FILM REVIEW: "Nope" is a return to form for horror funnyman Jordan Peele
Filmmaker Jordan Peele, after delivering a knockout classic with his debut ‘Get Out’ and leaving a compelling trail of breadcrumbs to nowhere with ‘Us’, delivers a thrilling experience to match his thoughtful ideas with ‘Nope’.
Its story rhythms are unique – heck, strange, if you found it a bore to behold – and it’s sure to piss off more than a few with its storytelling choices that seem like unrelated tangents.
But I found it came together with some elegance in my mind hours after my viewing.
Rather than just going for another horror comedy, Peele throws in science fiction and westerns into this mix. The result is a kind of unnerving spooky atmosphere that pervades the film; even when the big UFO isn’t sucking up gawking folk, churning them, and spraying them out into fine scarlet mist.
‘Nope’ isn’t a statement on American racial politics and society like ‘Get Out’ and ‘Us’ were but it’s a paragraph of suggestions that we as a people may be too enchanted by the spectacle of exploitation; it’s an enchantment that leaves us dumb, dull and useless, fodder for the machine. It might be best to look away, like the title suggests.
But when the showman is as rigorous and idiosyncratic as Peele, there’s no chance of that.
