The first official poster for Christopher Nolan’s next summer blockbuster dropped today. Oppenheimer is the action packed story of the first atomic bomb featuring bankable stars Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt, et cetera. Nolan mainstay Cillian Murphy dramatically poses in the center of the poster amid an ominous yellow mushroom cloud with the tagline, “The World Forever Changes.” Except, all accounts point that this isn’t an action thriller like The Dark Knight. Or a sci-fi epic like Interstellar or Tenet. Oppenheimer is based on a boring book that tells the life story of a 1940’s guy that wears cool suits and a hat. Nolan is making a biopic about an inventor. More Imitation Game than Inception. But marketing is still yelling about new Nolan dropping and they have to make it look exciting. Sometimes audiences are led to expect the wrong thing from creators that just want to try something new. Am I using current events to make a thinly veiled comparison between two great modern directors to try to temper expectations for Jordan Peele’s new ambitious swing? Yes, uh I mean, Nope.

So You’ve Just Won An Academy Award, What Will You Do Now?

In Hollywood it’s not good enough to have one great idea, everyone wants to know what you’re doing next. So after making the seamless transition from Comedy Central co-star to Oscar winning writer, Jordan Peele needed his next Thing. That was Us, released in 2019 to cautious praise. He once again nailed a feel, combined pop-culture with culture-politics, all while scaring the red jumpsuits off his growing ravenous fan club. But the allegories weren’t quite as tight as Get Out and the ending left something to be desired. 

Not to worry if you can’t get enough Jordan Peele horror in your life. They slapped his name on the middling Candyman reboot, the confusing Twilight Zone reboot, and…okay wait not actually Antebellum. That movie was awful and very loudly “From the Producer of Get Out and Us” but that producer wasn’t Peele. Even when movies weren’t using his name, they used his cachet. And he was all over YouTube and social media lending his voice to promote some underrated horror classics and upcoming projects. He is more than a director, he is a brand himself.

Which by the way is amazing and exactly what a new age of content creation is about. Superstardom fell into his lap and he has held it humbly and with respect. The leaked “horror homework” he gave Us star Lupita Nyong’o became a great jumping off point for people he’s introducing to the genre. And he is constantly lifting other creators up, rather than punching down.

Which all sets the bar pretty high when he actually has a new movie released. Will he complete a perfect trilogy with atmospheric social horror? 

Nope.

But that was too high a bar, and honestly probably not even the bar Peele was aiming for. From the beginning Nope feels more experimental. It’s a movie that has one cool idea, and maybe could have been a really tight short film, but falls apart looking for runtime. It’s got two or three of the best visuals I’ve seen on screen in 2022. And there is a deeper theme behind the scares (as we expect with a Jordan Peele Joint) but it isn’t quite as poignant as his previous films.

What Is Everyone Nope-ing?

Unclear from the marketing but obvious within the first 15-or-so minutes of the film is that Nope is an alien movie. Of sorts. Not like Alien aliens, but aliens. Daniel Kaluuya is reunited with Peele along with his on screen sister Keke Palmer to run the oldest black-ran horse ranch in Hollywood. But business isn’t great and they keep losing their horses to rival opportunist rancher Steven Yeun. Yeun plays a former child star that had a run in with a crazed animal on set long ago, and he has also realized the truth is out there in the clouds.

Also prompting an audible “NOPE” in my screening was the film’s brutal open on that monkey attack. It’s a visual that’s been on Peele’s mind for years, and it’s cool, but again, doesn’t totally coalesce with the finished film. 

The creepiest moment of the movie is played for laughs immediately after (which is a tension releasing choice, I get it). And for his second straight movie, he struggles to land the ending.

Where I Nope-d

There’s an exact moment in When a Stranger Calls where the movie goes downhill. It’s when you see the guy. The whole movie you know it’s just a guy making the calls. I mean okay “ooooo the calls are coming from inside the house, scary” but it’s still just a guy right? But the part of your brain that is afraid of things doesn’t really admit that until you see him. And once you do see him, there is a moment of relief.

The terror you can’t see is always scarier than the terror you can. Jaws knew this, even if they had to lean into it because the animatronic shark wouldn’t work. Monsters (2010) knew this. JJ Abrams TO A FAULT knows this. You have to open that mystery box eventually JJ. 

Anyway, Nope sets itself up perfectly to have a creature we can fear. The drive of our main characters is getting it on film. The lore behind UFO’s is that no one has really gotten a good look at one. All we see of it for most of the movie is the inside of its esophagus. We learn before the final confrontation that its rule as an animal is that it won’t attack unless you look it in the eyes. Every attack leading up to the end happened either at night or during a storm.

Then we STILL spend act three watching Daniel Kaluuya’s horse outrun a shapeshifting pillowcase in broad daylight. It just doesn’t look good and it really isn’t scary. I wouldn’t say Jordan Peele has to make a horror movie, but it’s kind of what he’s known for.

The Jordan Peele Genre

Everyone in the industry knows the Jordan Peele Brand is strong, but what they might not see is the growing Jordan Peele Subgenre. A24, headlined by Ari Aster and Robert Eggers, has a corner of the horror industry locked down with immersive and dour stories about grief and the demonic expression of modern feelings. The other main 21st century branch of the horror tree is Jordan Peele’s thematic culture films. They are more concerned with shining a light on a scary side of society than scaring you on the screen. Get Out had a lot to say about trend cycles, black excellence, and the appropriation of the black body in relation to the American history of slavery.

Let me yell once again that Jordan Peele is popular today because this movie was so tight.

Us was less so, but it still made points about upward economic mobility, and the people that are left in the shadows of wealth, and how childhood trauma can change the person you are, leaving a (literal) version of yourself behind. There was no 1-to-1 comparison to clean up at the end, but the third act still labored trying to explain what was best left metaphorical.

Sorry for the tangent, it’s just really easy to talk about those movies. 

So What is Nope’s Message?

Man doesn’t control nature. We shouldn’t be so eager to watch train wrecks. Aim your Ring doorbell up a bit, just in case of UFO’s. I don’t know and that’s okay. Jordan Peele has trained his audience to dissect every minute detail of his films because Get Out was the cinematic embodiment of what my 7th grade English teacher used to say. “The author doesn’t put it in there, unless he really means it.” In a CineSins world, Jordan Peele rose from the ashes to give us the capital-P Perfect movie. 

But CineSins is dumb and movies don’t have to be clinical. Peele had an idea for an extraterrestrial sting ray that eats people and hides in a cloud and sure the whole third act drags, but it has a field of those Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Men that serve as a map pinging system for a monster you aren’t supposed to look at and damn that’s pretty cool.

Now What’s Next?

At some point post-The Dark Knight Christopher Nolan made Dunkirk. It forced his time-passage obsession onto a pretty straightforward war story and I kind of hated it, but at least it was something new. And after the disaster critically and commercially of Tenet, maybe Oppenheimer will be calmer and not what we expect from the Batman and Inception guy.

Nope wasn’t Get Out. It’s unfair to expect that or want that. Nope was a goofy alien movie with fun characters, cool music, and yeah a few flaws. I just hope it was what Jordan Peele wanted. And that studios aren’t creatively tapping one of Hollywood’s best young minds before his prime. Or even worse, that fan culture doesn’t blast him for a perceived misstep. Enjoy movies for what they are.

——

Check out other reviews from Cole before you go!

Like horror? We have more horror film reviews as well.