"KEEP BUSTIN'."

Nope

I think the first time I noticed Jordan Peele was in the 2012 movie WANDERLUST. I thought he was really funny in that and then his Comedy Central show Key & Peele started and there were those Liam Neesons sketches and all that. Somehow 10 years later we mainly think of him as one of the most exciting working horror directors – he was even name dropped in the most recent SCREAM movie. Strange world we’re living in.

For me Jordan Peele film #3, NOPE, was one of the most anticipated movies of the summer, and not just because it would put an end to its trailer playing on every god damn movie I went to for several months. It’s pretty impressive that I was able to go see it and be surprised to find out what the overall story was and that some of the shots I had seen seemingly hundreds of time were not what I thought they were. To preserve that for you if you haven’t seen it I’ll talk about my general feelings about the movie and then I’ll warn you when I’m gonna get into it in more detail.

I love the first two Jordan Peele movies. Here’s my theory on them. Both have really original concepts and worlds, great acting performances, characters that are entertaining to watch, well executed ratcheting of tension and release, and elements of allegory that are fun to think about while watching and even moreso afterwards.

Most people seem to prefer GET OUT, which was obviously the bigger cultural phenomenon. Huge crossover to non-horror fans, great audience experiences, started some discussions, introduced the commonly referenced concepts of the “sunken place” and the white person who says they wish they could’ve voted for Obama a third time, also won the best screenplay Oscar and was nominated for best picture, director and actor despite being a Blumhouse horror movie directed by one of the guys known for getting too excited about Liam Neeson and exploding.

Though US was a big hit, it didn’t set the world on fire in the same way. But for my tastes it’s an even better horror movie. It’s just so stylishly designed and directed, it has such a knockout dual performance from Lupita Nyong’o, and it delivers more on such important horror elements as monsters and gore. And most of all I just think it’s a pitch perfect balance of genre and subtext. I would compare it to something like THEY LIVE – what it’s saying is a big part of what makes it so cool, but even if you were somehow blind to that it would be a kickass genre movie. The idea of monstrous doppelgangers of each of us living under the earth is a weird, creepy nightmare whether or not you extrapolate further meaning from it. On the other hand, GET OUT’s concept of mad scientists implanting old people’s consciousness into young people’s bodies requires you to appreciate what it’s saying to work at all, because otherwise that would be a laughable subject for a horror movie.

US has some overlap with Wes Craven’s THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS in both horror concepts and underlying meanings. As much as I love Craven, I prefer US – “the tethered” are just cooler than the people under the stairs, and Peele’s treatment of class is much more nuanced and convincing than Craven’s (as well meaning as it was). And like GET OUT, PEOPLE sort of requires you to dig the subtext to think it’s cool. Taken literally, the idea of a society of feral people living miserably inside the slumlords’ walls is a little iffy.

So with NOPE did Peele continue developing that balance I loved so much in US?

Um… I’m not gonna say it. The answer is, you know, the title of the movie. But that’s because he’s evolving his approach and changing his goals. As he told the Big Picture podcast, “I think when people think of movies like JAWS and ALIEN they think of these big, fun movies. And that’s what I love. And those movies pack a message, but I just don’t think people want a director who’s trying to scream a message at them. I think people want to have a good time, not know what the fuck is happening, have an immersive, teleportative experience… I think people like movies more than messages.”

He notes that “that doesn’t mean a movie can’t say something or start a conversation,” and this movie has definitely started some conversations about what people think the message is, but it’s definitely not something he’s screaming at us, at least in any language I understand. I think it accomplishes his goal of being an entertaining movie that doesn’t make you feel preached to or like you’re being asked to eat your vegetables.

But… to me there’s a small problem with the way that works here. Not a debilitating one, just one that makes this very enjoyable movie my least favorite of his three so far, at least on first viewing. The problem is that Peele maintains his interest in layering in detailed motifs, symbols, parallels, movie references both real and fictional, weaving a world and a tale that take their time getting to where they’re going. So even though it’s completely compelling the whole time, when it gets to the conclusion it feels a little light. Like it didn’t amount to quite enough.

But maybe it did. Some people seem to think there’s a whole lot in there. There are definitely many cryptic elements to decipher, and Peele is a very detail-oriented director who surely has thought through all this stuff. We’ll discuss some of that later in this review.

Daniel Kaluuya (JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN) and Keke Palmer (HUSTLERS) star as Otis Jr. (O.J.) and Emerald (Em) Haywood, brother and sister whose father Otis Sr. (Keith David, DISCO GODFATHER) ran Haywood’s Hollywood Horses, providing and training horses for Hollywood productions. After Otis Sr. dies in a bizarre incident of debris falling from the sky, O.J. struggles to keep the business going without much help from Em.

The opposite personalities of the siblings really come out when they bring a horse to a commercial shoot. O.J. has trouble communicating with the Hollywood people (including a director played by Osgood Perkins – “Young Norman,” PSYCHO II), while Em can’t stop showing off and plugging her Etsy business and stuff. Then she’s schmoozing and not paying attention when he needs her help, leading to an incident.

There’s tension between them. Em doesn’t seem to have been around lately, she’s just visiting, and pissing him off. She seems to think he should sell the ranch, but at least isn’t pressuring him about it. To get by he’s been selling some of the horses to a neighboring western theme park called Jupiter’s Claim, run by former child star Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun, OKJA). But he’s hoping to eventually have the money to buy them back.

For me the most effective thing about NOPE is the way it sucked me into the lives and world of these characters without worrying about when or how the genre elements would come in. As you know from the trailer, the Haywood family proudly claim to descend from the guy who rode the horse in the very first motion picture, photographed by Eadward Muybridge in 1878. But since then their biggest job was training horses that ultimately weren’t used in THE SCORPION KING. (O.J. still wears his crew hoodie from that job.)

Their neighbor Jupe’s claim to fame is a combination of nostalgia and morbid fascination. Coming along with O.J. to see Jupe and looking at the memorabilia in his office, Em suddenly clocks Jupe as “the Asian kid from KID SHERIFF,” some cheesy ‘90s movie that’s the basis of his theme park. But when the subject comes up he jumps at the chance to talk about Gordy’s Home, a sitcom he was on that was cancelled after an infamous tragedy. In fact, he has a secret door into his mini-museum of mementos and collectables. The one thing that makes him more excited than recounting his most traumatic childhood experience is to gush about the Saturday Night Live sketch it inspired. The awe in Jupe’s voice as he speaks reverently about “Kattan” made me laugh because I couldn’t be sure it was meant as the cold hearted sketch-comedy-performer-on-sketch-comedy-performer dig I took it as. Plausible deniability.

Eventually this is gonna be about a UFO. Some but not all of the odd things going on around here are tied together by some hovering disc thing that has been prowling the area. One night one of the horses freaks out, all the electricity goes down, and O.J. sees something flying around in the clouds. Then brother and sister settle on a project they can work on together: going to Fry’s (the time period here is slightly ambiguous) and buying a security camera system, believing (reasonably or not) that proof of this flying saucer could get them money to save the ranch. Luckily Angel (Brandon Perea, DANCE CAMP), the Fry’s employee who drives out to help them set it up, gets excited about the project and even (unethically) monitors their feed from work, so he notices something odd.

(okay, I’m gonna get into the BIG SPOILERS now)

There are some good surreal horror concepts in here, whether or not they’re as weird as the ones in previous Peele movies. One is that Angel notices a cloud above the ranch that never moves. What the fuck. Another is the MAIN GIMMICK OF THE MOVIE SPOILER reveal that it’s not a spaceship hiding in that cloud, but in fact a monster, some sort of rare creature that floats in the sky, can suck people and animals like a tractor beam, can do some sort of eel-like electricity thing, and (best of all) spread into a bizarre but beautiful sort of… sail? I don’t know how to describe it. But it would freak you out if you saw it over your ranch, I bet.

Em comes up with this idea of putting a (stolen) decoy horse in the field to attract it without killing one of their real horses. The string of pennant flags wrapped around it seems to get caught in the creature’s throat, so they see it hanging out of the cloud. That made for a perfectly enigmatic teaser image, but it also sets up a clever rule going forward: wrapping themselves or their horses in flags or ribbons can protect them since the creature learns not to eat things that look like that. I love that.

