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‘Nope’ Review: Hell Yes

Jordan Peele’s genre-melting third feature stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as brother-and-sister horse wranglers defending the family ranch from an extraterrestrial threat.

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By A.O. Scott

The trailers for Jordan Peele’s “Nope,” one of the most feverishly anticipated movies of the summer, have raised some intriguing questions. Is it a western? A horror film? Science fiction? Satire? Will it fulfill the expectations raised by Peele’s first two mind-bending, zeitgeist-surfing features, “Get Out” and “Us,” or confound them?

I can now report that the answer to all of those questions is: Yup. Which is to say that there are some fascinating internal tensions within the movie, along with impeccably managed suspense, sharp jokes and a beguiling, unnerving atmosphere of all-around weirdness.

“Nope” feels less polemically pointed than “Us” or “Get Out,” more at home in its idiosyncrasies and flights of imagination even as it follows, in the end, a more conventional narrative path. This might be cause for some disappointment, since Peele’s keen dialectical perspective on our collective American pathologies has been a bright spot in an era of franchised corporate wish fulfillment. At the same time, he’s an artist with the freedom and confidence to do whatever he wants to, and one who knows how to challenge audiences without alienating them.

In any case, it would be inaccurate to claim that the social allegory has been scrubbed away: Every genre Peele invokes is a flytrap for social meanings, and you can’t watch this cowboys-and-aliens monster movie without entertaining some deep thoughts about race, ecology, labor and the toxic, enchanting power of modern popular culture.

“Nope” addresses such matters in a mood that feels more ruminant than argumentative. The main target of its critique is also the principal object of its affection, which we might call — using a name that has lately become something of a fighting word — cinema.

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Nope Reviews

I can’t confidently say that everything works, but most of Peele’s latest feels as experimental and creative as it is simple and fun.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2024

With unflinching dexterity, Peele and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema juxtapose the terror of encountering a being from beyond with one of the most claustrophobic scenes ever caught on film.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 20, 2024

Nope‘s combination of stellar acting, incredible cinematography and awesome sound design makes this a cinematic experience that’s out of this world.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 15, 2024

Jordan Peele crafted an impressively well-crafted sci-fi flick that while it displays clear homage to classics, feels unlike anything we’ve seen before it.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Jul 12, 2024

Nope is simply put one of the year's best films

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 4, 2024

Jordan Peele’s mind is astonishing. He takes such large concepts and layers them upon each other, building out a metaphorical journey that only deepens with each viewing.

Full Review | Jul 3, 2024

“Nope” is really a story about the underdogs in showbiz trying to survive instead of getting out, but Peele pulls punches when it comes to showing how demented they are in that pursuit.

Full Review | Jun 9, 2024

The supporting players work together in ways that show Peele’s prowess, not only as a visual filmmaker, but as one who casts well and trusts his actors. Nope is a wild ride, and one I can’t wait to take again.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2024

Jordan Peele’s third film captures the terrible beauty of our endless fascination with events no matter how horrific.

Full Review | Oct 4, 2023

Nope, Peele’s third directorial outing, may debut in the horror genre, but there’s more to the brilliant film than audiences’ expectations.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Sep 7, 2023

More stylish than substantial.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Sep 7, 2023

I love all of Jordan's movies so far, but this one might be my favorite just because there's so much to unpack. Every time I think about it I find more things that I need to talk about and it's the gift that keeps giving.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 14, 2023

It's a very layered movie, lot of themes on Hollywood and how it uses people and kinda chews them up and spits them out - figuratively. He [Jordan Peele] is probably one of our best directors today.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Aug 10, 2023

The failure of Nope is partly because of Peele's lack of restraint in terms of mangling together mismatched ideas.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Aug 9, 2023

Although the vision is stronger than the pen this time around, the Spielberg-esque scope is all-embracing, and his craftiness in the individual horror/sci-fi set pieces is utterly remarkable.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jul 29, 2023

As with his previous films, Peele wears his inspirations on his sleeve. This time around he mines heavily from two Spielberg classics, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Jaws.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Jordan Peele takes full advantage of Hoyte van Hoytema's phenomenal cinematography and Michael Abels' memorable score to create a spectacle worthy of the big screen, but it's the sound production that really elevates the movie to that level.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 25, 2023

An almost perfect spectacle that dives into our obsessions with spectacles in our real life. A unique blockbuster that will make you afraid of looking up.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Jordan Peele has made a science fiction thriller that is one of the most visually striking films in recent memory.

