Nope Review: Yup, It’s Aliens

To borrow from Forrest Gump, movies and aliens go together like peas and carrots. As far back as Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon, filmmakers have been working through their anxiety and excitement for creatures that came from outside Earth. However, unlike Méliès, we have typically been far more concerned about aliens coming here than of humanity going to them. Jordan Peele throws his cowboy hat into the extraterrestrial ring with his latest horror western Nope, and we sure are glad he did.

Peele reunites with Daniel Kaluuya as his leading man, this time playing a Hollywood horse wrangler named OJ. Yes, this name gives white people pause and, yes, OJ is accustomed to their hesitation to proceed with calling him by his preferred nickname. Early in Nope, OJ loses his father (the always sublime Keith David) to what is a freak incident involving small metal bits and bobs raining down from the sky. You know how lore says a penny dropped from the Empire State Building can kill someone? Well, here nickel took out Otis Sr, but you get the idea.

The mourning process for OJ and sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) must take a back seat to tending to their stables and training their horses for their movie closeups. To keep afloat OJ resorts to selling some horses to neighbour and novelty ranch owner Ricky (Steven Yeun), though OJ sees this as just a temporary setback. Everything in life seems to be chugging along as well as it can until something resembling a flying saucer starts to steal horses in the middle of the night.

Nope takes no real time in acknowledging the aliens within the film or letting us believe that this is real and not just paranoia on OJ’s behalf. Instead, we learn fairly early on that this thing is without a doubt very real and it might be a way to help OJ and Em with their financial problems. Afterall, people would pay a lot for a Hollywood-quality image that proves we are not alone in this universe.

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Compared to Peele’s previous films Us and Get Out, Nope settles for showing us the experiences of a few people in a single California ranch valley, and does not go out of its way to try to break our reality or rewrite all of American history. Sure, it is possible to extrapolate the societal ramifications of a discovery like this, but the film does not do any of that dreaming for the audience. It does not explore anything in terms of a greater mythology of humanity, it just is what it is on screen. It is hard not to want that grandeur from Peele, as he has consistently offered those truth bombs and is really good at them, but on its own merits Nope does not feel lacking of that sweeping hypothesizing.

Nope is also the funniest film from Peele to date. We all knew he had it in him, being that he first came into our collective awareness through his brilliant comedy sketches, but he has played his films as earnest and terrifying, rather than campy. It would be tough to argue that Nope is stepping towards horror comedy (it isn’t), but it does seem to have a lot more fun with the material and the characters. When faced with imminent danger, characters dryly say “nope” and turn their backs just as any reasonable person would. The gag never gets old, and endears the characters to the audience by not acting like illogical bumpkins. It is easier to care for people who act like you would act in the same situation.

Composer Michael Abels’ score drives much of the tone of the film, and it is gracefully manipulative. Nope’s third act embraces the film’s western DNA and Abels’ music runs with it to bring home the notions of good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. Peele has a knack for getting all the right people in all the right places, and his continuing collaboration with Abels is consistently one of the best decisions they both have made.

There is not a bad performance nor a bad edit anywhere to be found in Nope. Any of the arguable weaknesses seem to be attributed to the script and its occasional blips in follow through or seeing a single idea through to the end. There is plenty going on in the film, so these blips are minor and not terribly detrimental, but they are blips nonetheless.

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As far as Jordan Peele movies go, Nope is his weakest of the bunch. However, it still might be one of the best genre films of the year.

Nope is out in theatres now.



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