Jordan Peele has made three fascinating features to date, though I admit I was reluctant to see the latest, 2022’s Nope. For one thing, I thought his previous film, Us, had a great deal of potential that went largely unrealized. Also, the media was quick to label this latest work as his “alien” film. I like science fiction but, for whatever reason, I wasn’t interesting in seeing something from him that wasn’t straight-up horror.
I was wrong. This film is definitely horror, though of a more primal nature than I expected. It is a horror film in the same manner as Jaws.
Now, I feel I have to be extremely careful in what I say about the film. I already try to keep these essays free of spoilers (or, at least, give ample warning before revealing such information), but it is very hard to say what constitutes a spoiler in this case. I think it would be safest to start by simply describing the first three scenes in the movie.
The first images we see appear to the aftermath of a chimpanzee’s homicidal rampage on the soundstage of a TV sitcom. Especially odd is what appears to be a woman’s shoe impossibly standing upright, balanced on its heel. The shoe has a spot of blood on it, but then there’s blood all over the place.
Next, we are taken to the family farm of Keith David where he and his son (Daniel Kaluuya) train horses for film work. A weird rain of hard objects falls from the sky like bullets, with puffs of dirt shooting up where they hit the ground. David is killed when one such object, a nickel, goes through his right eye and into his brain. The horse he was riding has a housekey embedded in its flank.
After that one-two punch, we’re on a motion-capture soundstage where Kaluuya is trying to calm one of his horses. He’s very quiet and reserved, while his sister (Keke Palmer) is extremely outgoing. She gives the filmmaking crew a brief history of Black people in cinema. She gives an interesting example of how everybody knows the photographs Edward Muybridge took which proved all four of a horse’s feet leave the ground while running, but nobody ever remembers the name of the Black jockey riding that horse. Funny, but I never even noticed the jockey, let alone considered their race.
Not only are these scenes intriguing, but they introduce some of what I suspected to the themes of the film. Unlike Peele’s prior two films, the focus seems to less on race here. I still picked up on racial elements here, but they weren’t as much on the surface as in the others. In its place, the movie had me thinking quite a bit more about whether we should be using animals for entertainment and, if we do, what price are we willing to pay for that. It didn’t surprise me when one character mentions Roy Horn being attached a white tiger.
Still not wanting to spoil anything, I want to mention a couple of other interesting performances. Steven Yeun plays a former childhood star who now has a western motif theme park near the horse ranch. His sitcom past may have an association with that very first scene. I also liked Brandon Perea as an electronics geek who is so intrigued by what is happening at the ranch that he eventually becomes a permanent fixture there. I have a suspicion this happened without any kind of formal agreement.
And that’s all I feel comfortable saying about the plot or characters of Nope. There is a wealth of surprises here, and I’m still chewing on some elements nearly a week after seeing it. This is a work that is far from flawless, but it was refreshing to see something so different. It is also entertaining, though not in the ways I anticipated. Here is a film that is so fresh and original that it’s like it…well, dropped out of the sky.
Dir: Jordan Peele
Starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Brandon Perea
Watched on blu-ray