Nope Review

Nope, Jordan Peele’s latest horror-comedy epic is intensely enigmatic. At times both profound and confounding, this is an incredibly dense movie, filled with metaphors and symbolism it oftentimes leaves up to you to decipher. While it is certainly possible to enjoy the movie’s narrative at face value, I’m sure many will walk away from it frustrated by the seeming lack of answers to the plot’s many curious questions. Although beautifully shot, and frequently hilarious, I’m certain Nope is destined to be Jordan Peele’s most polarizing film to date. 

I’ll be careful to not include any kind of spoilers in my description of the film, as it is certainly a movie that plays better the less you know about it going in. With that in mind, the film follows a pair of siblings (the fantastic as always Daniel Kaluuya and a scene-stealing Keke Palmer), who are the owners of the only Black-owned horse training company in Hollywood (their Great-Great-Great-Grandfather being the jockey photographed in the first moving image caught on film.) When the siblings begin experiencing unusual phenomena around their ranch house, they gather a small, eclectic team to attempt to capture the events on film.

To be clear, I loved this movie. It is easily one of my favorites of the year so far. That being said, I did find it to be somewhat of a frustrating watch. As I mentioned, this is a very dense movie that offers very little explanation for some of its more cryptic story beats. For example, there is a seemingly random plot point the film keeps returning to, despite its apparent lack of connection to the central story. It’s just a depiction of a particularly gruesome event in one of the side character’s backstories. Clearly there is a lot of intended meaning behind this event, as it opens the movie, but whatever the intended thematic link is, it went entirely over my head. I actually hesitate to write about this movie before doing my homework on it and looking up different interpretations of its themes and symbolism. It is not very often that my review of a movie includes a paragraph about how it’s too smart for me, and yet, here we are. While I respect the film for not spelling anything out, I’m sure others will find this aspect of the movie unforgivable, and it will lose them during the opening scene. Thus my initial description: polarizing. 

Nope is Jordan Peele at his most Spielbergian. Obviously, the film’s sci-fi themes are incredibly similar to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, only this time combined with Peele’s signature biting social satire. The film’s closest relative, however, is Jaws. It cannot be understated how deeply Nope is connected to Jaws. From its blend of the intimate with the epic, to its climactic, character-revealing showdown encompassing the entirety of the third act, Nope follows the Jaws playbook to a T, updating and twisting its structure to fit our modern times. I’ve seen it observed that with this film Peele does to clouds what Spielberg did to water, and I couldn’t agree more. It is not hard for me to picture a future where the imagery from Nope is both iconic and ubiquitous when discussing the “big unknown” in the stars.

Nope is a beautiful-looking sci-fi thriller that is as funny as it is thought-provoking, even if it might be a little too smart for its own good. Jordan Peele is three for three in terms of making brilliant movies, and I can’t wait to see what he thinks of next.