“It’s not what you think!”
Jordan Peele’s feature debut, GET OUT (2017), was a breakout hit and marked him out as a talent to watch, as well as nabbing him the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Expectations were high for his second feature, US (2019), but it turned out to be a bit of a mess. An initially intriguing but ultimately ludicrous twilight zone-y tale with a nonsensical premise that not even my high level of suspension of disbelief could tolerate. It was a disappointment.
His new film, NOPE, is something of a return to form – albeit with some great big honking caveats. If you decide to see it, I strongly recommend avoiding all spoilers in advance. With that in mind, here’s a basic summary of what it’s about:
After their father is killed in a freak accident, OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer) become the stewards of his Hollywood horse rental business, based on a ranch in the lonely California outback. Their nearest neighbour, a former child star, now runs a cowboy themed park, haunted by memories of an on-set animal incident that killed or mutilated his co-stars. He knows something’s lurking in the skies above the valley, something possibly Not Of Planet Earth. And unless OJ and and Emerald are careful, they might be taken by it too.
There’s certainly some interesting themes to this one, though they aren’t deployed as elegantly as I’d have liked. It’s a critique/warning of the dangers of people trying to control animals – and by extension nature too. There’s also some garbled messaging about media and our desire to “see”. It’s not as tightly-written as GET OUT, but in places it’s really quite striking, with some haunting visuals and scenes that have stayed with me, days since seeing it. I was lucky enough to see it at the Waterloo IMAX and it looked stunning in that format. It’s easily the most cinematic and beautiful film Peele’s made so far. It’s also got a fabulous, evocative score by Michael Abels.
It’s messy, but interesting. If you can try and ignore the bad logic contrivances done by Peele to keep his story moving the direction he had in mind, and just go with the flow then you can have a lot of fun with it. It’s certainly a much better film than US on every level. And arguably it’s a much more interesting movie than GET OUT in terms of ideas. I think the script felt a bit under-cooked. But even as an undercooked stew, it’s still got some interesting and unusual ingredients and it’s still fairly tasty!
