Nope

Nope

Writer & Director – Jordan Peele

2022, USA-Japan

Stars – Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Brandon Perea

On the Brain Rot podcast, director Mick Garris says “I think we’re in a really good place because diversity had become important to getting films made.”; and on the Evolution of Horror podcast, Tananarive Due says how she doesn’t think themes of the black experience can be shoved back in the horror box, post-‘Get Out’. ‘Get Out’ being a game-changing breakout hit that touched the nerve of race relations but did so through the lens of appropriation rather than red neck racism. It was smart, funny and recognisable in its “Don’t Go There!” narrative: it wasn’t difficult. Peele’s second film, ‘Us’, was more of a mess, going from home-invasion though spookhouse to conspiracy horror. Whereas ‘Get Out’ was admirable for its stripped-down precision, ‘Us’ was enjoyable for its anything-goes and everything-in gusto, even if it didn’t quite gel. And he’s good at this stuff: his Key & Peele sketch “White Zombies” is a favourite. In ‘Nope’, the social commentary concerning race is there, but it is arguably more contextual and cultural rather than the thematic engine. Diversity is finding interesting niches in the tropes of genre.

 

Just to mention that the trailers for ‘Nope’ were good at teasing without giving it all away (the ‘Us’ tailer was awful).  And ‘Nope’s slower, smouldering pace seems to have left many wanting, or lingering wondering if they enjoyed the film or not. Both Peele’s previous films had a key flaw in that the story stopped for exposition. ‘Nope’ doesn’t have that and is all the better for letting the audience put the information together. For example, it doesn’t quite spell out that the objects falling from the sky is non-digestible UFO shit, but we get the gag. It is the kind of conclusion you can imagine two pals coming to when just riffing and laughing over a nerdy beer/coffee. There’s the black comedy, not just when characters say the title of the movie. This also allows for an all-time Gothic classic image of a house being rained on by blood.

 

‘Nope’ has a lot of similar vivid imagery – Peele is good at that. The clouds. The range. The plastic horse and inflatables. The UFO swooping down. The carnage in the TV studio. Actually, the subplot with the rampaging Gordy the chimp is the part that takes up much centre-stage but doesn’t truly gel with the rest. This is surely meant state the themes of animal aggression, bland entertainment and Wild Things Can’t Be Tamed, but this doesn’t avoid the fact that this is a lot of flashback for a secondary character and plotline: Jupe (Steven Yeun and Jacob Kim). We already got the themes of blameless animals being exploited and potentially dangerous from the early scene of OJ Haywood supplying a film set with a horse, waiting for his extrovert sister to arrive. And Daniel Kaluuya’s wonderfully taciturn turn speaks volumes about the character’s solitary nature. For a film set on a ranch with a lot of Western genre nods, the horses sure get short shrift; mostly they’re just bait. But this Gordy chimp sequence is a real chiller and beautifully done, nevertheless. Peele is good at horror set-pieces.

 

There was and is a lot of fan theory surrounding 'Nope', but mostly it’s a monster movie, and it’s highly entertaining on that front. And like many monster movies, you’ll be left unsatisfied by stupid character behaviour just so the monster can do it’s thing (Just go inside? & Why sacrifice yourself for no good reason?). And would something of such a nature really be reliant on eye contact to feed? But just go with the flow. Its slower, more contemplative pace isn’t typical of mainstream monster films, and although it has ambitions above its genre station, it is lots more fun than perhaps its pensive tone implies. And for a film somewhat critical of exploitation in the aim of cursory entertainment, it offers a lot of Big Spectacle.