Nope

Nope is about a genuinely scary encounter with something that should be too big, too frightening, too strange to really exist, says Tom Einarsson.

After all, the most impressive thing about Nope is that it is a genuinely good horror movie about an Unidentified Flying Object. Nothing in the film is done for cheap sentimentality or shock factor, but rather serves to pepper the plot with added uncanniness so that its world becomes increasingly unnerving and often downright grotesque. In an effort to identify the Unidentified Flying Object, Em and OJ hatch a plan to film the unfilmable by setting up cameras and elaborate traps. Firstly (and here I have to spoil at least a little), the UFO disables all electronics when it approaches. But the struggling Hollywood horse ranch is beset by strange occurrences: power outages, strange noises and sightings of what OJ comes to believe is a UFO. Seldom do horror films manage to both be loaded with coherent symbolism and frightening sequences so hair-raising that you will be afraid to look up at the sky for the foreseeable future.

Today we take a look at Jordan Peele's NOPE (2022 15 2h10m) Starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yuen, Michael Wincott, Brandon Perea, Wrenn Schmidt, ...

NOPE is one of those movies, it tries for modern arthouse, it tries to improve on its predecessors, it tries for shock value disguised as horror but It fails on all three counts. Hoyte Van Hoytema handled the cinematography and I’ll be honest, he did a great job, having filmed the likes of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008), DUNKIRK (2017) and one of my personal favourite movies of all time, INTERSTELLAR (2014), you can see his quality work through the sweeping shots of the Agua Dulce desert in northern Los Angeles County using 65mm film in IMAX, making it the first horror (if you can call this that) of its kind to be shot this way. There were also sections of this movie that made no sense, such as a whole flashback of backstory featuring a TV chimp that loses his shit and (if you’ll excuse the pun) goes ape on his handlers during the taping of a TV show that he is part of. Realising that his business is dying he decides inexplicably to capture the UFO on film and be the first to have genuine proof of extraterrestrial life. It harkens back to the kind of sci-fi that made SIGNS (2002) or WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953) great films and tries for the sort of awesome tension that these films expertly created. Given the hype and secrecy of its release and the limited trailers and media, I expected to sit down to a bloody great sci-fi horror.

In what can be easily brushed off as a straightforward alien film where the humans finally come on top, it's the 'whys' and 'hows' that define Nope and ...

On the whole, Nope is definitely not on par with the filmmaker's first two films when it comes to its well-roundedness, the finesse with its storytelling abilities and the big twists that completely change the way the film has been viewed. As a classic example of history forgetting what shouldn't be forgotten - and in this case, the erasure of the contributions of people of colour to the evolution of filmmaking - there's no record of the black jockey who rode the horse and Nope gives it a sense of identification. Peele also cited the pandemic and the lockdown as the inspiration for how his protagonists get stuck in an inescapable grim situation and it shows. In what can be easily brushed off as a straightforward alien film where the humans finally come on top, it's the 'whys' and 'hows' that define Nope and makes it an intriguing watch. While it might not match with his previous hits when it comes to narratory choices or storytelling excellence, it still packs a punch thanks to the underlying themes and interpretations that have become a much-welcomed trope in this filmmaker's films. When they finally get to know that there is more to it than meets the eye, they devise a method to track the creature and put an end to its rampage.

HOLLYWOOD—Jordan Peele, he has been coined the new face of horror, but I beg to differ. His “Get Out” was something never seen before, but I'll be honest ...

This is there movie and they are the heart and soul of it. For starters, I think Daniel Kaluuya is a phenomenal in this flick he really carries the bulk of the drama and intensity that slowly, but surely starts to build as the narrative pushes. No, but Peele toys with that notion of what people will do to earn their big break, which includes trying to capture this alien that has been hiding in plain sight for a period of time that strikes when you least know it, particularly looking directly at it.

A lot can change in six years. In 2016, Jordan Peele was one half of a beloved TV sketch comedy duo; today, he's one of the most famous filmmakers in the ...

We review the latest 'horror' film by Jordan Peele, Nope, in 10 words. Spoiler alert: This is his best production yet.

