'Nope', An Uncut Review

What It's All About

The third feature film from acclaimed director Jordan Peele, entitled “Nope”, may be one of the most memorable films of the last twenty years. 

“Nope”, which draws heavy inspiration from the films of John Carpenter and Steven Spielberg, is the most spectacular and awe-inspiring film that Peele has ever made.

This latest film is primarily a sci-fi thriller which incorporates themes of the western as well. The fantastical story hinges on a background of realistic world building, and features some of the most stark and frightening imagery of all his works.

In a world where more and more classified knowledge is unearthed, and science seeks to answer the explicitly hard questions of the planet we call home, Peele utilizes a familiar trope to viciously prey on the insecurities of audiences everywhere: alien life forms. 

The premise is simple enough, a ranching family in Agua Dulce, California starts to witness odd occurrences around their property, such as electrical power going out, strange precipitation and odd behavior by some of their horses.

The Family

The family itself has a rich backstory. They run the only black-owned horse trainer business in Hollywood, tracing their lineage back to the first motion picture ever. That image, one of a Bahamian jockey riding a horse, produced in 1878 with multiple still photos, features a direct descendant of the family that owns the ranch, the Haywoods. 

This meta-nod to the history of motion pictures is just one of many in a film about the business of filmmaking. The Haywood’s have been involved in several famous films throughout the years. 

As a director, Peele has always written his characters like real people. They’re unique, nuanced and believable. The main character, Otis “OJ”, Haywood Jr. is played by Daniel Kaluuya ,Peel’s collaborator from 2017’s landmark film “Get Out”. Stoic and hardworking, OJ tries to keep his father’s horse trainer business afloat following his death due to bizarre atmospheric circumstances.

To supposedly aid him in this task, is his sister Emerald, played to great effect by the energetic Keke Palmer, who seeks fortune and fame in Hollywood. She feels less connected to the family business and wishes to sell it to Ricky “Jupe” Park, a former child star and entrepreneur played by Steven Yeun of “Walking Dead” fame. 

Ricky "Jupe" Park and Hubris

Jupe has set up his own desert attraction, a tourist attraction called Jupiter’s Claim. After one of the Haywoods’ horses becomes irritated by the cast of a commercial, it bucks and attempts to kick one of the actors, causing them to lose the job and fall into even more dire financial straits.

This forces OJ to sell some of his horses to Jupe, who is using them for unknown purposes on his own ranch. Later, when OJ witnesses an unidentified flying object, which has been devouring his horses and releasing any inorganic matter in the form of precipitation, his sister encourages him to try and film the phenomenon to help them become famous and wealthy.

Jupe’s backstory is vividly painted as well. In a shocking flashback, we discover that he was a child actor on a sitcom which starred a chimpanzee as well. In a terrible sequence of events, the animal becomes upset and kills many of the cast members before turning to young Jupe for a fist bump just as the animal control fatally shoots the chimpanzee. 

This event leaves Jupe emotionally scarred and he becomes addicted to the idea of spectacle being the most important thing. His theme park features memorabilia from that fateful day on set and tourists come from far and wide for a chance to live in that tragedy, even for a brief moment. 

When Jupe starts advertising his “star lasso show”, we soon discover that he is also aware of the UFO, and plans to feed one of the recently bought Haywood horses to it in a vicious display of arrogance. In an almost entirely quiet desert scene, spectators look on as Jupe tries to summon the aliens to feast on the horse.

This backfires almost immediately as the UFO appears and shines down a cyclone beam which pulls the entire crowd up into it. We are given a closeup of the poor tourists’ ascent, and they soon reach organic matter, ostensibly tissue of some kind, which resembles a mouth. The UFO reveals itself as a living thing, a breathing beast, as it grinds them down with its massive gizzard. 

OJ versus Jean Jacket, a Fight for the Ages

OJ shows up just in time to witness the havoc and disarray of Jupe’s once proud ranch, and he hides in a barn. He is knocked out cold when the alien tries to devour him as well, but the barn protects him. He soon concludes that this creature must be like the horse on set which bucked and kicked, it cannot be looked in the eyes. The spectators who were eaten alive all had their gaze affixed to this predator.

This sets OJ’s plan into motion, he wishes to capture footage of the beast so that he and Emerald may finally become financially responsible for the first time since the death of their father. This passing is soon made much more clear.

That night, the flying saucer returns to the Haywood ranch, hovering over their house like some obscene disc and it begins to send precipitation down to earth. The monster seems to evacuate itself of any inorganic matter, keys, pocket change etc. In a torrent of rain and blood, the contents of the tourists’ pockets are splattered against the main house.

They decide to team up with the director of the commercial from the beginning of the film, Antlers Holst, played by Michael Wincott as well as the young man who set up their surveillance equipment, Angel Torres, who is played by Brandon Perea.

The four develop a plan to lure the flying behemoth out into the open, and capture it on film in what Holst refers to as “the perfect shot”. Since the beast can disable electrical fields, he brings a hand-crank IMAX camera for the occasion.

