Courtesy Universal Pictures
Filmmaker Jordan Peele returns to the sci-fi/horror milieu with Nope, his third feature film and a darkly funny rumination on how and why we consume content—and how the fallout of our obsession tends to exploit those already in compromised positions, particularly people of color.
Here we follow OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer) Haywood, estranged siblings from a family of Hollywood horse wranglers descended from the Black jockey featured in Eadweard Muybridge’s 1878 work The Galloping Horse—widely considered the first motion picture ever made. When their father (the legendary Keith David in an all-too-brief appearance) dies in a mysterious one-in-a-billion accident, our heroes find themselves the sole proprietors of the family business just as an unexplainable phenomena takes to the skies above their ranch. Meanwhile, nearby, former child actor Ricky Park (a subtly chilling Steven Yeun) runs a Western-themed amusement park with his family and attempts to make a buck off his own tragic backstory. He, too, knows of the thing in the sky, and both he and the Haywoods hope to be the first to capitalize upon its appearance. There will be no winners.
Peele, who both writes and directs here, deftly interweaves deceptively simple plot lines about survival into a layered indictment of both capitalism and entertainment, and the positions into which they put those with the least power. Take, for example, both the Haywood and Park families’ knee-jerk decisions to seek fame and fortune from the thing in the sky rather than considering their own safety. At first, this seems short-sighted—a bit of the old “just get out of the haunted house!”—but the longer their terse coexistence continues, the more we learn about how both camps are simply trying to get by. Their stations aren’t so different, really, and their shared desire to struggle less becomes a central sticking point. Why don’t they work together to survive? Perhaps because we’ve been trained to get our own, screw the other guy. What might any of us do if faced with an opportunity to claw our way out of meager lives? Having mouths to feed might not be the most glamorous of stakes but, when we strip away artifice, there are none higher.
Kaluuya once again proves an actor who lives in the quiet intense moments, while Yeun brings an odd charm to what is essentially a faded star role. A short but vital B plot explains his horrifying origins, and you actually come to feel for the guy. Newcomer Brandon Perea shines as well as an employee from a local electronics store who wants to believe in UFOs, but Nope becomes Palmer’s movie so gradually you almost don’t notice until she steps fully into her power. When she does, allusions to kaiju and anime cinema pump up the badassery, and the intensity rises straight through to the climax.
In the end, it feels like questions remain, and Nope likely won’t deter anyone from consuming trauma as entertainment, but when simply living through another day continues to be the best most folks can hope for, unanswered questions and doomscrolling seem about right.
8
+The cast; the messaging
-Could prove too subtle for some
Nope
Directed by Peele
With Palmer, Kaluuya, Yeun, Perea and David
Violet Crown, Regal, R, 130 min.
