Review: Nope by Jordan Peele – first-rate horror and mystery thriller

I really enjoyed this film.

Jordan Peele – who wrote, produced, and directed this film – is a true original. His films bleed suspense and horror with a latent social commentary.

The films Get Out and Us were masterful in their suspense and unsettling aspect. Above all, for me, they added another dimension to the post-cinema chitchat.

To this list, Peele gives us Nope. It’s an unsettling disturbing film in which the horror gradually unfurls. Nope works best as a genuine mystery, and a thrilling. Like the characters, the audience must ferret out what is going on, and this is critical to the advancing unease of the film’s arc. There are no ‘experts’ in the film to nudge us along. We accept the inchoate and foggy assumptions of the film’s protagonists as to what is going on. To that extent, we never really form a complete and total understanding of the substance. But, perhaps we don’t really need to.

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Daniel Kaluuya plays the rancher OJ with his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer). They are trying to keep their father’s struggling horse-wrangling company alive. The chemistry between them is sweet and adds a charming bonhomie to the film’s narrative. OJ’s general reserved and phlegmatic disposition is at odds with his sister’s ebullience and humour. The yin-and-yang energy gives the movie its heart.

However, promptly, they both realise that they are being stalked by a mysterious cloud-like entity in the skies. Interesting to note that, as with the Roswell incident, UFO/UAP are associated with weather balloons; and so this film gives us the marauding carnivorous cloud. To save the indebted company and their home, they then try to capture film footage of the alien-like visitation in the hopes of a huge television network payout.

The mystery of the film is the audience and characters trying to understand what this alien is and how it operates. The cinematics surrounding the alien (noises it emits, quick, fleeting sharp motions, opaque concealments) are excellently done. The film’s Texas desert mountain-valley landscape is beautiful; and it is, after all, the clichiac epicentre of UFO sightings (Chinati Peak etc.).

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However, as I see it, the problem in the film is Peele’s social commentary vis-a-vis Steven Yeun as Ricky “Jupe” Park and the film’s occasional focus on the black rider in Eadweard Muybridge’s first moving picture.

Firstly, and with respect to the latter issue, I suspect it’s Peele’s side-glance to the history of slavery in America’s cinematic history. But, this is probably ahistorical. The ‘man on horse’ frames concerned a bet as to whether a horse had all four feet off the ground while it was running. According to Wikipedia:

In 1872, the former governor of California, Leland Stanford, a businessman and race-horse owner, hired Muybridge for a portfolio depicting his mansion and other possessions, including his racehorse Occident. Stanford also wanted a proper picture of the horse at full speed, and was frustrated that the existing depictions and descriptions seemed incorrect. The human eye could not fully break down the action at the quick gaits of the trot and gallop. Up until this time, most artists painted horses at a trot with one foot always on the ground; and at a full gallop with the front legs extended forward and the hind legs extended to the rear, and all feet off the ground. There are stories that Stanford had made a $25,000 bet on his theories about horse locomotion, but no evidence has been found of such a wager.

Twenty-four cameras were attached to tripwires creating “frames” along a stretch of a raceway. As the horse ran, it triggered the tripwires which set off cameras in succession. In our times, we are used to “movies” with actors being credited. But this was not a “movie” so much as an experiment. It proved that horses do indeed have all four feet off the ground for a moment while running. It’s only afterwards that a string of photos were then arranged together to make ‘motion’ (in the sense that we understand of “movies”). 

So, the underlying sense of exploitation – inherent in the historical reference – is a bit forced through its ahistoricism. It assumes a contemporary perception about film and cinema which it superimposes on a different historical context.

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Secondly, the other problem, relates to the backstory of the chimp (‘Gordy’) with Steven Yeun’s character (‘Jup’) and the fuzzy way that that ties into the alien storyline. It’s unclear to me whether Jup felt that he had a special connection with Gordy; but I think we can assume so as he later tries to recreate a similar ‘relationship’ via taming the alien predator.

The problem here is that this idea is explored, through the chimpanzee, in a half-hearted way. It does feel shoehorned into the movie which made for a confused viewing at those particular moments, and a disjointed feel to the flow of the movie. It feels like an attempt to squeeze in disturbing scenes at the expense of Jup’s characterisation.

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Nevertheless, the predator-prey motif governs the movie (e.g. director watching clips of a tiger and a snake in mortal combat) and it’s a subject which Peele excels in showcasing.

In Nope, there are haunting scenes in which people get consumed by the predator. The screeching piercing screams of people getting sucked into the object and not dying immediately. They’re enveloped by the monstrous alien into tight moist spaces with enough space to wriggle and scream (and presumably breath) but not enough for any control. It’s only after a while that they are consumed by the alien; by which time we have been wondering what horrors await them.

The above discussions about the subtext does not diminish the film’s amalgam of mystery thriller with disturbing horror.