Many reviews seem to see this as a big Spielberg homage, but if they mean something beyond having an alien and/or people look toward the sky with awe I’m not sure what it is. I guess there’s a parallel to JAWS, with a couple people banding together to defeat this one large animal that’s been eating people, but that’s not exactly a Spielberg trademark. I’ve also seen many describing it as an example of and/or deconstruction of big summer blockbusters. I don’t really get that, though, because it’s been so many years since big summer blockbusters could be this small and intimate, about a couple of people fighting one thing on their property, not trying to save the whole city/world/universe/multi-verse. To me it seems more like a nice little break from summer blockbusters.

I think most of you will agree with me that the movie it seems most patterned after is in fact the 1990 January release TREMORS (which had about one seventh the budget, unadjusted). So after all that build up you realize oh, it’s kinda like TREMORS, but nothing can quite be TREMORS. So you enjoy it for what it is – an interesting version of a movie that’s kinda like TREMORS. But part of what makes it interesting is all these details it leaves me puzzling over, not sure of their significance. I don’t know the meaning of O.J. naming the monster “Jean Jacket” after the horse that was supposed to go to Em but got trained for THE SCORPION KING instead. I don’t know exactly what it says that Jupe’s co-star (Sophia Coto) who was badly disfigured by the chimp attends his alien show clad in a t-shirt of her smiling childhood face. I figure there’s something symbolic in it being a balloon of Jupe as Kid Sheriff that ultimately kills Jean Jacket – and/or being a balloon at all since a balloon popping was what set off the killer chimp – but I can’t quite make sense of it. And I definitely don’t understand the shoe standing upright during the chimp attack. I don’t mind not knowing, I like having to think about it, it’s just that giving you this much code to crack on the surface feels a little lofty compared to the “it’s just a simple monster movie” center. Luckily for me that’s the sort of misgiving that usually melts away on a second viewing after I know what I’m getting into.

One thing about it that is not like TREMORS, and that I would not have guessed during the unbearably high number of times I saw the trailer, is that the movie opens very disturbingly with that chimp attack on the set of a cheesy sitcom. When that event is revisited later in a flashback it’s a genuinely scary and disturbing scene, much more than anything with the monster. It’s also the most enigmatic part, since it only seems to connect thematically with the main story, not directly. You can only pretend a dangerous animal is a funny member of an astronaut family for so long before he gets frightened, reverts to his true nature and eats somebody’s face. Jupe survives the incident physically unscathed, becomes obsessed with it, and cluelessly destined to strike out in his second go ‘round, when he tries to make Jean Jacket put on a show.

He may believe he has some unique bond with dangerous animals, because after the chimp playing Gordy mauled his co-star it did not attack him, but gave him a fist bump (their trademark on the show). But we have no idea what “Gordy” really meant by this or what he would’ve done next had his brains not been splattered on the soundstage moments later. By contrast, O.J. really does have a bond with horses – he knows how to respect them, how to keep them calm, and the limits of his control over them. He witnesses the worst event of the movie because he’s worried about the horse he sold to Jupe and going to get him. He names the monster after a horse, and he survives encounters with it by extrapolating from what he knows about horse behavior.

So it’s a movie about nature, it’s obviously also about the movie business and/or art. The great Michael Wincott, if-you-know-you-know legend of THE CROW, STRANGE DAYS and ALIEN: RESURRECTION and brother of b-action icon Jeff Wincott, makes his triumphant return to the big screen as Antlers Holst, respected Hollywood cinematographer who brings his artistic eye and a non-electrical, hand-cranked camera to the ranch for Em and O.J.’s “documentary.” And Peele has him use that gorgeously gravelly voice to solemnly intone the lyrics to Sheb Wooley’s “Purple People Eater” as if they’re deep. I mean, why not? If Keith David’s character was still around he would’ve been good for it too, but that’s not how things panned out.

Antlers cares about much more than just getting coverage, so I guess if NOPE is about summer blockbusters then he must represent those who really believe in their art and take their craft seriously. So (another spoiler) I don’t approve of what happens to him. We need more Antlers.

The cinematographer of NOPE was probly chosen for being kind of an Antlers. Hoyte Van Hoytema (LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, THE FIGHTER, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY, HER, INTERSTELLAR, SPECTRE, DUNKIRK, AD ASTRA, TENET) shot much of it with Imax cameras, one of his specialties. Apparently it’s the first ever horror film shot on 65mm Imax. Many reviews rave about the impressive scope of the imagery, about it just being gigantic. I did not see it Imax and I have to admit that, while there are some nice wide open spaces on the ranch, the size was not something that particularly caught my attention. So I’ll have to take their word for it.

I’ve seen many raving about that size and Peele’s stated theme of “our addiction to spectacle.” I admit I’m not totally sure what they’re seeing there either. I don’t think we’re worried about the proliferation of UFO videos or sitcoms with chimps or wild west shows. I guess “the Gordy’s Home incident” can stand in for any tragedy people are fascinated with, inspiring Netflix documentaries and shit. Is this supposed be like the ‘90s when we were worried about shows like A Current Affair and media obsession with murder trials, so we got MAN BITES DOG, NATURAL BORN KILLERS, SERIAL MOM, TO DIE FOR, BENNY’S VIDEO, etc.? If so, didn’t NIGHTCRAWLER do a better modern version of that? With its live animal/monster show, this seems more related to JURASSIC PARK, or JAWS 3-D, or of course going back 90 years to KING KONG.

I guess I’m just not convinced there’s much to say about “spectacle” that hasn’t been blindingly obvious our whole lives, so it’s perfectly fine thematic content, but as soon as you start talking about it like it’s an important message it makes the movie sound pretty flimsy. So I will stop talking about it after I mention one odd little detour that ties into that theme: the scene where a strange man (Devon Graye, I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE) on an electric motorcycle wearing a mirrored helmet with a built-in camera (that he never takes off) drives up right when they’re trying to lure the monster in. He turns out to be from TMZ, trying to get footage of the thing before they do. I enjoy the irony that we resent TMZ for exploiting people’s misery and therefore this information makes it much easier for us to laugh that this guy is about to get munched (and as the electrical interference comically hurls him from his vehicle). Still, O.J. does the right thing and attempts to save him (until he realizes the guy is too obsessed with getting the shot to be saved). I really like that this quiet, humble animal trainer gets to turn into kind of a western hero.

When all is said and done, I think my favorite thing about NOPE is Daniel Kaluuya, and I realize now how severely I undervalued him in GET OUT. There was that crying scene, and he was more memorable than in SICARIO or whatever else I knew him from, but I didn’t come away feeling like his performance was at the top of the list of reasons why the movie was great.

Then I saw him in WIDOWS (where he was terrifying) and JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH (where he was Fred Hampton) and it’s striking when an actor can make that much of an impression with three characters that are that different from each other. And now NOPE threatens to become my favorite performance by him so far, because this time he’s an entirely different person again but the character is mostly interior, mostly a lack of energy, the opposite of most movie-stealing performances. Also the opposite of Palmer – the two performances balance each other out just as the two sibling characters do. Or do not, I guess. Their differences cause lots of friction. But eventually they get on the same page, and any movie that has a brother and sister getting over some problems and having a good time together is gonna be pretty nice, especially if they do it by battling a weird man-and-horse-eating sky monster.

UPDATED POST-SCRIPT, 8/5/22: Another interpretation occurred to me while jogging today. What if Peele is wrestling with some of the issues that came to him while/after writing and producing CANDYMAN? That movie, along with some other horror movies and TV that have dealt with racial violence, have been criticized in some circles for exploiting Black trauma as entertainment. Of course Peele isn’t trying to make a “spectacle” of hate crimes, he’s trying to approach the subject with artistry – more Antlers Horst, less TMZ helmet-cam. And he’s reclaiming the character and meaning of Candyman for Black culture and a growing movement of Black filmmakers, just as O.J. and Em think filming Jean Jacket will save their historic Black-owned Hollywood horse training business. But maybe he still questions how strong the line is between art and exploitation.