As “Nope” was shot on IMAX film, this is a nice meta nod to the construction of this disturbing tale. This is where the amazing imagery comes in. They decorate the farm with air dancers, the colorful fabric stick figures which wave in the wind at car washes or such places. 

They power the dancers with car batteries and lay out a map of those locations. In a distinctively Spielbergian brainstorming session, our four characters utilize monopoly pieces to show where they will be on the day the plan is executed. This is just another subtle nod to the idea of America as a nation of spectacle and occurrences. 

With everyone in position, Antlers and Angel at the helm of the IMAX cameras, OJ dons an orange “Scorpion King” hoodie he received for working on the 2001 film with his late father with the word “crew” emblazoned on the back. He mounts his favorite horse, Lucky, who has his eyes covered with a medieval cloth mask to prevent the fleshy disk in the sky from engaging with him.

The monster, named “Jean Jacket”, by the siblings in reference to a horse their father promised to let Emerald train, gives chase as OJ heroically rides on horseback through the desert. The name, pulled from an earlier flashback of Otis Sr. when he reneged on that promise and allowed OJ to train the horse in preparation for “The Scorpion King”, Emerald was heartbroken. OJ calls the skyward predator “Jean Jacket” in honor of her finally getting to tame something in her wild life. 

Jean Jacket gives chase, but just as that is about to play out, a TMZ reporter following up on the strange disappearance at Jupe’s ranch, appears on an electric motorcycle seeking to capture Emerald and OJ on camera. Jean Jacket disrupts the electrical barriers and the man’s bike throws him to the ground and breaks his limbs. As the reporter, named Ryder Muybridge, ostensibly a descendant of the man who made the first motion picture, Eadweard Muybridge, lies on the ground begging for OJ not to save him, but instead to capture the moment on film. 

Jean Jacket soon resurfaces and annihilates the young reporter, spitting the waste on the sand. It next targets Emerald, and OJ seeks to lure it away by releasing a rainbow parachute from the back of his horse to distract Jean Jacket. This whole time, Antlers is recording this phenomenon he hasn’t believed until this moment and leaves the shelter of his filming location to confront the angry alien out in the open. While recording, Jean Jacket sucks him into the sky with vicious force and Antlers dies for his art.

Emerald's Escape

OJ tells Emerald to grab the electric bike and escape. In the most heartfelt moment in the film, he points to his eyes and back to hers from far away, symbolizing that he’ll always keep an eye on her no matter what happens. This in reference to the earlier flashback with Jean Jacket the horse. When Emerald was a child and saw her brother taming her betrothed horse, he looked up to the window acknowledging her presence and desire to do it herself, even though their father wouldn’t allow it. In what is such a terrifyingly anxiety-inducing action sequence, this moment drives a dart through the heart and multiple people in the IMAX theatre choked up along with myself. 

Emerald escapes on the bike and Jean Jacket fights OJ, and soon takes on an evolution of sorts, becoming a large jellyfish-like creature, enveloping the sky with transparent tentacles and beautifully colored wings. It makes its way to Emerald, who has escaped to Jupe’s theme park. Just as Jean Jacket hovers over her for a final meal, she releases a large blow up figure of Jupe into the sky by detaching it’s anchor chords from the ground. The balloon slowly ascends and Jean Jacket seeks to devour it, confused by the large ‘treat’. In a perfectly timed sequence, Emerald lays down by the “winking well”, a novelty picture-taking device used to give tourists an old-school souvenir for their trip back home.

The primitive device captures a photo of Jean Jacket, by now fully changed into his final form, just as he consumes the Jupe balloon. The hot air inside big Jupe expands and bursts in Jean Jacket’s mouth, which tears it apart in the sky and separates its body into spindly portions. The remains of the dead alien predator fall to the earth as the police and news media show up to take a piece of the action. As the film closes, OJ appears in front of Emerald, heroically on horseback and shining in the California sunlight. The audience is left to wonder if she imagined this or if OJ survived Jean Jacket’s attack. The credits roll. 

An Analysis of 'Nope'

Peele’s latest entry, “Nope” is a dynamic engine of American myth making. Taking cues from M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs”, it utilizes modern fears of UFOs to put the audience in a truly precarious position as they writhe in their seats and ponder the potential reality that the film portrays.

Peele’s America, however, is less Area-51, and more like Cormac McCarthy’s dangerous idea of the west as a strange and untamed land. Jean Jacket cannot be tamed in the same way Gordy the chimpanzee couldn’t be molded into a professional actor. 

Beware what you try to conquer, Peele seems to be saying. Jean Jacket is proof of this, as even when the Americans conquered the west, there were still things that evaded their grasp. 

In yet another original screenplay, Peele accurately captures the precocious paranoia dwelling deep in modern American’s minds, preying on their insecurities with a truly disturbing spectacle of a film.

In an interview with SyFy, Peele said,“…‘Nope’ is about the human addiction to spectacle.” No other word perhaps better encapsulates Peele’s intentions for his third feature film. 

