Film review: Nope is a frightening new brew from Jordan Peele

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If Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Shining had a baby, it would be Jordan Peele’s new horror-thriller Nope. Taking place on a dusty ranch somewhere in the desert outside Hollywood – the backlot of the backlot, as it were – the movie mixes awe and wonder and loneliness and more than a little terror into a frightening brew.

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It gets off to a magnificently stuttering start. There’s a one-in-a-million death like something out of Magnolia. There’s a creepy shot of a blood-smeared chimpanzee roaming an abandoned TV studio with audience seating. There’s a quotation from the Old Testament: “I will pelt you with filth, I will treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle.” (Oddly, not even the darkest line from Nahum chapter 3, which begins: “Woe to the bloody city! It is all full of lies and robbery; the prey departeth not.”) And there’s a cacophony of disturbing sounds.

And then the opening credits. Fasten your seats belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.

Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer star as O.J. and Emerald Haywood, brother-and-sister horse ranchers who supply equine actors to Hollywood productions. They’re a study in contrast: he laconic to the point of immobility; she wired and twitchy. But when they catch a glimpse of something in the skies over their property, both snap into action, purchasing a bunch of home-security cameras with the intention of capturing whatever-it-is on film. Tech store employee Angel (Brandon Perea) helps set up the equipment and stays on to offer support and conspiracy theories as needed.

They also enlist a famous filmmaker with the fantastical name of Antlers Holst. Played by Toronto actor Michael Wincott, he seems like a weird cross between John Huston and Clint Eastwood, all gristle and gumption with a gravelly voice. His spoken-word rendition of One Eyed One Horned Flying Purple People Eater creates a very particular kind of shiver in a movie that’s full of them. The closest metaphor I can devise would be to imagine Sam Elliott singing Happy Birthday to you.

Also: Remember that chimpanzee from scene one? Played by animal-mimic Terry Notary in a motion-capture performance, he’ll be back later in the movie to explain the backstory of Ricky Park (Steven Yeun), a former child actor who survived a tragedy on the set of a sitcom back in the ’90s. (Nope is the only horror film I can recall with a subplot that could easily have been turned into its own horror movie.)

These days, Ricky runs Jupiter’s Claim, a shabby old-timey western theme park where the land “out yonder” offers a new attraction that Ricky is keen to profit from, even if he doesn’t fully understand what it is. It’s just down the road from the Haywood ranch in the ironically named Aqua Dulce Canyon – no water here, sweet or otherwise, and what does fall from the sky sure ain’t rain.

It wouldn’t do to reveal any more of the plot – the trailers have been remarkably careful to preserve some of the mystery, and Peele keeps that up through the film, with some clever misdirection and directorial sleight-of-hand. I will say that Nope doesn’t have the same stark societal “message” as his other two films, Get Out and Us, and for that we should be grateful. You don’t want to become known as the message guy. Look what happened to M. Night “twist ending” Shyamalan.

But a lack of a straightforward message doesn’t mean the movie has nothing to say. On the way home from the screening, my son and I were hotly debating some of the film’s finer points, plot details, dialogue, etc. A couple of fun background details: check out the pattern on Ricky’s faux-western jacket. And is that a poster for 1972’s Buck and the Preacher, starring Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, on the Haywoods’ wall? Yes, yes it is.

And while Nope is pushing its shot-for-Imax format, I was most impressed with the sound design. (Supervising sound editor Johnnie Burn has credits on both Under the Skin and The Favourite, two films that knew how to play with noise.) There are moments where we hear things long before we see them, and the sound alone is enough to dig into whatever primitive part of your brain it is that raises your hackles. Like this summer’s Top Gun: Maverick, this is a film for the big screen, but equally for the invisible Dolby-enhanced sound system.

Should you go see it, and hear it? The answer is obvious. Yep.

Nope opens July 22 in cinemas.

4.5 stars out of 5