Known for his powerful social commentary in US and Get Out, Jordan Peele reinvents the summer blockbuster through a neo-sci-fi western that looks at society’s obsession with spectacle.

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Nope First Reviews: Ambitious and Well Crafted, but Possibly Jordan Peele's Most Divisive Film Yet

Critics say the writer-directors sci-fi thriller is thought-provoking and confidently made, but its big ideas and cerebral plot may leave general audiences wanting more..

TAGGED AS: aliens , First Reviews , Horror , movies

Nope marks the third feature from writer and director Jordan Peele , and the first reviews of the movie prove that Get Out and Us were no flukes. This time, the filmmaker is focused on a frightening science fiction story involving a horse ranch, a former child actor, and something mysterious lurking above the clouds. Nope stars Daniel Kaluuya , Keke Palmer ,and Steven Yeun within a praised ensemble amidst some spectacular visuals. But whether its script is brilliant or confusing is debated from one review to the next.

Here’s what critics are saying about Nope :

Does Nope confirm Jordan Peele as one of the great directors of our time?

With Nope , Peele once again proves that he’s not just one of the most interesting filmmakers working in horror today, he’s one of the most interesting filmmakers working, period. – Ross Bonaime, Collider

He continues to be one of the best in the business. – Caitlin Chappell, CBR.com

This film really might be what it takes to etch him as, no, not the next Spielberg, but an event-level filmmaker that we’ve all been worried we were losing. – Cory Woodroof, 615 Film

How does it compare to Get Out and Us ?

While still full of profound and layered ideas, Nope is closer in execution to the horror-comedy mix of Get Out than Us . – Ben Kendrick, Screen Rant

Nope is arguably the most conventional horror film of his three directorial efforts. – Matt Rodriguez, Shakefire

Peele’s most assured, confident film yet… Nope may not be Jordan Peele’s best movie to date, but it is his most enjoyable. – Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm

Compared to Get Out and Us , Nope is likely to prove more divisive… I fully expect it to be labeled his strongest and weakest flick in equal measure. – Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

Peele is capable of doing much better movies (as evidenced by Get Out and Us ), but Nope just looks like a cynical cash grab. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

Is it as good as Us and Get Out ? Nope. – Scott Mendelson, Forbes

It’s Jordan Peele’s weakest film. – Robert Daniels, Polygon

(Photo by ©Universal Pictures)

What other movies does it recall?

You can just about taste the DNA of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and… other films that have been made in the shadow of Close Encounters , like M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival . – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

What binds this movie so closely to Close Encounters of the Third Kind has less to do with alien visitors, in the end, than with the fervent curiosity that they can inspire. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

It captures the same thrills, tension, and strong characters of movies like Jaws , while also setting itself up to be as iconic as sci-fi movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien . – Caitlin Chappell, CBR.com

It’s closer to Peele’s Super 8 than Peele’s Signs . – Scott Mendelson, Forbes

This movie reminds me of Tremors … That’s a movie with swagger. And Nope has a similar swagger that Peele was smart to use. – Mike Ryan, Uproxx

The film it most resembled in spirit is a small one, Theo Anthony’s 2021 documentary All Light, Everywhere . – Cory Woodroof, 615 Film

But is it also totally original?

Nope is unlike anything you’ve seen before. – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

With stunning cinematic moments of pure dread, terror, and wonder, Peele has indeed delivered on his promise to bring audiences something unique. – Matt Neglia, Next Best Picture

This frequently monotonous and unimaginative movie is an unfortunate case of hype over substance. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

Is it scary?

The best horror movie of the year… building the tension to the point that it feels as if nowhere is safe. – Caitlin Chappell, CBR.com

Peele is able to create one thrilling, scary scene after another. – Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm

As a horror movie, Nope fails miserably to be frightening. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

How does the movie look?

Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema captures something so original visually that it is destined to become iconic. – Caitlin Chappell, CBR.com

Nope mostly delivers in terms of big-screen spectacle, visual oomph… and overdue iconography. – Scott Mendelson, Forbes

Peele’s latest boasts some of the most inspired alien design since H.R. Giger left his mark on the genre. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

The movie’s visual effects are adequate but definitely not spectacular for a movie concept of this scope. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

Does Nope have a compelling plot?

Nope doesn’t have a plot so much as a series of happenings that spill out in an impressionistic and arbitrary way. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

For all of the film’s escalating supernatural events, though, what’s less clearly drawn, and will likely prove less satisfying to a plot-hungry public, are the whys and hows of its conclusion. – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

It’s obvious that writer/director/producer Jordan Peele got this movie made without anyone stepping in to question the very weak and lazy plot of Nope . – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

Nope is an idea more than a story. It’s a collection of individually captivating scenes, as opposed to an intriguing whole. – Robert Daniels, Polygon

Is it more cerebral than entertaining?