Just a thought. Peele may not have thought of those parallels at all, but I wouldn’t rule it out. Seemed worth sharing. So I did. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2022 at 1:52 pm and is filed under Horror, Monster, Reviews, Science Fiction and Space Shit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

55 Responses to “Nope”

  1. Yeah, this was a fun time at the movies but it really didn’t cohere the way Us and Get Out did. The Ricky character seems really underbaked. It’s an odd choice that he doesn’t seem to be a foil to either of our leads, even though it would be easy enough with Em’s obsession with fame, OJ working in the industry as a child, ect, ect, ect.

    There is something very charming about how petty he is, though. He make contact with an actual real life alien and his big plan is to feed it his neighbor’s horses and build a small set of bleachers and sell chintzy alien merch? I should hope that, were I to find myself in the same situation, I would at least build a large set of bleachers.

    I couldn’t help but wonder if Peele wasn’t working backwards from imagery he found compelling and building a story from that a la Ari Aster. Chimp killing people on a sitcom set and a UFO vomiting blood onto a house don’t sound like they have much in common, and, after watching the film, I’m still not convinced they do. Pretty fucking sweet to look at though.

    Overall, I did not expect the movie to start with chimp murder and I did not expect it to end with a live-action Akira slide. Very good time in the theater, even if I probably won’t rewatch it like Get Out or Us down the road

  2. Yeah I saw it today at a matinee (those ticket prices really need to come down for matinee showings) and afterwards a friend of mine and I discussed it over lunch to parse the film out. Details like the upright shoe, while intriguing, demand some sort of explanation. It felt like I had to work harder than Peele did to find a solution to it, which is concerning. Peele’s pretty wise to leaving hanging threads, and in some longer 5 hour cut of this film, maybe those are better tied up. But it felt extremely first-drafty.

  3. Loved loved loved this movie, it crept up on me in hindsight. I don’t really know the proper etiquette on marking spoilers, so forgive me but the rest of this post will probably be full of them.

    I’ve seen a lot of people take it at face value that the guy on the bike was actually meant to be a paparazzo; I figured it was just a glib joke made by Emerald in the moment (apologies if this was demonstrably not the case, I admit I didn’t catch what the credentials that he quickly flashed said). Similarly it could just be an easy joke that the character is named “Ryder Muybridge” in the end credits (recall Eadweard Muybridge), but I don’t think so.

    Backtracking but there was a scene where my heart completely sank for a moment, the one with the praying mantis. Moment to moment this movie had me wondering what direction it was going in, and here this scene suddenly reminded me of a story idea I’ve been working on for the past couple months. This idea I’ve had, was I about to be completely scooped on it by this film? The answer is no, of course not: that scene turns out to be a fun little diversion, and even if what I’m working on does see the light of day in any capacity I don’t think I’m in any danger of it finding a large enough audience to be called out on much of anything. That fear exists entirely in my head.

    But it’s a real fear, not wanting to get left in the dust, ending up an also-ran on something you believe you’ve got the angle on. I don’t know if the Biblical epigraph opening the film fully scans thematically, I can’t parse it in that sense, but I don’t think the film strictly aims to condemn the idea that we’re all addicted to spectacle. I agree that would be pretty weak, although I haven’t seen Peele’s original quote about it so I don’t have the full context. The film has a shagginess to it but the clearest throughline to me, or at least the one that resonated with me so strongly, is the idea that if you want to pursue most creative endeavors these days you’ve got to work that much harder *because* it’s now so easy for us all to make spectacles of ourselves and our creative output.

    Em and OJ understand this. I don’t know what Ryder Muybridge planned on doing out there but it was probably nothing so elaborate as baiting a giant flying sea comb with a gauntlet of inflatable tube men.

    I know it sounds cheesy as fuck but I appreciate that Peele’s films have so far all felt pretty didactic. The world moves a million miles a minute (what else is new); each of his films so far seem like an attempt to provide a bit of a guiding light through the darkness, admitting that while there are no easy answers, being savvy and resourceful can get you a long way. Do you think Antlers was acting selfishly? From the second we’re introduced to that dude we know he’s going to be the Randy Quaid in Independence Day of this movie. I choose to view it charitably; he knew he could get more out of Em and OJ.

    My head is always in a total fog these days so I apologize if there were a lot of dumb or mistaken takes here, please take it all with a grain of salt. It’s possible I’ve made up a different movie in my mind which seems to happen to me pretty often lately

  4. Loved loved loved this movie, it crept up on me in hindsight. I don’t really know the proper etiquette on marking spoilers, so forgive me but the rest of this post will probably be full of them.

    I’ve seen a lot of people take it at face value that the guy on the bike was actually meant to be a paparazzo; I figured it was just a glib joke made by Emerald in the moment (apologies if this was demonstrably not the case, I admit I didn’t catch what the credentials that he quickly flashed said). Similarly it could just be an easy joke that the character is named “Ryder Muybridge” in the end credits (recall Eadweard Muybridge), but I don’t think so.

    Backtracking but there was a scene where my heart completely sank for a moment, the one with the praying mantis. Moment to moment this movie had me wondering what direction it was going in, and here this scene suddenly reminded me of a story idea I’ve been working on for the past couple months. This idea I’ve had, was I about to be completely scooped on it by this film? The answer is no, of course not: that scene turns out to be a fun little diversion, and even if what I’m working on does see the light of day in any capacity I don’t think I’m in any danger of it finding a large enough audience to be called out on much of anything. That fear exists entirely in my head.

    But it’s a real fear, not wanting to get left in the dust, ending up an also-ran on something you believe you’ve got the angle on. I don’t know if the Biblical epigraph opening the film fully scans thematically, I can’t parse it in that sense, but I don’t think the film strictly aims to condemn the idea that we’re all addicted to spectacle. I agree that would be pretty weak, although I haven’t seen Peele’s original quote about it so I don’t have the full context. The film has a shagginess to it but the clearest throughline to me, or at least the one that resonated with me so strongly, is the idea that if you want to pursue most creative endeavors these days you’ve got to work that much harder *because* it’s now so easy for us all to make spectacles of ourselves and our creative output.

    Em and OJ understand this. I don’t know what Ryder Muybridge planned on doing out there but it was probably nothing so elaborate as baiting a giant flying sea comb with a gauntlet of inflatable tube men.

    I know it sounds cheesy as fuck but I appreciate that Peele’s films have so far all felt pretty didactic. The world moves a million miles a minute (what else is new); each of his films so far seem like an attempt to provide a bit of a guiding light through the darkness, admitting that while there are no easy answers, being savvy and resourceful can get you a long way. Do you think Antlers was acting selfishly? From the second we’re introduced to that dude we know he’s going to be the Randy Quaid in Independence Day of this movie. I choose to view it charitably; he knew he could get more out of Em and OJ.

    My head is always in a total fog these days so I apologize if there were a lot of dumb or mistaken takes here, please take it all with a grain of salt. It’s possible I’ve made up a different movie in my mind which seems to happen to me pretty often lately. Also double apologies if this double posts; I didn’t see it pop up immediately the first time I tried but I don’t know if the site uses any sort of comment screening. I’m a long-time reader, not much of a commenter

  5. My least favorite Peele film so far, and I loved Get Out / liked Us. My big problem with this one: it’s boring. The idea of “a JAWS movie but the shark is in the sky” is cool as hell, but the story he came up with is not that interesting, and the two or three cool scenes are suffocated by slow pacing and flabby editing.

    I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — a movie can do a lot of things wrong and still be entertaining, but the one thing I will never forgive is if it’s boring. I spent hard-earned money to see your movie, don’t leave me sitting there thinking about that instead of getting swept up in your story. Thumbs down on this one.

  6. Loved loved loved this movie, it crept up on me in hindsight. I don’t really know the proper etiquette on marking spoilers, so forgive me but the rest of this post will probably be full of them.

    I’ve seen a lot of people take it at face value that the guy on the bike was actually meant to be a paparazzo; I figured it was just a glib joke made by Emerald in the moment (apologies if this was demonstrably not the case, I admit I didn’t catch what the credentials that he quickly flashed said). Similarly it could just be an easy joke that the character is named “Ryder Muybridge” in the end credits (recall Eadweard Muybridge), but I don’t think so.

