Nope (2022)
Directed by Jordan Peele
Residents in a lonely gulch of inland California bear witness to an uncanny, chilling discovery.
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With impressive precision Peele remixes a broad range of influences, including the incomprehensible terror of Lovecraft, more niche genre fare like Ron Underwood’s Tremors , classic Hollywood, and even beyond, such as a direct reference to Akira , through thrilling replication of the famous bike-slide shot (perhaps his tribute to a cancelled remake he was once linked to).
Whilst Nope nods to - and borrows from - other well-known ‘alien invasion’ films ( Signs , Close Encounters of the Third Kind , and War of the Worlds ), as well as pop-culture horror ( Tremors , Poltergeist ), it also manages to be its own unique film, with genuinely impressive twists and well-timed comedy.
O.J., ever the animal trainer that his father was, realizes he must play by the animal’s rules and respect its ornate posturing—leading to a dazzling sequence in the final act that recalls the crop duster scene in North by Northwest (1959) combined with the monstrous threat at the end of Tremors (1990).
Some of the bait and switch in trying to ferret out the entity also has some of the seagoing fun of “Jaws” (1975), with players at different posts reacting to unfolding events differently, though given the dusty, spare terrain it reminds me more of the quirky 1990s cult hit “Tremors.”
Fans of Peele’s previous work would be correct to assume that a horror film is to follow, and while there are a handful of scary and intense sequences, this is much more akin to a film like Jaws or Tremors than it is Fire in the Sky .
A Black sci-fi horror Western sounds like a goulash that can’t work, but the director – channeling “Jaws,” “Close Encounters,” “Signs,” and B-flick classics like “Tremors” – knows to keep the focus on his characters and his tongue at least half in cheek.
With impressive precision Peele remixes a broad range of influences, including the incomprehensible terror of Lovecraft, more niche genre fare like Ron Underwood’s Tremors , classic Hollywood, and even beyond, such as a direct reference to Akira , through thrilling replication of the famous bike-slide shot (perhaps his tribute to a cancelled remake he was once linked to).
Sometimes literally: Hoyte van Hoytema’s 65mm compositions lend the carnage an intergalactic scale that makes even the film’s most familiar tropes feel bracingly new, and inspire a degree of holy terror that allows the grand finale to alternate between heart-in-your-throat horror and fistpump-worthy “Akira” references as cinematography assumes a hands-on roll in the action (Peele keeps the film’s self-reflexive streak to a low boil, but cranks it up to a delirious high in the dying minutes).
Em’s journey goes from wanting “the Oprah shot” to shutting down in survival mode, making her eventual turn in the rousing finale (complete with a visual nod to 1988’s Akira) feel triumphant on a personal level as well.
Even a direct reference to Akira ’s famous bike-slide shot can’t shatter the illusion that what we’re watching is wholly, thrillingly original.
Pop culture fans will have a field day spotting the references (there’s definitely a shout-out at one stage to Akira ) and influences (fans of mind-melting anime Neon Genesis Evangelion will have something to discuss afterwards).
While most will talk and gush over the Akira scene reference—which is dope, by the way—it is very much earned.
Whilst Nope nods to - and borrows from - other well-known ‘alien invasion’ films ( Signs , Close Encounters of the Third Kind , and War of the Worlds ), as well as pop-culture horror ( Tremors , Poltergeist ), it also manages to be its own unique film, with genuinely impressive twists and well-timed comedy.
Peele tackles ambitious Spielberg-ian themes which makes Nope feel like his Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) while paying homage to the origins of cinema as well as westerns and science fiction films that have come before it.
Obviously, the film’s sci-fi themes are incredibly similar to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, only this time combined with Peele’s signature biting social satire.
It’s Jordan Peele’s homage to westerns and early-era Spielberg, Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind in particular being the most overt references.
While the calls to compare parts of Nope to Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind are valid and understandable; Nope ends up being more akin to the underappreciated Trollhunter, than anything else.
A UFO-focused story featuring echoes of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, this is a film on some level about watching and waiting, with characters gazing at the clouds, starting or thrilling to the flickers of movement that they see.
More importantly, he rips off (or “pays homage to”) the iconic chase sequences from Jaws , with inflatable air dancers standing in for those floating yellow barrels that made Spielberg’s shark all the more terrifying when unseen.