Nope feels like something of a B-movie ouroboros, an unusually well-made and imaginative thriller that’s sometimes tripped up by its own high-mindedness. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Depending on your appetite for the heady and sonorous, it will either feel frustratingly perplexing or strike you as a work of unquestionable genius. – Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter

It will leave certain viewers more confused than exhilarated. – Ben Kendrick, Screen Rant

Peele’s strength is that he makes you lean in and talk about his film whether you like it or not. – Kathia Woods, Cup of Soul

But does it actually make any sense?

Nope establishes itself as something of an ethically minded Hollywood history lesson, with a particular focus on the industry’s long, brutal record of animal accidents and abuses on set. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Nope gives audiences an unforgettable experience, but forces them to reckon with exactly what types of experiences they really want, and at what cost. – Cory Woodroof, 615 Film

While this might be his most bombastic film in terms of what he’s attempting to it, it’s also maybe his most understated in its messaging. – Ross Bonaime, Collider

Even when parts of it don’t gel, Nope is a rapturous watch. – Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter

Logic often takes a back seat, and that has the unfortunate effect of lessening our involvement. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

It’s a puzzle with a few pieces missing; standing back from it, you can still see the picture. But does it give the viewer exactly what they want? See the title. – Odie Henderson, RogerEbert.com

Does the movie have any other major issues?

Events may happen to OJ and Emerald, but outside of the plot’s story beats, we don’t really know anything about them on an individual level. – Matt Neglia, Next Best Picture

The characters would have benefited from greater depth and dimension. – Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter

Peele is far too impressed with its handsomeness to work on populating it with fully felt characters. – Robert Daniels, Polygon

The film’s drawn-out pacing issues… leads to redundant and repetitive events and a comparatively (even compared to Us ) claustrophobic narrative. – Scott Mendelson, Forbes

Nope opens everywhere on July 22, 2022.

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‘Nope’ Review: Jordan Peele’s UFO Drama Has a Mood of Exciting Unease but an Arbitrary Story

Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer play horse-ranch siblings who try to photograph a close encounter in a movie that, for all its skillfully ominous atmosphere, begins to fly in all directions.

By Owen Gleiberman

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NOPE, Keke Palmer, 2022. © Universal Pictures /Courtesy Everett Collection

Jordan Peele ’s “ Nope ” is a tantalizingly creepy mixed bag of a sci-fi thriller. It’s a movie that taps into our fear and awe of UFOs, and for a while it holds us in a shivery spell. It picks the audience up and carries it along, feeding off spectral hints of the otherworldly. 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.” Here, as in those films, the anticipation works better than the payoff.

Daniel Kaluuya , an actor so skillful he seems to overhaul his spirit with every role, plays the central character, Otis Haywood Jr., a sweet-souled but recessive and taciturn country fellow who goes by the nickname of OJ. Early on, he reunites with his feisty chatterbox sister, Emerald ( Keke Palmer ), on the California horse ranch the two have inherited from their father, Otis Sr. (Keith David), who in one of the film’s first scenes dies during a mysterious shower of inanimate debris. For several generations, the ranch has rented out horses to the entertainment industry, with the Haywoods serving as on-set wranglers and horse whisperers. But OJ is looking to sell the business and cash in.

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Before he gets the chance, he walks out of the Haywoods’ beautiful farmhouse, stepping into the bright starlit night to chase a horse that has leapt the fence of its training arena. What he sees and hears in the distance is freaky in the extreme: a crowd, lit by floodlights, that seems to have assembled like some outer-space cult. Before long, the signs grow weirder: a cloud that doesn’t move (and hasn’t for weeks). Wind that funnels down into a small tornado. And, finally, a dark svelte object that glides through the air like nothing of this earth. The film’s title plays, amusingly, off that most casual of contempo buzz phrases ( nope! ), and how it perfectly expresses our incredulity in the face of the otherworldly.

