Combining comedy, action, and tension, Jordan Peele's Nope is a comical love letter to Hollywood and the American dream. The film presents us with a story without fillers that perfectly lives up to what its trailers revealed to us. It is a movie about things falling from the sky and characters who hint at something sinister in the clouds, and at the same time completely different from the direct marketing that it enjoyed, which gave us glimpses of the plot, but it was skillfully concealed.
Nope sometimes seems like a Spielberg-style nightmare, not only in terms of sci-fi concepts, but also because of the way Peele portrays people in their most amazing moments, albeit in an eccentric context that showcases his satirical approach to alien-centric films. It also adds references to the E.T. movie.
The story
Nope tells the story of Hollywood ranch owner Otis Haywood Jr. (Daniel Kaluuya) and his sister Emerald (Kiki Palmer), who, after the violent death of their father, Otis Sr. (Keith David), find contradictory paths forward.
For Otis Jr., who witnessed his father's death up close, he tries to move forward by silently keeping the business thriving, but for his more outgoing sister she wants to leave the farm behind and market her diverse talents to anyone who might listen, including Otis' partner Ricky Park, better known as "Job" (Stephen Yan), is an actor turned entrepreneur who runs a Western-style carnival. Though he does have some shocks of his own (which has been much publicized) due to being a former superstar when he was a kid.
Compared to Peele other works, Nope offers a more in-depth reading of the way Otis, Emerald and Job carry their burdens, often told in close-up, long-running scenes on each actor, yet the way their suffering affects the story is crude (but not without reason).
General Impression
As much as Nope is about characters threatened by what appear to be flying saucers, it is also about what drives people's reactions to events like mysterious power outages and a variety of things raining down on them from above. Whether or not they are here to save the world, or even just to survive, what they ultimately want is to take a picture of this flying saucer and sell it for a fortune.
It is one of the most tense and anxious summer films we have seen in a long time, but we can not help but feel here the touch of Peele himself in the study of modern Hollywood and the return of horror films blacks.
We see Peele using phrases from the Bible that immediately invite the viewer to scrutinize but turn out to be too literal, before publishing a picture of George Washington on the $1 coin in an especially horrific context. What exactly is Bill saying here? We may infer from what we know from his previous films that he alludes to genocide or slavery, which are the sins of Native America, and although these allusions do not quite hear from the mouths of the characters, the most important thing in the end was the combination of American history and monetary value.
Stylistically, however, Nope is not a critique of studio filmmaking, in fact, it is a testament to Peele ingenuity as a director, who can bring a sense of unease to blockbuster films as a concept (which uses images, stories, and scenes as a cash-first quest) while also making a film Completely entertaining and one of the best cinemas this year. It's a movie that ups the ante with every scene (and thanks in large part to the stress-inducing soundtrack by composer Michael Appels).