    Backtracking but there was a scene where my heart completely sank for a moment, the one with the praying mantis. Moment to moment this movie had me wondering what direction it was going in, and here this scene suddenly reminded me of a story idea I’ve been working on for the past couple months. This idea I’ve had, was I about to be completely scooped on it by this film? The answer is no, of course not: that scene turns out to be a fun little diversion, and even if what I’m working on does see the light of day in any capacity I don’t think I’m in any danger of it finding a large enough audience to be called out on much of anything. That fear exists entirely in my head.

    But it’s a real fear, not wanting to get left in the dust, ending up an also-ran on something you believe you’ve got the angle on. I don’t know if the Biblical epigraph opening the film fully scans thematically, I can’t parse it in that sense, but I don’t think the film strictly aims to condemn the idea that we’re all addicted to spectacle. I agree that would be pretty weak, although I haven’t seen Peele’s original quote about it so I don’t have the full context. The film has a shagginess to it but the clearest throughline to me, or at least the one that resonated with me so strongly, is the idea that if you want to pursue most creative endeavors these days you’ve got to work that much harder *because* it’s now so easy for us all to make spectacles of ourselves and our creative output.

    Em and OJ understand this. I don’t know what Ryder Muybridge planned on doing out there but it was probably nothing so elaborate as baiting a giant flying sea comb with a gauntlet of inflatable tube men.

    I know it sounds cheesy as fuck but I appreciate that Peele’s films have so far all felt pretty didactic. The world moves a million miles a minute (what else is new); each of his films so far seem like an attempt to provide a bit of a guiding light through the darkness, admitting that while there are no easy answers, being savvy and resourceful can get you a long way. Do you think Antlers was acting selfishly? From the second we’re introduced to that dude we know he’s going to be the Randy Quaid in Independence Day of this movie. I choose to view it charitably; he knew he could get more out of Em and OJ.

    My head is always in a total fog these days so I apologize if there were a lot of dumb or mistaken takes here, please take it all with a grain of salt. It’s possible I’ve made up a different movie in my mind which seems to happen to me pretty often lately. Also double apologies if this double posts; I didn’t see it pop up immediately but I don’t know if the site uses any sort of comment screening. I’m a long-time reader, not much of a commenter

  7. Has anyone seen a reasonable theory about the shoe? I’ve actually seen surprisingly little discussion of it, but an otherwise good article in the L.A. Times that promised to address it ended up just saying that maybe Jupe was remembering it wrong. I don’t really mind not knowing but it’s the one thing that obviously requires some sort of explanation other than “weird shit can happen sometimes.”

  8. Has anyone seen a reasonable theory about the shoe?

    There’s was so many half-symbols that could of, or could not of meant something, or nothing, I sort of both lost count, energy, and will to keep playing. But I’m guessing something about the contest between trainer and creature being who’s going to heel.

  9. I really dug the way it kinda feels like Close Encounters for a while and then shifts gears and starts to feel more like Jaws (basically when they start to come up with a plan. With regards to the spectacle stuff, I think what’s interesting here is that this movie approaches adventure and spectacle and whatnot much more like an oldschool summer flick than a modern one. Nowadays when we hear spectacle we think of blue lights in the sky, the white house exploding, and a planet-sized war full of CG soldiers – but back in the day spectacle meant like “that’s a lot of horses!” or “look how big that set is!”

    And I think the movie is torn between being nostalgic with that flavor of spectacle but uncomfortable with how some of it was accomplished. Like I think it’s significant that this movie features real horses but a CG chimp. There’s a lot of that push-pull relationship with it going on. Like how Ricky’s park is kind of cute and charming and fun, but it’s also kinda gross that this dude’s entire life is shaped by a role he had when he was a kid. Or that a straightup horrifying real-life tragedy he experienced was turned into a funny SNL skit. I think that’s present in the TMZ guy too – like his goal is precisely the same as OJ and Em’s. Obviously they’re a lot more likeable than him, but I think we’re meant to consider the similarity between what they’re trying to do.

    The part I’m struggling to make sense of are the weird quirks of the movie, like the nebulous timeline (I initially thought Fry’s existence meant it was a period piece) or the standing shoe. I wonder if things like that will stick out less on second viewing and feel more like texture, or if something else will click into place and they’ll take on bigger significance. I definitely feel like I go into Peele’s movies with my detective brain turned on, trying to figure out the symbolism and thematic import of everything as its playing out, and maybe that does a disservice to the film. Maybe what he’s going for is something a little more visceral and less analytical. It’s def a movie I want to revisit.

  10. Yeah, OJ’s flip phone, a VHS tape and Fry’s made me think it was taking place earlier in the century. But I believe Em and others have modern phones, and I read that the famous UFO Fry’s closed down right before filming, so they must’ve just wanted to take advantage of that. I settled on the flip phone just representing OJ being old fashioned and rustic and what not, but I’m not 100% sure.

  11. Yeah and Fry’s only closed down a couple years ago so it could totally just be set in like 2019. But I definitely think the way it introduces elements like that is purposeful to kinda keep you on your toes. Our understanding of the setting develops slowly in a similar way to how our understanding of the object does.

  12. I regretfully have to agree with most of the above – liked it but wanted like it a lot more than I did. I didn’t find it boring, but I did feel disappointed that the many threads opened up in the first 2/3 didn’t really cohere into something… coherent, I guess. We get to know Jupe just enough for me to be super intrigued with him, and especially with how the opening/flashback to the chimp massacre fits in the whole story… but then we rush through his quick would-be UFO show, where it turns out he’s been courting/feeding the sky beast for awhile now?, and then he and everyone else there are – eaten, I guess? I never really figured out the chimp flashback thing.

    I loved every second of Antlers Horst, and I did find myself somewhat caught up in the final setpiece, but I couldn’t really figure out the plan or the stakes, and they put a lot of time and effort into an operation that ends up killing at least 2 people in the process! They’re confident in their ability to confront and manipulate whatever it is, based on… their understanding of earth horses? That’s a big plan they put into place, based on not a ton of info! And it’s all for a single photograph or snippet of film, because it will make them rich – but will it? Why wouldn’t the world just assume it was fake, and/or assimilate it with all the other info floating around every day – did those navy guys with the weird videos of floating triangles get rich? Maybe I would have felt different if they somehow established that this WILL for sure save the ranch. (“Guys, I just got off the phone with Oprah and she promises to pay us a million dollars for a photo of a UFO!”) Or the TMZ guy could have been lurking around throughout as a rival, making it clear that the whole world wants this footage… I dunno.

    Not to mention all those other reporters there with way more equipment at the amusement park at the end – did they not get the same photo or even more? Does that mean the whole thing is moot?

    Anyway, I loved the look of the whole thing, and really really liked all the performances, especially Daniel Kaluuya, and my family has been trying to replicate the awesome series of 5’s the siblings trade as the plan comes together. And I keep replaying in my mind the moment during the rainstorm when OJ starts to get out of the truck, glances up at the sky, then shuts the door muttering to himself (of course) “NOPE”… then locks the truck door. That was a great moment.

  13. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be too That Guy, but “redoing Jaws with a vaguely thematic, nifty-visuals prologue about Quint on the Indianapolis” is such a good summation of elevated horror (and modern Hollywood as a whole) that I can’t let it pass without comment.

    Fuck, that really sums it up.

  14. Miles, FWIW it’s actually illegal to use real primates in film and tv now. Animal groups stepped in and deemed making them perform on camera abusive (they’re right it seems). So anything with a monkey in it now is cgi.

    Not to say that doesn’t speak to a theme between Gordy and the Haywoods’ real horses. Just that Peele couldn’t have used a real chimp if he’d wanted to, but I trust he wouldn’t have wanted to knowing it’s bad for the animal.

    Perhaps it speaks to a theme that the industry has learned from the potential calamity this fictional backstory proposes.

  15. I probably should watch this unspoiled, but honestly, after everything I read about it, I actually consider seeing it in theatres now. Not sure if it holds up to my expectations, considering how many people I know and trust were a bit lukewarm about it, but it does sound like something that I would really enjoy.