Popular on Variety

Of all the fanciful phenomena that rational people claim not to believe in (ghosts, demons, monsters, the theory that Joe Biden stole the election), UFOs hold a special place. Simply put, there’s a lot of evidence for them. I don’t mean the kind of evidence cited by the folks who think that Ed and Lorraine Warren, of the “Conjuring” films, are paranormal documentarians. I’m talking about the mountains of filmed footage of UFOs, a lot of which is fake but not all of it. Of course, just because a flying object is unidentified doesn’t mean that it came from outer space. Yet the best UFO footage, which is available by the clipload on YouTube, exerts an uncanniness that can’t be explained away. You look at caught-on-the-fly images of gliding spacecraft, or lights dancing in the sky, and think, “Wow, what is that? What if ?” Those thoughts have only been encouraged by recent reports leaked by the U.S. government that acknowledge just how many flying objects there are that even military experts can’t identify, some zipping through the air with a technology no one recognizes.

“Nope” has a seductive mood of unease that makes the film feel, for a while, like something new: the first UFO thriller of the cellphone-ready, I-saw-it-online, how-can-you-not-believe-your-own-eyes? era. This is Peele’s third feature, after the landmark racial-paranoia nightmare “Get Out” and the ambitious but muddled doppelgänger fantasy “Us,” and for a while he draws on his skill at leading us down detours that become hypnotic lost highways.

In a way, the whole setup is a bait-and-switch, as Peele lures us into the quirky lives of OJ and Emerald, taking note of the fact that their business, Haywood’s Hollywood Horses, has deep roots in racial pride. It seems that the Black jockey who appeared for a few seconds in one of history’s earliest film clips was the great-great-grandfather of Otis Sr. (That’s part of their spiel to potential clients.) Kaluuya, so sly, communicating mostly through his sharp gaze, and Palmer, whose fast-break aggro style acquires more heart as the movie goes on, make the Haywoods adult siblings we feel invested in, and the film introduces a couple of other key characters: Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), a former child star who now runs a Wild West theme park called Jupiter’s Claim (that’s where the space-cult show was), and Angel Torres (Brandon Perea), a techie salesman at Fry’s Electronics who helps the Haywoods set up a surveillance system to record the alien spaceship that appears to have settled in over their property.

It’s a flying saucer that resembles a giant undulating sand dollar, and if you had to use one word to describe it that word would be “hungry.” OJ and Emerald decide to photograph it; if they can land the perfect shot and sell it to the right media source (they have Oprah in mind), it could make them rich. But how do you catch a phantom spaceship on film? You call the jaded analog cinematographer Antlers Holst, played by the veteran croaky-voiced hipster actor Michael Wincott.

As they launch the plan, “Nope” itself starts flying off in different directions. It’s part of the film’s design — and, in a way, its racial consciousness — that OJ and Emerald are too mistrustful of mainstream white society to get any authorities involved. So we’re spared the sort of meddlesome-U.S.-government boilerplate plot that weighed down a movie like “Arrival.” Yet “Nope” doesn’t have a plot so much as a series of happenings that spill out in an impressionistic and arbitrary fashion. There are memorable touches along the way, like the monster image of a praying mantis on a surveillance camera or, as the electricity goes out, the way Peele slows down Corey Hart’s ’80s kitsch classic “Sunglasses at Night” to evoke the dread of a world stopping in its tracks. Yet for all these suspenseful felicities, logic often takes a back seat, which has the effect of lessening our involvement.

The spaceship, for instance, will suck you into its membrane hole if you look right at it…and sometimes if you don’t. The details of the Haywoods’ strategy to film the thing are never fully sketched in. When Emerald dots the property with inflatable tube men, it makes for a grabby image, but the point of these super-fake decoys is barely established. What’s more, the most disturbing scene in the movie — a flashback to Ricky’s ’90s cable sitcom, which turned into an impromptu horror set when the chimp who played the lovable Gordy went on a bloody rampage — turns out to have nothing to do with…anything. When the spaceship finally unfurls its freak flag, it looks like a pirate galleon made out of a giant ripped bedsheet, which is a little spooky and a little innocuous. “Nope,” like “Signs” and “Arrival,” will probably be a major hit, and it confirms the power of the Jordan Peele brand. But it also confirms that making movies with too much chaos and sprawl is threatening to become part of that brand.

Reviewed at AMC Empire, July 19, 2022. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 135 MIN.

Production: A Universal Pictures release of a Monkeypaw Productions production. Producers: Jordan Peele, Ian Cooper. Executive producer: Robert Graf.
Crew: Director, screenplay: Jordan Peele. Camera: Hoyte Van Hoytema. Editor: Nicholas Monsour. Music: Michael Abels.
With: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Brandon Perea, Michael Wincott, Keith David, Wrenn Schmidt.

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‘nope’ review: jordan peele’s rapturous and suspenseful sci-fi ride.

