Saying a big Yes to NOPE

Monday is Movies. And sometimes TV. Today I look at Jordan Peele's latest movie, "Nope"

I saw NOPE on its New Zealand opening night, a couple of weeks ago now, and I can’t stop thinking about it. So many of its images hanging there still in my mind. Its beautiful tone-poem feel, its extraordinary commitment to a unique brand of storytelling. It’s been a great year for new horror - the Scream reboot, The Black Phone and X obvious highlights, but maybe Nope will be the one I’ll be thinking of the most throughout the year…

Jordan Peele’s third film is going to divide fans – and I’m sure he’d like that. He’s operating on a level where his movies reward repeat viewings, contain deep-cut attention from a huge film and pop-culture geek and also have such a strong social conscience/political narrative imbedded in and around the existential horror thread that the real marvel is the fact that he’s somehow been trusted with budget and schedule to essentially produce a summer blockbuster but on his own terms and in his own way.

But it’s also time for people to take issue with the writer/director/producer, to decide that his hidden meanings and cryptic clues aren’t actually really there, are some form of laziness because the answers aren’t simple enough.

This happens three films into an impressive career. This happens when musical acts turn away against the obvious commercial path (see: Radiohead).

So it’s hard to talk about Nope without spoiling it. And it’s hard to talk about it without acknowledging the polarisation.

Less a horror than a sci-fi film, Peele puts us in the remote ranch of some Hollywood horse hustlers – a family that’s been wrangling animals on film sets for generations; in fact they go back to the very first moving images ever recorded.  Generational trauma and frustration is a part of this family’s story. In some way, they are monetising that grief, whilst paying tribute to the legacy.

In cutaway scenes, apparently unrelated, we are shown the film set of 1990s TV show where a chimpanzee terrorises its cast. The surviving child star now makes money off that nostalgia and runs an old-time fair – he too is monetising his trauma, his grief; his world a phoney recreation of a past that haunts him. His compensation keeps him allegedly happy and allows him to thrive.

These worlds combine when Otis Jr “OJ” Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) starts to sell some of his family’s horses to Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun) in order to keep the business alive and pay off debts, ever since Otis Senior (Keith David) died after a strange attack.

I’ve said more than I would about the plot, ordinarily. But I know the film’s second trailer gave a lot away.

What’s worth mentioning here, is how Peele has created a film that’s intriguing, weird and at times a little scary – but it’s also funny and odd and just so beautifully filmed. I thought, often of Tarantino as an influence, where I’ve not thought about that with Peele’s previous films. In particular, Tarantino’s most recent triumph, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – some obvious connections and themes with the looking back at a Western-infused Hollywood of the past. And also in the way Peele here layers the soundtrack (a mix of Michael Abels’ creeping score and needle-drop bangers like Dionne Warwick singing Walk on By).

I thought, too, of M. Night Shyamalan – a more obvious reference point perhaps but also here I thought about how his sci-fi/alien film Signs didn’t really stick the landing, but gave me enough during its first half to seal the deal. I felt a little that way when watching Nope.

Then I walked away after and thought more about how beyond the clever, beautiful framing of the film, its intriguing wild ride and slow-burn combination, it was a film that buried a deep, brutal warning of how we never learn. The human species is so concerned with itself and the chance to forge a business venture out of seemingly any opportunity. I think that’s what Peele wanted to do. Push that idea in, Trojan Horse style. Push that idea in to a horror/sci-fi dystopia, that just also happens to be a summer blockbuster. That just also happens to be his very best film to date, even if it has the least satisfying ending; even as it will be the one that will be the most dividing.

I can’t wait to see it again.