[Film Review] Nope (2022)

“Something hides in the cloud” Jordan Peele’s third feature NOPE is a flying saucer spectacle, conforming to our contemporary cinema’s decades-long preoccupation fixated on the extraterrestrial life forms and intelligence commenced by Spielberg’s CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977). But here, Peele’s hovering behemoth is purely primordially predatory, devouring its prey without discrimination, far more voracious than intelligent, which is potently cued by Michael Abels’s portentous score.

Making great use of its Californian setting including an expansive horse ranch and a western theme park, NOPE isn’t weighed down by an elaborate provenance story about the alien creature, it is simply a predator, whose sole aim on earth is to subsist by seeking comestible. Instead, it is us earthlings who is the focal points in Peele’s thought-provoking script.

OJ (Kaluuya) and Em (Palmer) are two siblings who belong to the only black family of horse-wranglers tailored to Hollywood’s film and television productions (incidentally, audience is schooled that the first motion picture footage is a black jockey riding a galloping horse shot by Eadweard Muybridge). After the family’s patriarch (a cameo by David) being killed by a mysterious metallic item falling from the sky, OJ fears there is a massive, UFO-like creature lurking above his land, whereas nearby, the owner of the theme park, Ricky (Yeun), a former television child star, seems to harbor a delusional wishful thinking that can be traced back to a freaky accident associated with a maiming chimpanzee.

Ricky’s “tame the creature” idée fixe is the leitmotif NOPE critiques with great attention and suspense (also Yeuh has gradually become the epitome of inscrutability and secret obsession), a more broad-minded concern that goes beyond Peele’s default race-centered stance, in NOPE, he finally can fabulate a colorblind tale with a cast of full diversity. Ricky survives one ordeal at a young age and takes it as a proof that he has some sort of superpower to calm, or connect with a dangerous creature, then tries to exploit his new-found discovery as an eye-catching spectacle, a rodeo show with an extraterrestrial performer, sadly, he overestimates his capacity and is defeated by his self-deception. That is Peele’s food for thought about human foolery.

For OJ and Em, NOPE is their tale of pipping an almighty, unknowable entity, and the key to stay alive is “don’t look up”, the opposite of being lured by the spectacle, to survive, one must resist temptation, attraction and distraction, to stay focused, by extension, it is the key to any kind of success, Peele wisely illumines us.

Going from strength to strength, Peele’s visual landscape reaches a new peak in NOPE, money is not skimped on the astonishing SFX and breathtaking aerial shots. It is ironic to watch an anti-spectacle film possessed with such full-scale IMAX grandeur and chromatic richness, not to mention the monster’s transmogrification, you simply cannot take your eyes away from it, a case in point that it is easier said than done to look away from the spectacle, a meta-angle Peele slyly uses to NOPE’s own advantage.

Among the cast, Kaluuya looks somewhat distracted with his lackadaisical posturing and deadened gaze, totally overshadowed by a more engaging, zippier Palmer, whose heroine-in-the-making trajectory is what audience is rooting for. That said, the dynamism between the siblings feels a tad strange, as if there is some missing pieces of their past are left undisclosed. (Could it be Em’s sexuality?) Brandon Perea’s Angel, a Fry's Electronics employee, is fan’s favorite, who is thankfully exempted from being a casualty because of his creativity in extremis, like the final “Winkin’ Well” trick, a Peele’s picture has never been short of ingenious ideas, NOPE sees him stride out of the “horror” bracket and enter a more Sci-Fi friendly territory with estimable flair and bodacious flourishes.

referential entries: Peele’s US (2019, 7.4/10); Jeff Nichols’s MIDNIGHT SPECIAL (2016, 6.9/10); Steven Spielberg’s CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977, 8.2/10).

Title: Nope

Year: 2022

Genre: Mystery, Sci-Fi, Horror

Country: USA, Canada, Japan

Language: English, Spanish

Director/Screenwriter: Jordan Peele

Music: Michael Abels

Cinematography: Hoyte Van Hoytema

Editor: Nicholas Monsour

Cast:

Daniel Kaluuya

Keke Palmer

Brandon Perea

Steven Yeun

Michael Wincott

Keith David

Wrenn Schmidt

Devon Graye

Terry Notary

Jacob Kim

Donna Mills

Oz Perkins

Rating: 7.6/10