As I left the theatre, I felt a darkly blossoming mix of disappointment and dread that washed over me. Peele is more than obliging to this section of the audience. (Keith David) from a coin that mysteriously falls from the sky that rips his face almost in half, a UFO enters the narrative and menaces the area. The trial of images and experience was happening. Nope is the starkest and sharpest realisation of it yet. Across from them – in the vast, barren expanse of Agua Dulce, California – is Jupiter’s Claim, a Western-styled theme park, run by Jupe (Steven Yuen) who, as a child, starred in the fictitious sitcom Gordy’s Home. Every aspect of the film is charged with a multivalent power. Even before the film started, even as the trailers played, I sat in the theatre expecting to be ‘scared’ by the ‘horror’ film that was to come. The legacy of the ranch is storied and foundational: It’s alleged that the first ‘film’ or series of moving images was of a Black jockey riding a horse. The Haywoods claim that they are descendants of said jockey. Not the audience and most definitely not the cultural matrix within which it exists and perpetuates the prejudices of the status quo. His use of the medium is interrogatory – it spares no one and nothing.

Don Morton has viewed some 6,000 movies, frequently awake. A bachelor and avid cyclist, he currently divides his time between Tokyo and a high-tech 4WD super- ...

Jordan Peele’s films blend horror with a dash of comedy. With the help of a gormless electronics-store clerk (Brandon Perea) they must use their wits to defeat the clearly more powerful intruder. Has to do with a brother and sister (Daniel Kaluuya, strong and silent, and Keke Palmer, vivacious and rash) who notice something odd in the sky over their isolated California

Peele's new sci-fi spectacle is a fittingly fresh self-referential take on the classic UFO summer event film, ambitiously crammed with surprises.

The broader appeal of Nope is the way it morphs as a film — the suspense and obfuscation builds and peaks in the middle, at the point where the bloodcurdling significance of the spooky soundtrack suddenly becomes clear. Nope is a comparatively abstract name referring to OJ Haywood’s amusing reaction to the freaky phenomenon. With its strange name, cryptic title cards and constant back and forth between the main and subplots, Nope is pretty all over the place. The intentional irony to Peele’s exploration of morbid spectacle in society is that his films are horrifically transfixing and grand spectacles themselves. Though Nope is set up as a quintessential American UFO flick, it also develops the genre by poking fun at classic tropes. It’s the chimpanzee’s wildness that fascinated fans of Gordy’s Home, and a morbid curiosity that makes it impossible to look away from the gruesome carnage Gordy eventually unleashed. The film was nearly called Little Green Men, a title sending up the dated conception of aliens in cinema. Jupe has minimal involvement in the main plot; his purpose is to contextualise it and show how a story about a UFO relates to the real world. “I had this idea of making the Great American UFO movie, and not only a flying saucer horror film, but really, the quintessential one. The film begins by introducing us to Jupe, a child star in a comically cheesy 90s sitcom called Gordy’s Home about a family who live with a pet chimp (Gordy). Whatever you expect from Peele’s films, you will always be surprised, in part because he keeps the nature of his movies close to the chest during their marketing. What begins as an opportunistic attempt to cash in on the demand for conspiracy footage escalates into a terrifying unpredictable life or death survival thriller.

There are delicious popcorn-movie vibes and horrors galore, both funny-suspenseful and stone-cold bone-chilling. But most intriguing is the twistiness of ...

[Prime UK](https://amzn.to/3TlR2NB) [Super 8](https://www.flickfilosopher.com/2011/06/super-8-review.html) [ [Prime US](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0068THAGY/theflickfilosoph) [Prime US](https://amzn.to/3TllZ4a) [Prime UK](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00GS801KC/flickfilosoph-21) (Note: Some of Nope is shot in the IMAX format.) How are we, the audience, as we gape and thrill to see it, any different from Jupe’s visitors, with their perverse interest in the horror he experienced as a child? Not too generous, though: Much of Nope’s terror and brutality comes in the reminder that we are deluding ourselves by imagining that all things can be made subject to our will. The risks that those who make art, even low art, take in pursuit of it, is a running motif: Michael Wincott ( [Get Out](https://www.flickfilosopher.com/2017/03/get-movie-review-yes-white-people.html). Their mere presence as protagonists here is an unspoken rebuke to the erasure of Black horsemen and women in movies about the American West, and of Black artists in the history of film itself. The Haywoods and Jupe separately hatch the notion to taunt whatever it is, to draw it to them and harness the spectacle of it. He left TV work as a kid after a bizarre, violent incident on the set of the sitcom he starred in that left him traumatized; the notoriety of it draws visitors to his little theme park even decades later.