    And I am surprised that there haven’t been any real life chimp-on-set-violence incidences. These fuckers are scary and dangerous! (Google the Gombe Chimpanzee War, but only if you can take absolutely horrifying stories of animal-on-animal violence.)

  16. “requires some sort of explanation other than “weird shit can happen sometimes.”” This is exactly what I thought about the shoe, but since everyone is guessing on it’s deeper meaning, I was thinking about it in the shower this morning and came up with this: shoes are a symbol of man’s civilization. We’re no longer running around barefoot. We’ve built a civilization full of creature comforts and such. But it wouldn’t take much for nature to rear it’s beastly head and rip us right out of our shoes (aka civility) with such violence as to leave us upended.

    I enjoyed this movie but didn’t love it. I’m disappointed that the scariest bits weren’t even about the main scary thing – the chimp attack, the fake aliens in the stable, even that disturbing film clip of the tiger and the snake.

    Small detail I loved – the big ass US scissors on display on Ricky’s desk. Small detail I didn’t love – no person who works with livestock would stick their work glove in their mouth to bite the finger to pull the glove off.

  17. Sorry, Alex’s double post was my fault – it was getting caught in the spam folder and I tried to rescue it but it was acting screwy so I did it more than once.

  18. I had another thought that I added to the review but I’ll post it here too:

    UPDATED POST-SCRIPT, 8/5/22: Another interpretation occurred to me while jogging today. What if Peele is wrestling with some of the issues that came to him while/after writing and producing CANDYMAN? That movie, along with some other horror movies and TV that have dealt with racial violence, have been criticized in some circles for exploiting Black trauma as entertainment. Of course Peele isn’t trying to make a “spectacle” of hate crimes, he’s trying to approach the subject with artistry – more Antlers Horst, less TMZ helmet-cam. And he’s reclaiming the character and meaning of Candyman for Black culture and a growing movement of Black filmmakers, just as O.J. and Em think filming Jean Jacket will save their historic Black-owned Hollywood horse training business. But maybe he still questions how strong the line is between art and exploitation.

    Just a thought. Peele may not have thought of those parallels at all, but I wouldn’t rule it out. Seemed worth sharing. So I did.

  19. I thought Get Out and Us were both masterpieces. I thought this was fine. Us got better the more I thought about it and read up on it in the days following; this one’s doing the opposite for me.

    I love the central twist/idea. And I liked the creative use of wacky waving tube men. However, the movie kept me at an arm’s length most of the time, which I guess is reflected in Daniel Kaluuya’s more reserved and laconic character. And I think the slower pace of the first hour or so is why it feels like some necessary scenes are missing– probably cut to keep a tighter pace and runtime. But I found it odd that Barbie Ferreira gets fairly prominent credit but about 15 seconds of screentime. And I really don’t understand why Antlers does the things he does in the climax– if we got to spend more time with him, it might click better for me. I also didn’t really understand why Jean Jacket does the expanding thing at the end– that felt unnecessary. And I find it hard to believe the characters are still so determined to get a picture of the UFO after all that happens to them in the third act, rather than just, y’know, trying to survive. I know some of this is nitpicking, but I felt less invested in this one, and therefore I poke holes.

    The best explanation for the shoe, to me, is that it’s just a bad miracle– a million-to-one thing that happened amidst tragedy. A terrible beauty. Which ties into the Biblical definition of spectacle that the movie seems to be about.

    I like your post-script thoughts there, Vern. I have seen a number of voices express being tired about seeing black pain displayed on film. There are important stories to be told and art to be made, but in terms of the black experience, media seems to focus on suffering. Naturally, you need suffering and conflict in drama, but I get it. So it probably is something Peele has thought a lot about. That said, I also saw someone share Peele’s tweet from 2014 about how he had a dream about a chimp that attacked a bunch of people but hugged him. Inspiration comes from many places.

  20. You all are way too hung up on the shoe standing upright and not with the fact that we’re meant to believe a popular sitcom filming in 1998 wouldn’t have had security personnel on immediate standby who’d have rushed in before multiple cast members got mutilated/killed like that.

    Anyway, finally saw it tonight and really like it for what it is, (“neo-Jaws” is what came to mind) and yeah, the odd bit had me like “what does that mean?”, but I can forgive a movie not working on multiple levels as long as it works at least on the literal one, and it pulls off “siblings deal with a weird UFO monster on their ranch” pretty well. If there’s one thing I think makes the movie feel light it’s Peele’s continued eschewing of epilogue. It worked in GET OUT as a first time feature and where things were more or less covered, it was personally frustrating to me in US, and here, the movie isn’t ambiguous enough in its events to really call for it. I really would have liked a “one month later” scene showing how the survivors’ lives changed, even Angel, who would probably be a massive celebrity in his own right as a guy who got eaten up and spat out by the UFO.
    Some other thoughts/observations:
    -Emerald’s flubbing on the “great great great” grandfather thing at first paints her as rather glib about the family business, but later hearing the video Otis senior made about the ranch makes it seem she was emulating what he did verbatim, despite the rift between them.
    -Ricky’s attempts to make money off the UFO is a bit rushed with how it comes up suddenly and lazily explains how he even knows about the UFO via exposition, but I guess part of the reason he’s doing it is he’s making the UFO the new “Gordy” and trying to tame it the way he might have almost done the chimp.
    -Personally if it was me trying to drive away from an oppressive hunting flying monster, I’d probably turn my car stereo off.
    -So is the title just a reference to the line coming up repeatedly in dialogue, or the “Not Of Planet Earth” theory people came up with? When they were talking about UFOs got given a different term, I figured it might come up there.

  21. Well, it’s finally come out in the UK. Maybe because of lowered expectations and knowing it’s a step down from Us and Get Out, I ended up liking it a lot anyhow. It’s a lot of fun, and full of memorable scenes and images. Man, Peele can direct; despite all the humor and ridiculous premise, the film is creepy as hell.

    Stray thoughts (spoilers):

    Man, Wincott’s lines are so fucking goofy, but they still fit the creepy tone because… dat voice. The only explanation for the purple people eater scene I can think of is that Peele was scientifically trying to disprove that Wincott can say anything and sound cool.(Evidence inconclusive.)

    KEITH DAVID KILLED BY ALIEN SCAT! would make for a great Weekly World News headline.

    Jesus Lizard and Earth t-shirts! Who’d have thunk Peele was into noise/drone metal?

    The upright shoe reminded me a lot of that scene in Us where a frisbee falls on a towel perfectly on top of an identical circle; fits with the bad miracle line, as someone above mentioned, but I thought it’s just another weird image to up the off-kilter feel of the movie.

    The final form of the sky shark was lovely. The way it flapped its mouth thing made me think it was flapping frames to form something like moving images, which… ‘rhymes’ with the initial scene where we’re within the alien’s gizzard watching the footage of the jockey riding a horse.

    This led me to the fact that the alien only tries to eat you when you look at it.

    I don’t know, man. I was sure the movie was more about running themes and imagery, but now I’m thinking there might be a more coherent message lurking there somewhere. Whatever it is, if it’s there it’s way more obtuse than in his previous films.

  22. Re: the title: I saw an interview with Jordan Peele where he said the working title was LITTLE GREEN MEN, because that also describes the dudes on the money. But I believe he went with NOPE because that’s the feeling he was trying to elicit.

    Is Not Of Planet Earth an acronym that existed before speculation about this movie? Google is failing me.

  23. I just finally got a chance to see this and I loved it. I think it may have replaced Get Out as my favorite Jordan Peele movie. Don’t get me wrong, I still really love Get Out and Us, but this one really hit the sweet spot for me of just being a lean, entertaining horror film with some fresh takes at familiar horror tropes. Really great stuff, overall!

  24. Thought it was great.

    I don’t know where the idea of primates being illegal to use in movies comes from, don’t think it’s true. Just saw one that was real in a 2022 movie. CG monkeys are used halfway for the same reason as CG blood, explosions or gunshots: faster and easier. Although in this case, to get the exact acting would have been impossible so a motion capture chimp makes sense. I absolutely believe there could be lax security in the 90s on a show like that…even stunts were being done shoddily sometimes. And I mean look at Alec Baldwin or the recent incident of shooting on a train track they weren’t authorized to use and someone died. Only takes one fuckup.

