Nope is a horror movie directed by Jordan Peele and starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Michael Wincott, Brandon Perea, Stephen Yuen, and Keith David.
Otis Haywood Jr (Kaluuya), or OJ, runs a ranch that trains horses for movies, along with his father (David) and occasionally his sister Emerald (Palmer). And then one day change and other metal objects fall from the sky, and Otis Sr gets a nickel in his eye socket and dies, leaving OJ to manage the business. Otis is perhaps a good trainer, but he's shy and not particularly good with people, and Em is, shall we say, not focused.
OJ is also occasionally selling off the horses to nearby Wild West theme park Jupiter's Claim, run by former child star Ricky "Jupe" Park (Yuen), whose claim to fame is that he was on set when a chimp (mo-capped by Terry Notary) went bananas (lol) and killed some of his costars.
And all of this gets really weird when one of their horses runs off and then disappears, and something strange moves in the clouds, and all their electronics malfunction at times.
The siblings initially assume the thing moving around in the clouds is a UFO, an alien craft of some kind. They set up a bunch of independent cameras with the help of Angel, a tech store employee they kind of unofficially recruit along the way (Perea). And then it turns out that the thing in the clouds isn't a ship at all, it's a creature not unlike a crab or a jellyfish, and it shloops up and eats anything that looks at it. It's been eating horses because Jupe has been feeding it (which is kind of a dick move, seeing as how OJ made clear he wanted to buy them back eventually), but it's quite happy to eat people. In fact, it eats a whole crowd of people at Jupe's big unveiling of his big attraction (which was supposed to be feeding a horse to the creature), and we get treated to shots of screaming people being passed along the creatures digestive tract in one of the more disturbing sequences I've ever seen in a horror film.
Nope, like both of Peele's other films (Get Out and Us) is heavily themed. It's about spectacle and how no matter how dangerous something is, human beings will try to put a funny hat on it and make it dance for their amusement. It's also about human arrogance and lack of respect for the world, and maybe a bit about how people in modern times will literally die for a picture or video that might go viral (a TMZ reporter, played by Devon Graye, literally gets sucked into the creature's maw begging OJ to take a picture). And like Peele's other films, it improves on a second viewing because there's so much detail that it's hard to take in the first time, when you're still thinking this is gonna be about a spaceship that has aliens in it rather than what it is, a creature feature.
Peele continues to pull amazing performances out of his actors. Kaluuya, as with his role in Get Out, manages to pack a lot of meaning into subtle looks and gestures. Stephen Yuen (who was rightly nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for Minari) does incredible work taking the unresolved trauma that his character feels and pouring it into monetizing whatever he can. Standout moment is when Em asks him what really happened that day on set and he deflects by talking about the SNL ski making fun of it. And of course we get Michael Wincott as the cinematographer they bring in to get the "impossible shot" of the creature, and I could listen to Wincott read the phone book in that scary-ass voice of his.
The effects, too, are pretty top-notch, but then I always say that about mostly practical effects (including that aforementioned "being swallowed" shot, which is probably why it works so well). They hired an animal taxonomist to figure out the science, behavior, and eating habits of "Jean Jacket" (the nickname for the creature), and it shows, because when you put that amount of work and love into understanding your own story, the story always comes out stronger for it.
My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: Medium
Next up: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
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