Warning: Spoilers for Nope to follow.
Jordan Peele’s jump from comedy to horror may have been a surprising one, but all doubts evaporated as soon as we all encountered Get Out. Teaming up with Daniel Kaluuya for the first time, the film shows the horror of racism in a nuanced and unrestrained way. The film cemented Peele as a horror director to look out for and, like many filmmakers, he only improved upon his craft as time went on.
After 2019’s speculative horror film Us, Peele created his magnum opus. Nope is the filmmaker’s 3rd venture and should be considered one of the best cosmic horror movies of all time. But more than anything, OJ (Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood’s (Keke Palmer) fight with an Unidentified Flying Object is a straight horror film. Aliens can sometimes toe the line of actually terrifying their audiences, but when Peele is in the director’s chair, prepare for the unexpected.
Nope is more horrific than most UFO movies
Peele’s niche is delving into the unexpected and Nope more than delivers. After the Haywood patriarch, Otis (Keith David), dies from what seems like a freak accident, his children uncover more baffling and unexplainable events. Random objects fall from the sky, and their horses are seemingly abducted. But it is only when local celebrity Ricky Park (Steven Yeun) proclaims the existence of a phenomenon that the film takes a turn. Ricky and his entire audience get sucked into what appears to be a flying saucer but is something much worse.
With visuals of a giant flying monster digesting people, Nope takes a sharp turn down Grotesque Lane. Once the entity the Haywoods dub Jean Jacket finishes its meal, it wastes no time in dumping buckets of blood all over the Haywood house. And when Peele isn’t throwing in surprising visuals, he also gives jump scares and one of the most disturbing opening scenes of any film in recent memory.
It is some time into the film before the inclusion of this sequence makes sense in the grander scheme of the film, but the flashback to Ricky’s most gruesome experience is not for the faint of heart. During his time as a child star, he acted in a show starring a chimpanzee. Everything goes wrong one harrowing day when the monkey snaps and kills and mutilates the cast members before being shot down. This sequence not only sets the stage for a brutal film but shows that Ricky thinks he can tame Jean Jacket later in life. Nope is an alien film that explores scary territory, and if you are thinking this will be a Steven Spielberg gentle take on aliens, think again.