Miss Flicks

Nope: Film Review

Given the success of his first two films, Get Out and Us, my expectations for Jordan Peele‘s latest movie Nope were incredibly high – and it didn’t quite deliver upon them.

Nope stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as siblings OJ and Emerald Haywood, who run the Haywood’s Hollywood Horses handling and training company. Very strange things start to occur on their remote ranch in the California desert and they become convinced they’ve encountered a UFO.

While it sounds like a simple sci-fi story, we all know by now that Peele’s films are horrors with a side of social commentary. They are about so much more underneath the surface and are filled with subtext and thought-provoking undercurrents. I may sound like an airhead here, but I’m not the best at figuring that deeper meaning while I’m watching a film for the first time and generally take it at face value but it gave me a lot to think about and reading everyone’s various takes on the meaning has been interesting.

The film is the least scary and my least favourite of Peele’s three. I liked it, don’t get me wrong, but I thought it was quite long and slow, I was underwhelmed by the ending and there were certain aspects that weren’t explained or clear. There are only a couple of genuinely scary moments, but the film is all about the ominous and unsettling atmosphere and the sense of foreboding. Like most horrors, the UFO encounters get progressively more intense and threatening and so the tension builds and builds. But there is also light relief in places and I laughed out loud a few times.

As gripping as the UFO storyline is, I was far more horrified and morbidly captivated by a subplot involving Ricky ‘Jupe’ Park’s (Steven Yeun) childhood as an actor. It is revisited a bunch of times throughout the film. I’m not going to reveal any more than that but those scenes really stuck with me and are far more memorable than the UFO narrative. It gave me serious food for thought.

I don’t know why Palmer isn’t a bigger star already because she carries this movie with her charming, outspoken personality. She is so charismatic and I couldn’t stop looking at her. Her chatterbox nature balances out Kaluuya as the shy and silent type. He isn’t good with people and speaking seems like an effort. Yeun gives a subtle performance as a troubled person dealing with trauma and Brandon Perea is sweet as the Haywoods’ tech support Angel. I feel bad for Barbie Ferreira as she is so underused I forgot she was even in it.

I think perhaps I was expecting too much from Nope and that’s why I feel a little let down. It’s a clever film if you take the deeper layers into it but the main surface story didn’t blow me away.

In cinemas from Friday 12th August