Jordan Peele is a filmmaker known for creating comedy and horror films. His debut movie—Get Out—was released in 2017, and was described by Vox as an American psychological thriller about “a Black man who stumbles into a very white, very weird world.” As a huge psychological thriller and horror movie fan, I was pretty excited when I heard about a new thriller coming out. I sat down in the theater and the first ten minutes were pretty cool. The opening scene is a few clips of a monkey wearing a birthday hat and covered in blood. There is also a shoe standing which I interpreted as symbolizing the saying “Wait for the other shoe to drop.” The following scene is great; I have no complaints regarding it. It was a great way to start the movie—it leaves the audience with questions, and hooks them so they think they’re in for a mysterious ride.
Unfortunately, after that, the movie starts to go by very slowly. The whole movie is essentially the same scene over and over again, with minor adjustments. I got bored pretty quickly; nothing big was happening, and I had been so excited to watch a sci-fi thriller. I had never really been into sci-fi but this—by the trailer and
description—seemed like a good place to start. Jordan Peele has such great reviews on the two other movies he released before this: Us and Get Out. The trailer shows an unknown flying object in the sky, which left me wondering how the movie would explain the technology behind this.
I’m not the only one who felt frustrated by this movie; I interviewed IHS junior, Brooke Gordon, on her dislike of the movie. She told me she had enjoyed the start of the movie, but it went downhill from there. She then went on to explain a minor plot hole: horses need horseshoes to walk, but this movie doesn’t even have horseshoes. This movie had a high budget, sixty-eight million dollars. Unfortunately, none was put into getting horseshoes, or in this case, a plot.
I would like to clarify that this is not the worst movie to ever be released—that would be Open House, a 2018 “horror” film directed by Suzanne Coote and Matt Angel and starring Dylan Minnette. But that’s for another article. Back to Nope, though: I think the cinematography was amazing, and the casting was great. Unfortunately, it was just 135 minutes of wanting to be scared but nothing ever came out of it. In our interview, Brooke spoke about how disappointed she was, constantly waiting for something to happen.
Brooke and I agreed one of the best scenes in the movie was the kids in the horse stable. It also happens to be where the word “nope” is said the most. In this scene, OJ is in the stable because he hears some noises and we see creatures that Peele meant to be aliens. OJ gets freaked out and says “nope” about four or five times, but it turns out to just be some annoying kids from the nearby “circus.” Gordon said that it was a well-placed scene since “It happens at the right time, a little after some previous action.”
I would like to remind you all that I do not watch or read science fiction, so if it were not for Will Thomas enlightening me that the word “nope” also stands for “Not Of Planet Earth,” then I would’ve forever been mad at Peele for naming a movie with a word that was said so little. I could count it on my fingers and still have a few left over. After some research, I also learned that in an interview Peele explained why he named it what he did; he said, “I was trying to let people figure that one out for themselves, you know? So I wasn’t leaning into that but the cat’s out of the bag. We are talking about a UFO here and it is not of planet Earth it also of course refers to how Black people—what we would say if we saw a UFO: Nope. It’s like … no extraterrestrial.”
If you think about it, Nope is just Jordan Peele’s failed adaptation of the thriller Birdbox but poorly translated to a science fiction thriller. With both creatures, you cannot look at them or else they will kill you. You can speak and make noise; just as long as you do not look at them, you will be safe. The largest similarity is that both creatures are never completely revealed in the end. Birdbox was just some demon that made humans want to end their lives. In Nope it is this odd metal jellyfish that eats you. But it was never actually clarified what either of them was.
Another odd detail Brooke noticed in the film was these weird eyes you could see in at least two places. There were eyes on the
children’s masks from the stable, and then the same eyes were later seen on a motorcyclist’s helmet. It was an unknown repetition and the only reason Brooke noticed it was because she was so bored with the movie itself she was looking in the background for stuff to try to put together. She was noticing things on the first watch that should usually be seen after a few watches.
I will say that I did appreciate that the metal jellyfish alien in Nope was not just a spaceship and that the saucer was indeed just the alien. It was different and I really do admire that because I wasn’t expecting it. The whole movie I was still expecting some aliens to come out of the ship.
Brooke and I would also like to acknowledge that Peele made a scene to point out how humans are awful and will exploit anything for money. In this movie that would be Gordy, the chimpanzee who killed the whole set and left only Jupe because it got shot dead before Gordy got to Jupe. Jupe also goes on to grow and exploit the alien ship for money too. He gets a large crowd to see this new wild phenomenon, not thinking about the consequences of this decision: when the ship gets too close to the crowd it sucks everyone and everything up and consumes them. Most viewers will tell you this was the most disturbing scene. I, a horror/thriller fan, will just tell you it was mediocre. I have seen much worse and gorier scenes. I think that the connection between the shoe standing up at the beginning of the movie finishes with this scene, with it starting with Jupe being the only survivor of the exploitation of Gordy, to Jupe dying as he was supposed to earlier—to the alien he was exploiting to make money for himself.
Brooke and I would also like to point out that while the second scene was very long (the one with OJ and his sister, Emerald, working on the set and explaining the background of the horses and their trainers), it goes on to explain that we need to appreciate the Black folks working as the horse trainers while not receiving any acknowledgment. This scene dives into the Black erasure in Hollywood movies. Black people are usually not credited in movies using live-action animals when they are trainers or when they let shows and movies use their animals. So while Jordan Peele does indeed represent some very important things in his movie, it still wasn’t enough to make it enjoyable.
When I searched for “Nope 2022,” the overall Google rating was 2.8 stars. One of the reviews said, “It doesn’t even know what genre it wants to be. It was advertised as horror or suspense but it is far from that. Too much time is spent talking about horses and establishing backgrounds and storylines that are mostly minor (putting it kindly) to the plot that by the time the main plot device comes around it just feels a bit underwhelming and disconnected.” Another review stated, “The whole alien terrorizing small town concept would of been good if explored properly, but we never really learn why the UFO does what it does, nor why after so many people are killed, there’s no state or federal reaction to what goes on. The alien ship comes out of nowhere, claims its victims, and …the life goes on until it finds its own demise when it consumes a giant floating balloon cowboy.”
Going off of the last review, I would like to add that Peele never explains anything about the horses. His movie is set on a ranch that would obviously have horses, and for some reason the alien spaceship thing makes the horses act up whenever it is close. But Jordan never explains why it was just horses and not other animals that reacted this way. What connection do the horses have to this creature that makes them hyper-sensitive to it? I assume it left other viewers wondering the same as me, which is, ‘What was the point?’
I know Will Thomas believes this film was truly amazing. I really did appreciate reading his article and hearing his point of view on the movie. If you would like to read why he believes it was a fantastic film, you can check out the November issue of The Tattler on page thirty-two. I, however, will never be able to see eye to eye with him on this. I just do not think the film was well put together, though I liked the idea of it. A large metal spaceship that turns out to not be a ship at all and just the alien itself. The fact that it cuts off anything electric when it is close. Also that it makes horses freak out. These are interesting concepts, but I would really like to see another director take these ideas and put them into a better-made film, that actually runs together smoothly. It also could just be that I am not a sci-fi fan so I didn’t understand it as much as others may have. While I had little enjoyment watching it, I wouldn’t tell those reading this to not watch it. In fact, I hope that after reading both of our articles—if you haven’t seen it yet or you have—you can agree with at least one of our opinions.