So, kudos to Jordan Peele. The guy went from half of a well-known comedy duo to one of the hottest directors of socially conscious horror in years. I don’t think anyone saw that coming, and if anything, he’s done a good job of keeping his movies surprising. Anyone who has more than a vague idea what any movie of his is about before they see it probably saw some spoilers somewhere first, even possibly on purpose. I mean, I remember watching a YouTube video that tried to dissect the first trailer to Peele’s latest, Nope, and all of those guesses were 100% wrong.
Granted, all those scenes still appeared in the movie and meant something very different once the context of the scenes were known, but the point stands.
Siblings Otis “OJ” Junior (Daniel Kaluuya) and Em Haywood (Keke Palmer) have a problem in the form of the family horse ranch. The Haywoods have been raising horses for showbusiness going back generations, but since the sudden and bizarre death of patriarch Otis “Pops” Sr (Keith David), the ranch, which wasn’t doing all that well to begin with, is in dire economic straits. OJ is good with the horses and knows the business, but he’s a quiet, taciturn man who doesn’t seem to get along well with people. Em has all the charisma and razzle-dazzle needed to win people over, but she really doesn’t care about the ranch and its financial problems as she’d rather work on her own career. It’s gotten to the point where OJ has had to sell some of the horses to their neighbor, former child star Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), for use at his western-themed amusement park. Things look a bit grim, and they get worse when some strange phenomena, something that looks like a UFO, starts taking away some of the horses.
However, where some might see this as a reason to fear, the Haywoods see it as an opportunity: if they can get some high quality photos or video of the UFO, they’ll be able to regain their financial footing and maybe save the ranch. Small problem: electrical devices of all kinds tend to short out when the UFO is nearby. That would make it difficult when even a smartphone stops working. There may be ways around it, and the only real ally the Haywoods have is a big electronics box store employee who also happens to be a UFO enthusiast (Brandon Perea). Still, there’s a lot that Angel and the Haywoods don’t know, and what they don’t know could be the sorts of things they’ll need to know to keep themselves alive. Fortunately, between the group, they do have the skillset necessary to get what they need. They just need to figure out what that is.
Now, this is a Peele movie, and that means there’s probably some kind of underlying message. If Get Out was about the racism of well-off white liberals and Us dealt with socio-economic inequality in America, Nope might actually be about treating animals with respect and exploiting living things for financial gain. The Haywoods, or at least OJ, get that. OJ knows horses and how to handle them, understanding that no matter how tame a horse may be, it can still be a dangerous and unpredictable animal. By contrast, other characters aren’t necessarily abusive or anything, but they don’t seem to get that animals aren’t people and they can be dangerous. That shines through most with Yeun’s Jupe, but could just as easily apply to Michael Wincott’s character, a cinematographer who spends his free time watching wildlife footage, particularly one video that seems to be a python attacking a tiger.
Peele’s direction, as I expected, does know how to create and for the most part maintain the tension. I felt like that let up a bit in the last half hour or so, largely due to how OJ and the others had figured the UFO out by then, what it was, what it did, and how to survive dealing with it. From there, the movie became more of an action movie with a sci-fi bent and not so much a horror film. It still had a good deal of tension, but it was tension of a different kind. The movie was still worth the trip, and as has happened with every new movie Peele has made, I am already looking forward to his next one.
Grade: B+
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