In a paradoxical way, Jordan Peele must run from his own success. No matter the metric, his 2017 feature debut Get Out was a monster hit. A critical and commercial phenomenon, the film nabbed Peele an Oscar, to say nothing of how ideas and lines from the film have entered the popular imagination. The trouble is that the surprise and fun of Get Out – a socially conscious comedic thriller with serious observations about the modern Black experience – can only be done once. You get the sense Peele does not want to become another M. Night Shyamalan, who has (wrongly) become synonymous with one kind of trick.
Peele’s follow-up, Us, was more of a straightforward horror film than Get Out, although it establishes tropes that he just might return to with every project. His characters are more self-aware than what is typical of the genre: they are suspicious, smart and armed with a healthy knowledge of pop culture ephemera. If Us assures hardened genre fans he’s no one-trick pony, then his third film, Nope, is broader and more ambitious. It is a thriller in the summer blockbuster mode, in the spirit of Jaws, the original Jurassic Park and Twister. Sure, it delivers on those terms, with scenes that are creepy, awe-inspiring, and joyful. But Peele nestles in many intriguing ideas and subplots, enough to engage our imaginations and get us arguing long after its satisfying climax.
Before Nope’s plot gets into gear, Peele lets us hang with his characters. His time on the sketch comedy series “Key & Peele” is crucial to the success of his early scenes, since his attention to detail and observation mean the introduction is never boring. His heroes are OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer), siblings who own a California horse ranch, the kind that provides the animals to Hollywood whenever they make a Western or sword-and-sandals picture. They fell on hard times after their father (Keith David) dies under mysterious circumstances, and they are coping in different ways. OJ is sullen and soft-spoken, a classic cowboy archetype who prefers horses over people, while Emerald, or “Em,” is more gregarious. When OJ sells several horses to Ricky (Steven Yeun), who owns a Western-themed amusement park adjacent to the ranch, he’s already talking about buying them back, while Em wants to be done with the ranch entirely.
Along with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, Peele shoots the ranch and surrounding area so it’s both seductive and imposing. Rugged individualism and big skies are the major draws of the Western frontier, and in Nope, both OJ and Ricky find their American dream in this territory. But there’s something not right about the sky, with Peele’s camera pointing upward just long enough to make us wary. For every POV shot upward, there are sweeping images of horses galloping through valleys and hills, a classic American image that looks great on an IMAX screen. Still, the shared unease about the sky is more than a bad feeling: there is a flying saucer up there, and what it wants starts to wreak havoc over the ranch.
Before an outright battle between the characters and their skyward foe, Peele lets his characters decide how they feel about it. OJ and Em want to get definitive video proof the saucer is real, so they enlist the help of an AV tech (Brandon Perea) and a grizzled cinematographer (Michael Wincott, always a welcome presence), using their knowledge of the saucer’s power against it. Ricky has his own ideas, and they’re informed by his past a child sitcom actor. Nope includes a flashback where we see Ricky on a fake ‘90s sitcom, one where a chimpanzee was the star, and a routine taping ends in disaster. Peele builds to the flashback incrementally, dwelling on it with unnerving horror and sound design. At first, the reason for the subplot is not obvious, then it clicks into view during the final showdown: OJ and Em inherit a respect for what cannot be fully tamed – and the natural world, generally – in a way that Ricky does not.
While Nope has the biggest scale of any Peele film, its restraint is noteworthy. Get Out and Us supply the audience with detailed explanations of what happens, and Nope goes in the opposite direction, eking out just enough detail to get us curious and fill in the gaps on our own. That restraint also applies to the performances. Kaluuya’s stoicism is a little off-putting at first, though it lays the groundwork for OJ to become a reluctant hero, while Palmer’s star-making, motormouth performance makes her an effective audience conduit. Still, I feel audiences may best remember Yeun and Wincott, who make a meal out of limited screentime. Yeun has a monologue where he describes a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that might be the scariest thing in the movie, while Wincott’s weary, gravely line-readings make him the film’s equivalent of Robert Shaw in Jaws.
Peele is keenly aware of film history, and his characters reflect that. They are capable of experiencing awe, to the point where all of them experience the “Spielberg face,” and use their sensibilities to recreate that feeling in others. Like Signs, another major influence, Peele includes many scenes of characters watching camera footage. But aside from its remix of influences and evocative imagery, Nope succeeds most in the way Peele intended: as a genuine crowd-pleaser. This is the sort of film that encourages audiences to talk to the screen, to yell at the dumb characters. Peele shrewdly plays the audience, creating moments for them to cower, laugh and ultimately applaud. Us proves that Get Out was no fluke, while Nope cements Peele as an original who operates on a level that rivals his greatest inspiration.
Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures
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