Jenn Arias ’23
Staff Writer
Jordan Peele’s new horror film “Nope” follows a brother and sister as they take over their family’s horse ranch after the death of their father. “Haywood Hollywood Horses” is the only Black-owned horse training company in Hollywood, their great-great-great-grandfather being the first Black man ever filmed riding a horse. However, financial issues have caused the ranch to hemorrhage money, and the older brother OJ, played by Daniel Kaluuya, decides to temporarily sell some horses to Jupe, played by Steven Yeun—the successful ranch owner in town, at least until he can afford to buy them back. However, weird things start to happen on the farm. One-by-one horses seem to lose control, escaping their barn, jumping the perimeter fence, and taking off into the night. Enlisting the help of his younger sister Emerald, played by Keke Palmer, and surveillance tech specialist Angel, played by Brandon Perea, they vow to get to the bottom of the horses’ disappearances and to discover who or what has been stripping the farm of the horses.
Peele is known for his past successful films “Get out” and “Us,” which both did very well in the theaters. “Nope,” however, only premiered in theaters briefly before Peacock bought the distribution rights, making it only available on their stream. Peele’s films have been known for the sharp and eerily dramatic music at unconventional times and carefully framed shots that keep the audience guessing at the significance and wondering what will happen next.
This suspense works well in this film, but it seems to have a strange take on the horror genre, focusing more on a Western aspect, sprinkled with comic relief that doesn’t seem to have any place in the middle of a scene meant to invoke terror.
There is also much buildup to what this creature that is plaguing the farms actually is; there are several scenes where you can see something disappearing out of the corner of a frame or a shadow that is meant to represent the creature. Claiming to be in a UFO hotspot, all this escalation becomes a huge disappointment when you see how little imagination or creativity went into what the creature looks like. In the end, it seems to be an original plot for perhaps an overdone monster.
What comes through more than horror in this film is the emphasis Peele puts on being a Black-owned company. In this day and age when that is still pretty rare, it’s a great thing to portray that in a film, but the extreme separation between “them” and “us” seems to take a front seat to the main point of the film.
There is also an apparent theme about the importance of animal training. The film utilizes flashbacks to show the improvements that have been made in this field, but these seem to contain more horror than the present-day action and also seem to set up a storyline that is never actually explained or completed. This leaves an unsatisfying feeling in the end alongside too many questions about these cryptic images that don’t seem to match the feel of the rest of the film.
Having been a fan of Peele since his stand-up comedy beginnings, this film turned out to be a disappointment in the end. Peele’s horror formula aspects all get along with each other, but don’t seem to accomplish the intended purpose. Unless he was trying to write a sci-fi Western, I don’t see this as fitting in with the horror genre. Peele may have been attempting to find a new and original way to present his horror interest, and while it is definitely original, I did not find it up to the standards of his previous films. One character says it best, “flying purple people eater, sure looks strange to me” and I’m going to have to call nope on a second strange viewing of “Nope.”
