series of alarming sights, from mysterious falling debris to the pinnacle of human agony, and he strings them together flawlessly. The eclectic series of events never feels disjointed or disorienting and is partly supported by the stunning cinematography and editing. Nope’s entire cast never misses a beat - Daniel Kaluuya seems like an unstoppable force of decade-defining performances, and Keke Palmer’s comic relief position never undermines either the severity of the plot or her incredible talent as a dramatic actor.

Nope’s ambiguity makes it harder to pinpoint a specific metaphor to it than in Peele’s other movies. Its commentary about human dominance/nature is the most apparent and acute, but the movie also grapples with our desensitization to the most sinister acts on earth and our morbid curiosity and perhaps inability to look away from them. 

The story follows Hollywood animal wranglers OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer), whose family has been involved in the industry since the birth of film. They are becoming quickly dismayed with the increasing reliance on the digital aspects of filmmaking. Using real horses is becoming more of a hassle than digitally recreating them - filmmakers want to disguise human-created interpretations of nature as reality. OJ, the character who is the most communicative and in touch with the natural world, realizes that his best shot to regain business is to try and capture footage of the UFO that is frequently appearing around his rural California property. Now, he is capturing unbelievable reality, showing audiences something real that has never before been seen. 

As the UFO captures humans and brutally digests them, the characters slowly begin to grapple with the extent of their “capturing” project. Can you genuinely capture something without posing harm to it? The character of Jupe (Steven Yuen) exists at the forefront of this conundrum. As a child, he starred in a beloved sitcom that met a tragic end when its chimpanzee star, Gordy, brutally attacked everyone on set - except Jupe. Now, he profits off this tragedy and seems driven to defeat the UFO as a kind of revenge against nature. However, this sense of conquest undermines the reason Gordy spared him in the first place. 

Nope’s most animalistic characters are the ones with no concern for the natural world - Peele tells us that we lose our humanity when our interest lies in profit rather than our environment. The life around us isn’t there to be conquered, and it can digest us just as easily as falling coins slice through loose desert sand.

OVERALL SCORE: 10/10

Nope was released on July 22, 2022 and is currently in US theaters and streaming on demand.