Once the assumed nature of the object in the sky terrorizing them is revealed, Peele’s film plays like an homage to Jaws (1975), sprinkled with 80’s references, like Poltergeist (1982) and a creepy use of Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses At Night.”
I was speaking at my screening to fellow film critic Preson Barta, and we both noticed there are quite a few parallels to JAWS, even some of the characters feeling like spiritual equivalents to the ones featured in the Steven Spielberg classic.
It’s Jordan Peele’s homage to westerns and early-era Spielberg, Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind in particular being the most overt references.
While the calls to compare parts of Nope to Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind are valid and understandable; Nope ends up being more akin to the underappreciated Trollhunter, than anything else.
While you’ll recognize Peele’s tribute to several films, “Jaws” being the most prominent, “Nope” is unequivocally original, the concept so outlandish yet so simple, that it will forever change how you look at UFOs.
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The film it most resembles may be M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs," in which horror also was initiated by an alien presence, but what it really reminded me of, in the way it combines spectacle and emotional investment, is Steven Spielberg at his best.
OJ, who is played by Daniel Kaluuya with the guarded poise of a great Western star, will ride his horse and lure out the craft in a sequence that can be ranked with anything by J.J. Abrams or early M. Night Shyamalan, whose “Signs” is another movie we can reference here.
Yet watching the movie, you can just about taste the DNA of Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and “Nope” mirrors the trajectory of other films that have been made in the shadow of “Close Encounters,” like M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs” and Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival.”
While Nope takes a Spielberg-like approach to its alien-encounter story, full of teasing moments punctuated by cathartic, cinematic spectacle, it also channels M. Night Shyamalan’s polarizing 2002 extraterrestrial-horror film Signs at times.
The isolated, desert milieu at times brings to mind the waiting game played by Mel Gibson’s family in M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs .
The marketing would have you believe “Nope” revolves around an alien invasion, however, the majority of “Nope” takes place on a remote horse ranch outside Los Angeles, allowing for the director to craft a domestic tale reminiscent of Shyamalan’s “Signs” minus the laughable last second twist.
It’s also worth noting that for as “serious” as Nope is, there so many little touches that made it so enjoyable for me: it shows some love to The Scorpion King, there are a few hat tips to Us (I didn’t catch any for Get Out, but I’m excited to watch it again to see if I can find some nods the second time around), it features Corey Hart’s Sunglasses at Night in one of the film’s best sequences, it somehow thrusts Chris Kattan into hero status with a mere mention, and I’m sure it’s a reference to another movie, but there’s a motorbike rider who truly felt like he just rode right off the set of The Wraith, and all of that just made me giddy as someone who loves popular culture.
But Peele’s movie love, sincere and sometimes goofy as it is (watch for multiple nods to the Dwayne Johnson action vehicle “The Scorpion King”), also comes with a serrated edge.
On the surface, “Nope” is a thrilling time with extraordinary craft behind it and embellished with a myriad of curious homages to movies like “Akira” or even “The Scorpion King.”
Their father Otis (Keith David) promised her a horse of her own, but instead brought OJ in on training him for work on The Scorpion King , as a father-son project.
A long drive from the hubbub of Hollywood studio shoots, the Haywoods own a sprawling ranch, where they train horses to perform in commercials and movies like The Scorpion King .
There are also easter eggs to films such as Buck and the Preacher and The Scorpion King as well as anime such as Neon Genesis Evangelion and Akira .
Peele has said “Nope” was inspired by movies like “King Kong” and “Jurassic Park;” films that “really deal with the human addiction to spectacle.”
Spielberg also loves combining awe and dread, as seen in his earlier titles (“Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and even “E.T.”) and some of his later works (“Jurassic Park” and “War of the Worlds”); these sources of terror are also impressive unknowns that instill wonder as well as panic.
The shot recalls so many in Spielberg’s body of work that concentrates on the awed spectator rather than what caused such astonishment—think the terrified images of Chief Brody in Jaws when he sees the shark or when Alan and Ellie first see a dinosaur in Jurassic Park (1993).
Whether you’re in awe or anemic to Peele’s retreading of Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Jaws,” “Jurassic Park,” etc., or his playful references to Shyamalan’s “Signs” there’s no doubt that Peele’s deference for those that came before and vision for his own films is committed.
