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Nope Movie Review

Nope is a 2022 western science fiction horror film directed by Jordan Peele and starring Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer. It’s a very old-fashioned, but also original take on the genre.

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“Since the moment pictures could move,

we had skin in the game“

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The residents of a lonely gulch in inland California bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery – the arrival of a dangerous UFO. First off, this is the third Peele movie after ‘Get Out’ and ‘Us’, and it’s the first one not to heavily focus on race relations, which to me was refreshing as this film’s themes are different and much more interesting.

There is a lot to unpack here as the movie is rather ambiguous and bordering on overly complicated, but the main idea is people’s current obsession with photographing everything. There is one filmmaker who risks his life to take “the perfect shot” and that was a very clear nod to all the people who lost their lives for that one selfie.

There is an evident critique of turning everything into a profit, even one’s trauma and pain. That is the case with Steven Yeun’s character, who is by far the most interesting and the only complex and memorable personality of the bunch. His backstory with the chimpanzee going crazy on a TV set and killing everybody was very grim, but how he turned it into a business, and how that eventually led to his role in the UFO filming was all very interesting. He is a tragic figure and an important cautionary tale against using finances as a cure for much bigger issues.

The main two characters fare worse. They aren’t properly developed, though the acting from both Kaluuya and Palmer is very strong. The character played by Kaluuya is overly sulky and annoying while his sister is much more likable and better developed. Keke Palmer is very charismatic in the role. Brandon Perea also made a solid impression in a minor, but important role, but again all of these characters needed better development.

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When it comes to Nope’s sci-fi elements, my opinion is divided. I both admire the main concept and find it to be very faulty. Basically, the aliens here are these animals who are incredibly dumb and thus easily tricked. That obviously made no sense whatsoever as how would these stupid aliens ever fly a spaceship, let alone land on a planet? It’s the kind of ridiculous SF conceit that is also seen in films like ‘District 9’ and ‘The Quite Place’.

However, I still appreciated the aliens for their very authentic designs while the ships themselves are an old-fashioned homage to the classic flying saucer types hailing from the fifties. The movie is Spielbergian in its spectacle, but it is also very much anti-Spielberg in how it perverts that romantic gaze into the night sky by making the aliens genuinely dangerous instead of benevolent.

Overall, the sci-fi here is more in line with horror of the unknown and the menacing atmosphere than the sci-fi ideas that I favor more, but still the third act is so thrilling in its beautifully executed action scenes that I genuinely found it to be a spectacle. It was an ode to a different time, in particular the late seventies. But the movie is also very much a western film in its rugged landscape, remote location, horse riding and even some genre-inspired music. It’s a mixture of all these genres that ultimately works more often than not.

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Nope is particularly impressive in its audio-visuals. The sound is so evocative in its creepy elements that it elevated those horror scenes a lot with the screaming sound being particularly eerie. The cinematography from the great Hoyt van Hoytema is impeccable as he really has an eye for memorable imagery. He elevated the movie to an epic status – the film is very limited in scope, yet its execution is more ambitious. The first half is ridiculously slow to the point of becoming a slog to sit through, but eventually the movie found its groove and it became quite a pleasant, epic blockbuster in its own right.

Overly slow at first and rather implausible in its basic SF concept, Nope is still a very strong third feature for Jordan Peele and his most entertaining movie to date due to that spectacular third act that channeled old-fashioned blockbuster spectacle from the late seventies. Dealing with the dangers of humans’ tendency to film and capitalize on everything, Nope has a lot to say, but it could have been populated by more interesting characters. Steven Yeun’s character actually ended up being the only complex and intriguing one from the bunch. The incredibly eerie sound and the highly ambitious cinematography elevated the movie to much greater heights. Nope is also interesting for being not just a science fiction and a horror movie, but also very much a western story, and that concoction worked more often than not.

My Rating – 4