    Loved the shooting of the UFO scenes, the long takes of them. The movie felt slightly undercooked but I had a lot of fun with it, still like it better than Us I think. Not sure, loved the weird explanation of Us although it make zero sense logically, even in the world of the movie.

    Seems to me the movie’s about people risking their lives or doing something stupid for fame. They KNOW that thing eats people, yet are running around being chased trying to get pictures. Motorcycle guy knows the scroe, wants his shot at fame. The DP DIES AS HIS PLAN to get what he knows will be one of the most famous images of film ever shot. Jupe still trades on his low level of used-to-be fame, and has found a way to make it big again. An actress has her face torn off yet comes to this event, still clinging to the fame she had with that sweatshirt with her picture on it.

    And by the way was that character the most tragic of all? Has her face ripped off as a kid, has to go through years of painful surgeries I’m sure…then hides her face from everyone then gets eaten by a monster and is stuck screaming in it for hours until it gets sick of not being able to swallow them and just chomps on them and spits them out. Man, that scene was horrifying, the scariest Peale has done.

  25. Muh — SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS given all that about “people risking their lives or doing something stupid for fame,” what do you make of the fact that the movie so cruelly punishes some characters (including the poor disfigured actress) but seems to view our trio of protagonists as heroic for doing the same thing, and even rewards them with the shot they want?

  26. Mr. Subtlety-
    SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

    I think that at the very least, OJ grounds them enough as more than just greedy people trying to get famous. OJ is on the verge of losing his family’s business, which he clearly seems to love and wants to preserve, so would probably use the money to keep it going. He’s also a genuinely decent and heroic guy, as evidenced by how he tries to save the TMZ reporter. Em’s a little more muddled, but the film also suggests the way her dad treated her is why she’s a bit less attached to the place, but might have found her love for it again with OJ. Angel also seemed to have a genuine interest in what was going on as his entry point to it all and he pulled his weight.

  27. Nothing much to add to the conversation except that what I liked about this movie was a script that constantly had me guessing what kind of movie it was going to be. The 1st hour had a lot of SIGNS-like…errr…signs, then started giving off some CLOSE ENCOUNTERS-style vibes before revealing itself to be Peele’s JAWS (or TREMORS) with a nice dash of Peele’s Western thrown in as a seasoner (note Kaluuya’s last shot on a horse, and the fact that his character’s economy with words, voice pitched an octave lower all bring to mind the laconic cowboys of Sergio Leone). And the movie’s gorgeous. Peele reveals himself to be an amazing visual stylist with each film.

    What I didn’t quite like was the pacing. The movie was 2hrs and 15 mins long and you felt the drag about 40 mins before it ended. Apologies for the analogy, but weirdly appropriate for this film: It canters when it should trot and trots when it should be going at full gallop.

    Plus some parts of the screenplay definitely looked it could have used an extra spin in the Rewrite Cycle.

    – OJ and Em want to photograph the UFO to “sell to Oprah” because they need the money but then invest in a lot of high tech cameras and surveillance gear, so they’re not exactly hurting for cash are they?

    – The chimp attack scene is terrifying but seems to belong in another movie and a little haphazard how’s it’s linked to the main plot

    -Still can’t figure out what triggers the alien monster. Is it sound? Horses? Movement?

    I still like this movie overall, but for me the weakest of Peele’s 3 efforts so far

  28. Oh! And voice of asshole TMZ reporter? Nicolas Cage!!!! Fuck Yeah!!

  29. Mr. Subtlety, I don’t know that the movie is exactly judging…I think it kind of views all of these people as kind of clownish in their intents, but I could be wrong. As for some being punished…not even sure that’s true that the movie is judging them in different ways or harshly? It’s a horror movie so some people are gonna die. Like, even the people who just came to see a show got eaten, totally innocent of all charges. Even the kids!

  30. Also gotta mention the monster not eating someone if they don’t look is such writerly bullshit. Like, Peele is trying to tie in his themes but realistically, a predator doesn’t give a shit if their prey is looking or not, in fact it’s better if the prey isn’t looking, that’s their chance for an easier catch. Gonna tell me it ate those horses because they were looking?

  31. In retrospect, I don’t hate him writing himself into it. It’s indulgent, yes. Massively so. But indulgence is the point of this entire endeavor. If the book wasn’t indulgent, it wouldn’t exist.

  32. Whoops, wrong thread.

  33. SPOILERS, PROBABLY

    Continuing to catch up after my months of communing with the spirit of Kim Il Sung on Mt Paektu…

    I was not particularly intrigued by the trailers or the fawning pre-canonization of the film as the next great work of genius from the mind of Jordan Peele. And the initial critical and fan response seemed to damn the film with faint praise. So, put all that in a blender, and my expectations were pretty measured for this.

    While I appreciated this one more than I enjoyed it, I definitely did enjoy it, and I am excited to watch it again (but will let it breathe for a year). My first reaction was that this film is a sign of a film-maker who is really hitting his stride and continuing to innovate and take risks. Monster digestion and blood-raining monster ablutions are truly horrifying and instantly pretty iconic ideas (metaphor for the way Hollywood and the viewing audience chews up and spits out actual and aspiring stars?) that puts the lie to the idea that this is nothing more than “Peele’s JAWS” or whatever (though, sure, it is his JAWS, also).

    Everyone seems head over heels for Keke Palmer and Geek Squad guy, and they are fine. But for me, Daniel K is the MVP. He doesn’t have to read it, just him looking at the phonebook would be a compelling performance. I also like the guy who plays Jupe who used too small a slice. Jupe learned the wrong lesson from his chimp encounter, mistaking luck for chosenness (or mistaking one instance of chosenness for a lifetime pass).

    I also like that this film has a lot of latent subtext and is ripe for all kinds of thematic interpretations but is the least on-the-nose or preachy of Peele’s films to date. To me, this is an actual bold, creative risk on his part, because I think the easy layup for Peele is to do something that panders. GET OUT was a very broad strokes, black-and-white (pun allowed) dualistic message / social commentary film, and it remains his best and most enjoyable film. But since then he has consistently resisted the impulse or pressure to pigeonhole himself and is getting more provocative and inclusive and ambiguous and equal-opportunity offender / weirdo as he goes along.

    If you’re going to be moralistic, challenge everyone. Better yet, don’t be tritely moralistic and instead just invite us into the strangeness and the foibles of human existence in all of its varieties and layers — as this film does. This is Peele’s most idiosyncratic and particular film, his least obviously “about something” film, which also makes it his most univeral and ink blot-ty. Like JAWS or MOBY DICK, it’s about very specific people and very elemental qualities, giving it a thematic richness that I think will stand the test of time. It’s not “about” racism or classism or the West or Hollywood or fandom or voyeurism or family businesses or legacy or tradition or identity or film crews or nature red tooth and claw. It’s about all of that and just about these specific characters in their little world and a bunch of other things that I’m sure I didn’t even pick up on it. Dope!

    Not the most enjoyable of Peele’s films but one of the strangest and self-confident, and I am really excited about his trajectory and can’t wait to see what he does next. At the fork in the road where JJ Abrams and Colin Trevorrow turned right, Jordan took the road less travelled.

  34. Also, more SPOILERS FOR SURE. Connecting back to a couple of points.

    1. To me, the upward shoe is clear link to Jupe’s faulty and hubristic belief that surviving the Gordy attack was some miracle that he treats as evidence that he has a special protective dispensation from God or the gods or whatever. The shoe clearly has a personal significance to him, he likes telling the story, and when he is doing his act with feeding the horse to the creature, before he goes into his spiel, he whispers to himself that he is “chosen” or “the chosen one” or someting to this effect. And then he promptly gets gobbled up by the creature. He took the shoe as evidence of the miraculous / spiritual / destiny / magical nature of him surviving the Gordy attack, and he falsely extrapolates that to imagine that he has a similar kind of miraculous protection or way with creatures. He mistakes luck for a miracle, and then he presses his miracle luck and discovers that it was just regular luck. This question of what is a miracle and the notion of miracle vs. luck is a key theme. The Gordy rampage was a miracle for him but not so much for his now disfigured co-star (good miracle for him, “bad miracle” for her). This time around it’s Jupe’s turn to experience a bad miracle (i.e., his luck has run out). The shoe is his version of seeing Virgin Mary in the tortilla chip, only most people who see Virgin Mary in a tortilla chip hopefully know better than to play matador with a giant space monster.