There is great beauty in this production. The costumes, the stylish street clothes worn by Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya make their characters feel real and grounded. The shiny horses galloping in the oddly feral Agua Dulce desert glide by and capture our gaze. Even Jean Jacket, a horrendous aerial predator, possesses visual grandeur with its sleek disc-like body. When it finally comes into its final appearance, it is unlike anything you have ever seen put to screen.

Peele again gives us a family in crisis in the Haywood’s, as he forces them to come to terms with the strange and sad reality of their lives. In an era where we know more about UFOs than ever before, Peele expertly plays into that niche by disrupting our expectations and allowing this particular UFO to become a living breathing entity instead.

This is a unique allegory used to showcase America’s conquest of the west and the greed it used to fuel the manifest destiny of bygone years. 

With a budget of $68 million, the film’s special effects are impressive. The sequences involving Jean Jacket are among the most haunting images of alien life ever put to film. 

The scenes that take place at night, with the bluish black fog hanging below the backlit moon, are among Peele’s strongest to date. He utilizes riveting, uninterrupted long takes which bring forth memories of Paul Thomas Anderson, while the color contrasts and action sequences conjure up Spielberg.

As “Nope” plays out on screen, a vast modern western with present day implications, there are moments that are as entertaining as they are tense. The moment Jean Jacket appears in the sky for the first time is as shocking a visual you will see on screen this year.

Jupe’s children dress up as aliens to harass OJ, but the audience doesn’t find out they aren’t real aliens until later. This is the biggest jump scare in the film, and conjures up a nod back to the title when OJ says, “Nope”. There are multiple plays on the title here as the cast of our film decides that the reality Peele has created for them is just too much to handle. Little moments like this add in a dab of humor to break through the hard outer layer of sci fi-based horror. 

The film is paired with a re-release trailer for “Jaws”, the original summer blockbuster, and “Nope” goes hard on trying to replicate that feeling. If you are looking for spectacle and a way to escape the summer heat, then seeing “Nope” in theaters likely won’t disappoint you. But do yourself a favor and enjoy it in IMAX, the loud bombastic and fully immersive environment it was meant to be shown in.

Another riveting aspect of the film is the sounds that are used, especially when Jean Jacket is around. The way Jean Jacket distorts electricity is surreally unnatural and is enough to give you nightmares. When it feeds, it does so with the immense strength of an alien predator and the screams of its prey echo in the dark California sky. 

Acting

Steven Yuen, though only really on screen for about half of the film, is a show-stealer in his own right. He brings the confidence of his Glen character from “Walking Dead”, with all the swagger and arrogance of a minted Hollywood actor.

While Yuen is outwardly engaging, the flashback into his past with Gordy the chimpanzee is sure to earn the audience's sympathies. Anyone with pets of their own will likely be deeply moved by his relationship with his primate costar.

Yuen’s shining moment comes right before his death, when he is putting on a show to lure Jean Jacket out into the open. As he stares skyward into the mouth of the great beast, his cowboy hat slides off the back of his matted hair and hits the dusty ground in one of the best visuals in the film. 

For her part in the film, Keke Palmer exists as an injection of infectious energy. She is the foil to OJ’s straightforward business approach. When OJ tries to give a safety meeting at one of the commercials he is involved with, the actors look on with contempt.

Emerald pops through the door and wins them over with the story of her great great grandfather and his part in the genesis of modern film. They find her charming and funny, and this is distinctly like the real Palmer as well. The ironic part of it all is that she cares little for the business, seeking fame and fortune in her own right.

Palmer’s wardrobe is eclectic and trendy; at one point she sports a “The Jesus Lizard” shirt which throws back to the grunge era coupled with a bandana that reminds us of her outgoing and flashy nature. She is likely to be nominated for her performance alongside Yuen and Kaluuya.

Kaluuya, whom Peele has called the “De Niro (to my Scorsese),” goes in the complete opposite direction of Palmer. Under Peele’s direction, he develops a stoic stance, becoming the voice of reason in a film where many of his best scenes contain no dialogue at all.

Kaluuya, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor from 2017’s “Get Out” (also under Peele’s keen guidance), will no doubt see another nomination for this performance as well. His on screen chemistry with Palmer, despite his character’s reserved poise, is moving and thoughtful. Their relationship is one of the more tender aspects of the film.

It’s great to see the visionary director and acclaimed actor join together to meet such an effective end. They join together to achieve something monumental with this film, and it likely will etch itself into the annals of time.

In many ways "Nope" is a love letter to crews in similar way Quentin Tarantino's film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywod" is a love letter to movies and Hollywood in general. This film tips its hat to the behind the scenes guys that make monumental achievements like films possible. Kaluuya rides a horse with a "Scorpion King" crew hoodie on and tries to achieve something monumental in his destruction of Jean Jacket. 

The strength images hold in our society is truly felt in “Nope.” Peele has delivered again, and one can only imagine his next film will have similar value. His work seems to wow the world with shock and awe before escaping into the annals of film, much like Jean Jacket himself leaping down from the clouds and then back into the dark California sky.