Say Yes to Nope

Oct 4

To be successfully concise is often a difficult feat. However, with short, yet meaningful titles like Get Out, Us, and most recently, Nope, Jordan Peele has continually proven that fewer words can speak louder. Nope, written, produced, and directed by Peele, is his third and most recent effort in contemporary horror. While the concept of the film, a family’s attempt to capture alien behavior on camera, is not necessarily unique, the way Peele goes about it makes it stand out. This visually striking film isn’t as scary as the trailers make it out to be, but instead it is a story about family bond, the history and importance of the black community in filmmaking, and of course, alien invasion.

When the first trailer for Nope was revealed, there was absolutely no way of knowing what it was about. At that point, it wasn’t even clear the plot was about aliens. However, when the second, and longer, trailer rolled out, the basic plot-points were shown and it looked like we were in for a scary tale of alien invasion. The idea ascertained from the second trailers was more on-point, but still did not accurately establish the feeling of the film. Nope isn’t a horror film, or a comedy, or a drama, or a western – it’s all these things rolled into one.

Nope follows siblings Emerald and O.J. Haywood on their California horse ranch. There, the siblings raise horses to be used on film sets. In the past, Peele has done an incredible job at highlighting the role of black history and individuals in cinema through his filmmaking. In Nope, he takes this a step further by giving audiences a history lesson. The siblings’ ancestry leads back to the black horse jockey captured in the very first film motion picture – Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion. This demonstrates the legacy of black filmmakers that people like Peele are continuing through their storytelling. Nope is very much a movie about the entertainment industry, but in a very different way than we are used to seeing.

While Get Out and Us were more obviously frightening, Nope had a light-hearted touch throughout the film, possibly to add contrast to the social commentary of this film and Peele’s past films. Maybe it was Keke Palmer’s unrivaled charisma or the ability of characters to just say “nope” to the horrors surrounding them. Even the aliens in the film weren’t visually frightening, instead they were gigantic flower-like creatures in the sky. In the end, this was still a horror film with some very gory bits (audiences will have a new fear of chimpanzees after that gory scene). It seems to be that the majority of the scariest scenes made it into the cut for the trailer. This set the audience up for a horror film, but they received something slower and more thoughtful. In the end, the only jump scares in this film were played for comedic purposes. The majority of the movie consisted of character-building as well as a dramatic landscape.

Overall, Nope is no Get Out. However, Peele’s third film is a solid effort with excellent characters. While the plot may not be the driver of this film, the eerie desert landscape and expansive visual effects hold the film together. With Nope, Jordan Peele solidifies himself as the reigning king of horror with a thrilling tale of alien invasion.