    2. I have difficulty seeing the argument that this film is about racialized violence or making racial violence or black suffering a spectacle — if for no other reason than that SPOILERS the two black leads both survive and are virtually unscathed, while all kinds of other people, all conspicuously not black, are getting gobbled up by the thing. Unless the argument that is that having *only* the black characters come out fine is some kind of coded inversion of tropes that is a commentary on the trope? If the film is about anything, it seems most about the fundamentally impersonal, meat-grinder that is the entertainment industry, which chews people up and spits them out, discarding them once it has no profitable use for them anymore. Whether it is aging out of child stardom, your one successful show getting cancelled (all the “Where are they now?” actor stories), or missing a big break because you blow the audition or aren’t sufficiently docile or submissive (I could go on a whole interpretive angle about the horse at the screen test or Gordy being a stand-in for every aspiring actor or actress who won’t bow to being pawed at or treated insensitively or who loses their shit and melts down under the pressure of fame and needing to always be smiling and “on”).

    The closest thing I can find to a guiding theme is the phoniness and hubris of people chasing fortune and fame and who find that eventually they are chewed up and cast aside by an impersonal machine that doesn’t care about you — you’re just disposable fuel for that big omnivorous machine that is Hollywood/machine — shiny and attractive for a moment, but easily replaceable or substitutable and likely to be spat out the chute in pieces once you’ve served your purpose and are past your peak or become too much trouble to manage.

  35. I just got around to watching Nope this weekend. (It’s on PeacockTV, which you can get for free if you have Comcast. And where I live is basically a Comcast monopoly). I thought this was absolutely great, and as others have mentioned, it feels less “about something” than the other two. My unfounded speculation is that Peele maybe got annoyed that people think he’s making message movies so he made a film that’s built intuitively around images rather than it is trying to say something. At the same time, clearly Peele has something on his mind with all this talk of spectacle. (Although, if I didn’t read that quote from Peele or read the passage at the beginning of the film, I would in no way think that this movie is about an addiction to spectacle. Something more along the lines of man’s desire to tame and control nature seems like a clearer theme.)

    But, man, what images. It’s such a great looking movie and gives us things we’ve never seen in an alien invasion movie. I love how the “spaceship” looks like it has been sewn out of cloth.

    And what do people make of the possible idea of sequels? Supposedly there was an entire character edited out of the film. It sounds like there were flashback sequences where some obsessed pedophile is stalking the young girl from Gordy’s Home. Nope doesn’t seem like the kind of movie that needs a sequel, but clearly Peele had a lot more he wanted to do with these characters and this world he was building.

  36. You can find articles/interviews where Jordan Peele “teases” or “has ideas for” sequels to both US and GET OUT, but given that he wants to tell original stories and has rejected offers to do franchise / IP films and clearly loves to flame fan theories and discourse and has not actually taken any concrete steps to move forward with said sequels … I think that’s almost surely just a troll or a playful gimmick to keep the suspense and speculation going, because the more his films ear-worm their way into your consciousness and film discourse (like what is happening right now here), that’s (a) fun for him as a fan, (b) it’s fun for us as fans, and (b) it’s good for the Jordan Peele is an auteur whose films are world-building events creative industrial complex (which I am clearly in favor of, if that’s not clear).

  37. I hadn’t heard that Peele also dropped hints that he was going to do sequels for Us and Get Out. Maybe it’s all bluster. Moreso than even those movies, though, Nope feels like there’s more going on off camera in this world. But I also don’t think it’s necessary to explore that territory. Just leave it to the audience’s imagination.

  38. Yeah, if you just search around those terms, you can find it. See, e.g.,

    Get Out 2 Is Very Possible Says Director Jordan Peele

    Director Jordan Peele reveals that he's going to seriously consider making a sequel to Get Out.

    Jordan Peele says he’d return to the Us-verse

    After a murky, twist ending, the writer-director sees potential for more

    That’s not to say it couldn’t happen, just that I take all of that with a grain of salt, and I think he enjoys enjoys letting these conversations percolate.

    I agree with you about the film(s), fwiw. Even when he doesn’t fully connect, he’s so stylish and original, and I am super encouraged to see him keep pushing both himself and his audience.

  39. I’m not someone who believes every aspect of a movie needs to be explained or a fit a theory (although obviously if there are too many pieces that don’t fit, the film feels incohesive), and particularly with Jordan Peele movies I feel like there’s a certain shagginess to them that is appealing to me. So with respect to the show, it was an intriguing detail that I didn’t immediately try to interpret but I love that there are so many different interpretations here. It worked fine as texture to me. I will also add that the stillness of the shoe mirrors the stillness/understatedness of OJ (note that OJ avoids looking at people as a rule) and they were both spared horrific violence. The fact that the shoe is delicately balanced perhaps references the delicate balance of nature that humanity is always threatening. The shot also reminded of that beat in PACIFIC RIM where the fighting narrowly stops just before a bunch of birds at a dock, there’s a brief pause, and then they all fly away.

  40. Interesting observations and well-said!

  41. Finally caught it today and while all the talk about the admittedly very muddled messages in this otherwise very good film is interesting, I wonder why am I the only one who seemed to wonder what the fuck was up with Antler and his willingness to get snacked.

    Shortly before that we saw him taking some pills, so maybe he had some mental issues. Also when we see him during the phonecalls, he seems to be obsessed with animal documentary footage, partly of one animal eating another. So maybe his problem was that he had some kind of vore fetish? (Which, for those who had the luck of never learning about it, means that you are aroused by the thought of being swallowed whole by something much bigger than you. You’re welcome.) Or he was so obsessed with getting “the impossible shot” that he was willing to die for an inside shot of JeanJacket. Which he obviously didn’t get, but I can imagine in that case his plan was being eaten while cranking the camera as long as possible and then hoping that someone would recover the footage when it get spit out.

  42. That’s just one of this movie’s many interesting elements that never cohere into a satisfying whole. I think it could have been salvaged but the tone is off. Everybody’s acting like they’re in a comedy, but the sound design and pacing is all A24 dread. Consequently, it’s never quite funny or suspenseful or exiting or much of anything, really, except confusing. It’s cool that Peele threw a bunch of ingredients in a pot and hoped for the best, but I can’t help feeling that the Peele of GET OUT would have made himself edit this shit until it came together. The new Peele has been called a visionary so many times that he doesn’t bother. Which is sad, because I think there’s a great movie in here somewhere. As is, we have to settle for an interesting one.

    Sadly, I’m starting to feel like Peele is a one-hit wonder. He’s still got good ideas but he hasn’t stuck the landing since GET OUT.

  43. Nah Mr M, I have to disagree with you over a few things. I don’t know where you get the A24 vibes from, because other than having “a message” (I guess), this couldn’t be further away from their output. Especially because it’s extremely fun and entertaining. There is only a short stretch after the blood rain, where it felt a bit like it started to drag, but thankfully it recovered in the finale.

    I do agree that Peele doesn’t stick the landing and maybe being pigeonholed as a guy who makes horror movies “about something” holds him back. All the scenes that are just about the horror stuff are damn great. When it switches back to metaphors, it’s distracting, but at least he knows that we came for a horror movie, so he puts the good shit first instead of never showing the monster, then have all characters turning on each other to let us know that humans are the REAL monsters or whatever.

    I also agree that, despite its entertainment value, it really needed some more editing. At times it felt like those 90 minute movie versions of a 2 part miniseries. Like when we learn suddenly that Jupe knew about the monster, was planning to make a big show out of it and even that there was another survivor of the ape incident, I was like “Huh? Where did this suddenly come from?” If this would’ve been just a surprise attack on unsuspecting amusement park goers, the whole scene would’ve been as good, but less confusing. And I don’t think it was a good idea to start with the sitcom incident, then show us the same scene later again, but a minute longer this time, without showing anything that was relevant or at least a surprise.

