Nope Review (Film, 2022)
content warning: violence against women, violence against children, violence against animals, grieving, medical/surgical footage, blood, gore, foul language, smoking
In Nope, brother and sister OJ and Emerald Haywood reunite after the tragic death of their father, Otis Sr. The Haywoods are the owners of the only Black-owned Hollywood horse handling business, providing trained horses and supervision to film sets. Something strange is happening in the skies above their ranch. Emerald and OJ decide to do everything they can to capture this strange phenomenon and truly leave their own mark on the world.
Writer/director Jordan Peele’s Nope is one of the most innovative sci-fi/horror films to come around in years. Peele is no stranger to social commentary in his work. Nope focuses in on the exploitation of whoever or whatever Hollywood doesn’t traditionally view as human.
It’s clear from the first animal handling scene in the film that modern Hollywood is being portrayed as heartless towards animals. OJ brings a horse to set and is not allowed to actually do his job to keep the animal and the people working with it safe. He tells the production staff to not stand behind the horse, but they keep sending more and more people into the unsafe space for that creature. They tell OJ he has time to prep the horse and cast to work together but then is immediately forced to put the animal in show mode. Even after Emerald shows up for the safety speech and actually grabs the staff’s attention by putting on her own performance, the cast and crew surrounding them ignore OJ and cause an accident.
Do I need to specify that OJ and Emerald are the only Black people on an otherwise all-white set?
Peele is not afraid to tackle issues of racial and economic inequality in his work and Nope is no exception. The critique goes further this time, exploring how Hollywood exploited former child actor Ricky “Jupe” Park as part of a diversity quotient in their programming. He was the Asian kid in the popular early-90s action/adventure film who then played the cute younger sibling on a popular sitcom. Despite starring in the show, the focus is always on Gordy, the chimpanzee living with the family. Ricky’s worth is valued as less than that of a trained chimp, which is explored over and over in flashbacks.
You can take the comparison a step further. OJ and Emerald are trying to prove the existence of extraterrestrial life above their ranch. They know no one will believe them unless they get the clearest footage ever captured of alien activity. They don’t have the luxury of showing off some blurry, obviously staged footage and making a fortune off the talk show and tabloid circuit. That avenue is not available to people like them. They need to do everything at such a higher level than previous extraterrestrial encounter survivors, same as having to perform their animal wrangling duties at a higher level than any other company in Hollywood.
Meanwhile, Ricky runs an Old West tourist attraction down the road from the Haywoods. His once-promising acting career is reduced to being the mascot of a tourist trap inspired by his most successful film. There’s even a massive inflatable Ricky gazing above the Old West façade to bring the guests in. It doesn’t matter that he’s running a successful entertainment business; his most lucrative work still comes down to being that Asian kid in a film and/or sitcom that people kind of remember from the 90s.
There is so much more going on with the plot of Nope. I’ve barely scratched the surface here. This is a dense, slower horror film with a non-traditional structure. The episodic film is divided into chapters named after the various animals that play a critical role in the story.
The cast is phenomenal. Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer have a brilliant, natural chemistry as OJ and Emerald. They are dealing with grief and trauma in their own ways, with OJ reflecting on the past and Emerald trying to escape to the future. Steven Yeun provides one of the greatest portrayals of PTSD I’ve seen onscreen in his Ricky. Brandon Perea plays Angel Torres, a Frys Electronics employee who helps upgrade the Haywoods’ tech for their paranormal research. He’s a welcome comedic relief that provides a great audience surrogate for what’s really going on. Terry Notary does great motion capture work as Gordy, the trained chimp, that really sets the tone for what the story is really about.
Nope also features some of the most original alien effects I’ve ever seen in a film. The creature conceived by Jordan Peele is beyond anything I ever imagined. I will not spoil it, but I am still trying to fully wrap my mind around what I saw.
Nope is very different from Peele’s previous horror films Get Out and Us. There is a beautiful slice of life element to the storytelling, allowing these characters ample time to breathe and explore their circumstances. The film is terrifying, the social commentary is sharp as ever, and the characters are allowed to react naturally to inherently unnatural circumstances.
Nope is playing in theatres.
