I Saw Nope!

(Warning: nobody paid me not to spoil.)

If my brief perusal of Box Office Mojo is accurate, I went to the movies five times in 2019: Us, Midsommar, Avengers: Endgame, John Wick 3 and Knives Out. Two of those were date nights, one was a Dads' Day Off bro-down with a buddy of more than two decades, and the last two…well, said buddy might have been there for one or both (I should ask), but I was going to see them no matter what. The films in question, Us and Midsommar, were both ambitious follow-ups to debut thrillers rife with unforgettable imagery, dark humor and metaphorical potency, the trailers promising respective writer/directors Jordan Peele and Ari Aster hoped to knock us on our asses again.

I go back and forth on whether I prefer Midsommar or Aster’s previous film Hereditary. It depends if I want to dwell on a son’s post-feminist shame or an ex-boyfriend’s (I regularly feel both!). But there's no question I think Us was a step up from Peele’s Get Out. While his first film earned its cultural renown, Us was messier in its messaging and more exciting for it; surreal infusions of class and family values made it hard to determine who was heroic and who had it coming. Some chafed at the lack of a clear moral, especially after his first movie made its villains so transparent. But I loved how its ambiguities - from a mother coldly shrugging off her son’s concern to a violent revolution that might wind up a mere photo op - lined up with our world’s.

Considering my obvious enthusiasm for its auteur (I haven’t even brought up binging that new Twilight Zone he helmed or how often I’ve rewatched the Halloween episodes of Key & Peele), it makes sense that Peele's new film Nope would inspire my return to the megaplex. Not that I missed the place much. I often went to movies at non-peak times anyway, often by myself, so streaming on a decent-sized TV with the lights off was fine if less effectively air-conditioned. Couches and online ‘watch parties’ actually allow for more socializing than my shushing self would ever tolerate in a theater. Plus, I could pause the movie for a piss break rather than hope for an obvious lull in the plot and skeedaddle.

But the Nope trailer? That was the platonic ideal of “my shit.” A Facebook Memory recently revealed I positively referred to Us & Midsommar as “kaleidoscopes of NOPE” three years ago. Clearly, Jordan Peele is on my wavelength and I think we would be great friends. Maybe, late into a night of bad movies, good music and mutual appreciation, he’d admit that it was a mistake to play Rod Serling when we’ve already seen him say “slap-ass” several dozen times on television.

Then again, maybe he wouldn’t. While I have profound admiration for how he hasn’t let his acute comic sensibility keep his movies behind walls of satire and mere irony, I’m starting to think he’s a little too good at muting his bullshit detector in the name of self-expression. Not that I was fazed by the critiques of Nope I’d read. After the glory of Us, I was all in for Too Many Ideas and Too Much Movie. Gimme some chaos, JP! I love ambition! But the problem with Nope isn’t chaos, it’s unclear stakes and taking its time getting to the next set piece. It isn’t ambition, it’s gratuitous chapter titles and undue confidence in the weight of its callbacks. Where Us pointedly didn’t have an answer, Nope simply can’t decide what it’s trying to say.

Things start promisingly enough, with strange things happening in the sky above interesting people. Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer play siblings trying to make sense of their lives as legacy Hollywood horse wranglers after the death of their celebrated father. Palmer's Em is all desperate charm and exposed nerves, while Kaluuya's OJ appears to begrudge the very need to speak. Steven Yeun is Jupe, the traumatized child actor turned western theme park owner next door. These are some novel-ass characters even before everything electric powers off and atypical cloud patterns spook the steeds. Then everything shuts off and the horses get upset again. Then everything shuts off again and the horses still don't like it. Then the siblings go to an electronics store and meet an obsequious cashier. Now three people are watching that truly expansive sky, increasingly confident they’re dealing with a UFO and eager to get footage of it.

Apparently, while we were watching OJ & Em grumble about the fate of their ranch among the anguished neighs & snorts, Jupe and his family were having considerably more direct interaction with the UFO, possibly for months. Though we spend considerable time on a nightmarish moment from Jupe’s childhood, we’re kept at length from the day-to-day of his adult life. Inversely, Peele provides only the briefest glimpses of OJ & Em’s lives before orphanhood. Maybe there’s a four hour cut that evens this out. I wouldn’t be shocked.

If I’d watched Nope at home, I’d tell you exactly how long it takes for the true threat of this UFO to become clear. But it’s a fuck-ton later than when we realize the family in Us better run for their life. For all its grandeur and mystery, Us makes clear the immediate threat for the central characters well before we know why the world went cockeyed. But it’s not until after a rather grotesque turn that Nope gets down to Spielbergian brass tacks, a growling cinematographer joining the lovable trio's mission to get! that! footage! As if pulling out cameras would be The Move after we’ve seen a giant flying manta ray of death shit blood all over your house, the screams of the innocent echoing through the sky. Once their daring photo op is set, there’s nothing but screaming, racing, dubiously motivated choices, ironic callbacks dangerously close to Shyamalan territory, and an ever more billowy monster in the sky until the credits roll. I spent three hours masked, paranoid and popcornless for soda ads, horror trailers, Maria Menounos and this?!

More positive takes on the movie have suggested a profound contrast between Jupe and OJ’s relationship with the saucer, with Jupe either being more naive or more exploitive in his goals and OJ either having a Herzogian understanding of predatory creatures or a more righteous quest. But as we don’t actually see Jupe’s previous successful interactions with the saucer, and no one is interested in more than profiting and surviving (ok, OJ also wants to do the chores), the distinctions between the two haunted small-time businessmen strike me as muddy and arbitrary. Bringing horses to a CGI soundstage is a lot less dangerous than treating a gargantuan carnivorous alien like Shamu, but I don’t think it’s particularly more noble.

Peele’s gifts haven’t entirely left him here. There’s still truly spooky moments, wry asides and poignant imagery. There’s meat in the discussion of “bad miracles” and a threat that’s both natural and beyond everyone's experience, if not comprehension (hi, pandemic!). I’m not going to forget that shoe anytime soon. But beyond the red flags of a director too big for harsh notes, my main cause for antipathy might stem from Peele’s desire to both celebrate and critique spectacle. In one interview he’d say he wanted to give a long isolated audience some movie magic, in another he’d say we aren’t capable of appreciating the horror around us because we’re too addicted to entertainment. There could be a great horror movie made out of this nasty irony, one that acknowledges film’s complicity in our dysfunctional detachment from existential threats in a shamelessly thrilling way. But Nope avoids and ignores the inherent contradiction rather than rubbing our faces in it. In fact, the film winds up confirming that I’ve never felt less addicted to spectacle, let alone movie magic. In hindsight, Nope easily could have been streamed, albeit with the lights out. I still want a little vibe.