    But say what you want about Peele, but I love that he seems to be one of the very few horror filmmakers these days who actually bother to come up with original concepts, even if it’s just “What if I take a plot that would usually be used as a fake horror movie in a sitcom and play it straight faced” or “JAWS/TREMORS with a pissed off bedsheet that hides in a cloud and only eats you when you look at it”. Sadly that also means we will probably never see him do a Slasher movie, but I can live with that. Sure, I would’ve preferred if this was an instant classic too, but for me, the good outweighs the bad. You see a muddled elevated horror mess, I see a good horror movie that is only dragged down a bit by trying to be too much at times.

  44. I don’t know why I’m so alone on thinking US is clearly by far his best movie so far. It has the best balance of being “about something” and entertaining, also it’s just the one with the best horror concept, the most style, the creepiest and the most fun.

    But I should rewatch all of them because (this discussion not withstanding) there seem to be a huge swath of people who saw things in NOPE that I didn’t, and maybe I’m missing out.

  45. I want to like US so bad, but I tried it again and I still couldn’t get into it. There’s a lot to like but as a whole I bounced off of it, as the kids say. I think it’s that tone thing again. The weird off-balance everybody’s-telling-jokes-but-the-soundtrack-is-telling-me-to-run thing worked in GET OUT, but ever since, I’ve found it distancing. Like, there’s nothing I can put my finger on about why I wasn’t that into US or NOPE. It’s the whole vibe. Peele’s preferred tone feels emotionally confusing to the point where I don’t feel like I’m allowed to believe in the story.

  46. It just feels like the less complete/consistent of the three films. GET OUT and NOPE work more as self contained, one and done stories that work on a pretty literal level. US is 90% a thrilling and weird survival horror that’s enjoyable, but 10% has this frustrating obliqueness to it that pushes up against the other stuff. I didn’t feel anything from its twist, and the final moments kinda piss me off because while Jordan’s going for some profound visual impact, I just see a film ending on a cliffhanger that will never be resolved.

  47. I’m not accusing you of being one of these people, but that’s what people said about THE THING for years, to Carpenter’s eternal frustration. I don’t think it’s a cliffhanger at all. It would be interesting to see how the hell he would follow up on that, but it *is* a complete story, in the tradition of HALLOWEEN III, THE FOG, FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, THE INVITATION or numerous other horror movies with an “oh shit it goes deeper” or “all hell has now broken loose” ending.

  48. I like US the best out of his films, too. GET OUT works much better as a whole, but US brings a whole lot of whatthefuckery to the table which I can’t help but to enjoy. Maybe the difference is that he had been thinking about GET OUT for years and years, where with US he had less time to think the script through.
    Having said that, I think US coheres pretty well; and despite being pretty barmy it does hit standard narrative beats, revelations, twists, etc. My problems with it run more along the lines of the style of horror (creepy doppelganger family, turns out, I find more laughable than scary; felt like some creepy theater kids trying to hard to scare people. Luckily I really dug the concept behind them, and a lot of other things.)

    The filmmaking in NOPE is incredible – if nothing else, Peele is one hell of a director, but I do think it’s a little more flabby than the other two, and I agree that it’s got some problems (but they don’t bother me much). It’s still a great, and more importantly, ridiculously distinctive and idiosyncratic movie.

  49. SPOILERS. Only saw NOPE once but loved it. I really respected Peele just going in an altogether different direction with this one. All the Jupe stuff was first-rate, and there was truly novel horror with that they explored with the alien consumption-digestion cycle. I feel like a lot of the complaints are that this one is not clearly or obviously enough “about something” totally on the nose that we can correlate to some important issue of our time. It’s pregnant with a lot of interpretive possibility and suggestion and themes, but it doesn’t hit you over the head with a univocal message. Also, although the JAWS/Spielberg connections people make, I think gaucamole is onto something with that last sentence. It’s honestly too strange and quirky and ambiguous for the JAWS/Spielberg comparisons to totally work, since NOPE is a little more as to what it’s saying or what it’s about. It could be and is about a lot of things, including JAWS/JURASSIC PARK-ian “respect nature” / “pitfalls of spectacle,” but it seems like it’s also about a bunch of other odd stuff.

  50. My bad, I am tired. I meant to say that “NOPE is a little more coy as to what it’s saying…” Also, I wanted to say that I think it’s a strength of the film that it’s not as clear or obvious as to what it’s “about.” It has the confidence to know that being a unique yarn well-told is plenty, and there is a lot of richness to keep exploring and picking over. Confident, restrained, original filmmaking.

  51. Well, hopefully my feelings will change on future viewings, but to me it’s the only one that has many things that just seem like “well, that must mean SOMETHING, otherwise why would it be in here?” For example, having the standout scary sequence (the chimp attack) seem only tangentially related to the larger monster movie, except for amorphous up to interpretation thematic reasons. So much of it is mysterious and intriguing but not very clear (to me) why it fits with anything else. That’s certainly not illegal but it’s why the other two feel much more like the “well-told yarn” you describe. And it’s still weird to me that people compare it to JAWS more than TREMORS, but maybe nobody remembers TREMORS anymore.

  52. My instinct with this one when I first watched it was to let it wash over me in the same way I enjoy surrealist films. That got reinforced upon a further rewatch.
    It doesn’t bother me that much that it doesn’t have a single coherent explanation, because it’s left me with a lot of jigsaw pieces that I can worry at and rearrange that are fun to think about – little bits of meaning that rhyme with each other but don’t necessarily line up neatly. It does jar a little with the rest of the film’s more straightforward thing, not to mention the expectations set by Peele’s previous two movies.
    In that sense I guess it’s reasonable to bring up A24 comparisons, but then again I’ve never seen that as a bad thing.

    I’m not saying that TREMORS is better than JAWS, but I like TREMORS better than JAWS. I get why people compare this one more to JAWS, though: there’s a certain Spielbergian swagger to Peele’s directing here.

  53. BTW, one detail that really made me laugh (but that I only noticed when I viewed that scene the 2nd time) was that the black (!) horse survives the amusement park suckening, because it basically goes “Nope” when Jupe tells it to leave the box and get eaten for the audience’s amusement.

  54. I think my experience of it is very along the lines of dreadguacamole’s, and he articulated it better than I could. I think it’s maybe a question of sensibility. I have shared some interpretations above. I think the stuff with Jupe ties into the notion of bad miracles and luck and destiny, and Jupe’s deal is that he learns the wrong lesson from the chimp attack — the lesson he learned is that he is specially marked/protected by God or fate or whatever; the lesson he maybe should’ve learned is that his ass got lucky once. He benefitted from a good miracle with Gordy (not a good miracle for his female co-star!), then he experienced a bad miracle later. In this film’s world, people interpret random dice throws of fate as miracles or judgment (i.e., superstition), which is based on our need to make meaning. All to say, I think the theme of good/bad miracles, luck, and how this is a matter of perspective (a subjective human meaning-make perspective vs. a mechanistic, impersonal, random chance perspective). To me, that’s a very, very strong theme, not just a vague, under-developed one. It’s the main theme. I don’t really spend too much time fretting trying to decode what the erect shoe means. Maybe it means something (I’m all ears), but it doesn’t need to…I’m not racked with intolerable curiosity or anything, for my part.

  55. I also am of the opinion that Peele is not always being a reliable narrator in his interviews and stuff. So far as I can tell, the answer is almost always “yes” whenever he is asked (1) if there might be a chance for sequels to a film of his, or (2) whether [insert odd moment or piece of dialogue or0 iconography here] “means something.” I think he likes people to be treating his stuff as full of riddles and pregnant with possibilities, and I think he will even go so far as to encourage what amounts to pure projection on the part of the viewer, because he thinks this is good for buzz and is just intrinsically fun for the audience. Maybe all of these little things do “mean something” as part of some meticulous master plan, but I’m not convinced of that. So, I think the ambiguous symbols or vague allusions or pseudo-thematic-or-symbolic connections are just par for the course, though I readily admit that this film is a bit more impressionistic than his first two.

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