In the sky above a dusty ranch outside of LA, something, or someone, is watching. A mysterious presence, an entity from another world. It appears briefly, like a smudged oval shape in a UFO photo, and occasionally rains down earthly debris, like someone wanting the contents of a heavenly handbag.
Coins, keys, pieces of plastic and general detritus fall from the sky; you want to see that nothing sharp hits you.
In writer-director Jordan Peele’s first two films, Get Out and Us, plots involving doppelgangers and body swaps showed us that the world is a false front, hiding deadly dangers and dystopian conspiracies. In Nope, the Californian sky turns into a celestial Loch Ness, and people turn their cameras around, trying to catch evidence of the sinister thing lurking behind its clouds, or beyond the horizon.
Getting the money, however, proves to be a life-ending event for some.
Peele’s 2017 debut Get Out won a slew of awards, including an Oscar for best screenplay. (Provided: Universal Studios)
Like Peele’s previous films, the tone of Nope mixes internet urban legend, gallows humor and an appetite for straight political criticism. It’s also wrapped in a widescreen cinematic package that’s the most visually accomplished yet, harkening back to the blockbusters of the 70s and 80s.
The ranch where the UFO appears belongs to an African-American family that trains horses for Hollywood. His patriarch (Keith David) is killed by the entity early in the film, leaving his modest but diligent son OJ (an excellent Daniel Kaluuya, who reunites with Peele after his featured role in Get Out) and his prodigal, fast-talking daughter. Me (a lovely Keke Palmer) to get the business going.
It’s not about “the human addiction to spectacle and the monetization of it,” Peele said at the film’s Hollywood premiere. (Provided: Universal Studios)
They recruit big-box tech store sales clerk Angel (a well-parted Brandon Perea, channeling minimum-wage fatigue) to install an elaborate off-the-shelf security camera system in his home, to keep an eye on the skies . It’s the kind of DIY bent you’d expect from the suburban hero of a 1970s Spielberg blockbuster: squint and Nope could be the love child of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
It doesn’t quite maintain the intensity of those classics, but on the other hand, it’s trying to say a lot more.
Running through the mystery thriller are questions of seeing and what it means to be seen, fitting for a film that is set on the outskirts of a town synonymous with spectacle and also talks about people of color.
OJ and Em claim an ancestry that links them to one of the earliest surviving film clips: a set of frames that constitute a kind of protogif, taken in 1887 by photographer Eadweard Muybridge, in which a black jockey rides a galloping horse in perpetual motion. . The idea that they are direct descendants of one of the film’s pioneering performers (whose name was never recorded) is presented with some irony in the film.
Peele met Keke Palmer (pictured) in 2013 when she guest starred on Key and Peele, his comedy series with comedian Keegan-Michael Key. (Provided: Universal Studios)
On set, historical pedigree doesn’t mean special treatment or even much respect, as Peele observes in a superbly directed scene where OJ shows up for a TV commercial shoot. As technicians scramble to set up a shot of OJ’s horse, oblivious to the animal’s growing anxiety, Peele adds a touch of farce with an exchange between a delicate female star and an exhausted assistant. The scene cuts to OJ’s point of view amid the commotion as he tries to keep the animal calm, but despite his best efforts someone spooks the horse, with disastrous consequences.
This isn’t the first time an animal has gone mad in a movie.
Nope’s most disturbing sequence is a cryptic flashback that occurs early on and returns later, where a chimpanzee goes ballistic during the filming of an 1980s sitcom. Here, Peele uses the point of view of a Korean American child actor hidden under a table to obscure our full view of the bloody carnage, heightening the suspense and terror. That kid, years later, ends up living next door to OJ and Em, running a western-themed amusement park (played by a Stetson-wearing Steven Yeun).
In 2021, South Korean-born Steve Yeun (pictured) became the first Asian American to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for Minari. (Provided: Universal Studios)
How this gruesome backstory relates to the mystery of the alien visitation is something Peele leaves the audience to ponder. But the notion of trauma, and how it reverberates through the lives of these characters, is a central concern.
In all this, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema (Dunkirk; Tenet), shooting in widescreen celluloid, brings a sense of momentum and rhythm, offering smooth images of horse rides and aerial acrobatics against the vast landscape in starlight and bright sun.
Several people descend these hills with different agendas, including a slightly crazy and tired cinematographer (Michael Wincott) who shows up with his wind film camera, invigorated by the idea of capturing a never-before-seen image. Hiding under a camouflage strap, the hand vigorously turns the camera crank, a portrait of clenched-jawed determination and manic intensity.
The rush and movement of the film as it builds is impressive, even when the narrative canvas seems to contract once the object in the sky is revealed and a CGI entity replaces what we had shaped in our imaginations.
Peele’s layers of themes and ideas, which aren’t always coherent, but form a thought-provoking, multifaceted critique, take second place to a popcorn thrill ride of high stakes and punchy action.
Peele cites the Japanese sci-fi animated action film Akira and the anime television series Neon Genesis Evangelion as influences for Nope. (Provided: Universal Studios)
Once the dust has settled, however, Nope’s best moments involve the horror of filmmaking. Its funniest and most confrontational revelations occur on set, whether through the perspective of the Korean American child star or Kaluuya’s horse-fighting, and are tied to the absurd excesses and nightmarish overflows of the industry
The central idea of the UFO chase is obviously an extension of this theme. But the metaphor of voyeurism and spectacle, however well-staged, creeps into exaggeration.
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To be fair, Peele does use it to raise important questions about where to draw certain ethical lines. What is the difference between representation and exploitation, between opportunism and collaboration? In an age when issues of representation are central to public discussion of film and television, especially in the US, the film feels like a substantial contribution.
But as a horror film about cinema, its most radical idea is that we should put down that camera. Sometimes. Lest we become monsters.
It’s not in theaters now.
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