It is a thriller in the summer blockbuster mode, in the spirit of Jaws , the original Jurassic Park and Twister .
One sequence which takes place at night and in the rain, and it feels impossible not to think of, say, the T-Rex escape in Jurassic Park , given the distance between the characters and the threat that looms over them both.
The rise to the crest is slow and steady, and a great character study with some super neat backstories, but once we get to the what and why of the goings-on at Jupiter’s Claim, “Nope” shifts gears and becomes something akin to a Spielberg alien encounter flick – “War of the Worlds” (2005) or “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977).
Spielberg also loves combining awe and dread, as seen in his earlier titles (“Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and even “E.T.”) and some of his later works (“Jurassic Park” and “War of the Worlds”); these sources of terror are also impressive unknowns that instill wonder as well as panic.
While many will cite Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a source of Peele’s inspiration for Nope (which Peele himself has done), I think this one has more in common with Spielberg’s sinister take on War of the Worlds —except this battle is isolated instead of involving the whole planet.
Part of the film’s effectiveness is that it’s not just another UFO movie, despite its apparent nods to War of the Worlds (especially Spielberg’s 2005 version).
Nope is very much a slow burn of a movie — so more like Spielberg’s Close Encounters than War of the Worlds — and it does require some patience, but that’s because Peele knows that, more than anything else, he really needs to make the audience care about O.J. and Em.
Taking notes from the likes of Signs , Close Encounters of the Third Kind , War of the Worlds , and even Jaws , Peele conjures up feelings of dread and excitement in equal amounts, constantly ramping up the tension and the action until the film’s finale becomes a white-knuckle thrill ride that’s equal parts jaw-dropping terror and out-of-your-seat exhilaration.
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O.J., ever the animal trainer that his father was, realizes he must play by the animal’s rules and respect its ornate posturing—leading to a dazzling sequence in the final act that recalls the crop duster scene in North by Northwest (1959) combined with the monstrous threat at the end of Tremors (1990).
Also whirling around in Peele’s genre blender are Cold War flying-saucer pictures like The Day the Earth Stood Still , the Cary Grant-in-a-cornfield chase from Hitchcock’s North by Northwest , a cleverly re-imagined pull from Spielberg’s Jaws , and at least one nod to M. Night Shyamalan’s alien-invasion fantasy Signs .
Peele is nothing if not a pop-culture savant, and here he drops any number of classic Hollywood allusions — the spinning cyclone from “The Wizard of Oz,” the cropduster sequence from “North by Northwest” — as easily as he tosses out a reference to “Saturday Night Live” and, by extension, the larger sketch-comedy world where he began his career.
You’re given only the vaguest notion why they’re there, but they look great, and you can speculate that this might have been the vision in Peele’s mind that led him to develop a whole movie around it, as though it was his version of the iconic crop-dusting scene in “North by Northwest,” except that it’s now a UFO (or, as the military now prefers to say, UAP) that swoops down after the rider.
Nope is Peele’s most ambitious project yet as a filmmaker, a Wild West space-alien epic with overtures of Spielberg ( E.T. and even Jaws ) that challenges Hollywood’s time-honored concept of bug-eyed “little green men,” what intergalactic travelers might look like, or do, or why they might be interested in us.
Spielberg also loves combining awe and dread, as seen in his earlier titles (“Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and even “E.T.”) and some of his later works (“Jurassic Park” and “War of the Worlds”); these sources of terror are also impressive unknowns that instill wonder as well as panic.
Peele even includes a (bloody) visual nod to the finger scene in "E.T." and riffs on the catchphrase of the Spielberg-produced "Poltergeist."
Now, before you think I have a thing against sci-fi movies, in general, I love them, including those where beings from other worlds show up, be that "E.T.," "War of the Worlds," the silly "Mars Attacks," "A Quiet Place" or the superlative "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."
With DNA strands from Signs, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and even E.T., Nope feels a bit as if Spielberg’s abandoned Night Skies project (intended as the malevolent counterpoint to Close Encounters) had finally reached the screen, but Peele has gene-spiced the elements into something instantly recognizable as a “Jordan Peele” film, mixing scares with social commentary.