A menacing force threatens a Southern California horse ranch in the director’s third film, starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer and Steven Yeun.

By Lovia Gyarkye

Lovia Gyarkye

Arts & Culture Critic

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Daniel Kaluuya in Nope, written and directed by Jordan Peele.

Nope , Jordan Peele ’s latest offering, slinks and slithers from the clutches of snap judgment. It avoids the comfort of tidy conclusions too. This elusive third feature from the director of Get Out and Us peacocks its ambitions (and budget) while indulging in narrative tangents and detours. It is sprawling and vigorous. Depending on your appetite for the heady and sonorous, it will either feel frustratingly perplexing or strike you as a work of unquestionable genius.

Full credits

Distributor: Universal Pictures Production company: Monkeypaw Productions Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott, Brandon Perea, Keith David Director-screenwriter: Jordan Peele Producers: Jordan Peele, Ian Cooper Executive producers: Robert Graf, Win Rosenfeld Director of photography: Hoyte van Hoytema Production designer: Ruth De Jong Costume designer: Alex Bovaird Editor: Nicholas Monsour Composer: Michael Abels Casting director: Carmen Cuba

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Jordan Peele’s Nope is a breathtaking celebration of filmmaking as an art form

Nope stars Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, and Steven Yeun

By Charles Pulliam-Moore , a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.

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Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood, Brandon Perea as Angel Torres, and Keke Palmer as Emerald Haywood.

With both Get Out and Us , Jordan Peele introduced the world to some of the monsters living inside his imagination that were born out of his deep-seated love for the horror genre. While Nope — Peele’s third feature with Universal — definitely runs on the distressing, disorienting energy his projects have become known for, it also feels like the director’s first movie that’s actually about filmmaking as a thrilling and terrifying art form.

Nope tells the story of the Haywoods, a family of Black ranchers who made a name for themselves raising stunt horses for film and television productions. While patriarch Otis Haywood Sr. (Keith David) always expected that his son Otis Jr. (Daniel Kaluuya) and daughter Emerald (Keke Palmer) would eventually take over the family business, none of them ever imagined that Otis Sr. would suddenly and quite mysteriously die after a strange encounter with an innocuous cloud.

The Haywood siblings are still grieving in their respective ways as Nope opens on Otis Jr. (who goes by OJ) doing what he can to maintain Haywood’s Hollywood Horses and Emerald making it very clear that she’s ready to become a part of the showbiz in a non-equine capacity. Like with most siblings, there’s tension between OJ and Em that Nope brushes up against without veering too far off course. But their father’s death brings Em and OJ closer in a way that properly sets Nope ’s story in motion and illustrates one of the film’s most salient ideas about what it means to work in the entertainment industry — particularly as a person of color.

Unlike OJ, the family’s soft-spoken stoic who prefers the company of horses, Emerald inherited their father’s showmanship and deep pride in their great-great-grandfather, the unnamed Black jockey depicted in Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion cabinet 1878 card series. Blessedly, racism (or some anthropomorphization of it) is not the frightening menace that eventually gets Nope ’s characters uttering the movie’s title aloud. But the specter of it is present in the way Nope connects The Horse in Motion ’s jockey to his fictional descendants: skilled professionals whose talents go largely underappreciated and overlooked by others in the industry, like famed director Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott).

Even those willing to do business with the Haywoods, like former child actor turned local show cowboy Ricky Park (Steven Yeun), are hesitant to see them as more than the people who tend to animals — people so low on the call sheet that they’re almost invisible. That sense of being boxed in by others’ preconceptions is one of the ways Nope starts to build up an atmosphere of dread long before any of its human characters realize that they aren’t alone out there in the desert.

OJ doesn’t really want to believe his eyes when he witnesses something strange one evening while chasing down an escaped horse, and he’s loath to tell his sister. But he can’t deny hearing the sound of screams echoing through the canyons whenever one of the strange power outages that’s been plaguing their ranch sets in, and before long, Em, too, catches a glimpse of the alarming sight that put her brother on edge. If you’ve seen any of Nope ’s trailers or its very effective posters, then you likely know what kind of creatures its story revolves around. But instead of trying to present itself as a wholly new spin on the kind of film it appears to be, Nope exceeds by going a bit meta as its heroes realize that they’re going to have to fight for their lives using, among other things, cameras.

Peele has always had an eye for bold, visual storytelling, but there’s a majesty to Nope ’s sweeping shots of the California desert that feels reflective of his evolution as a filmmaker and of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema’s artistic sensibilities. Nope ’s striking, almost portrait-like shots of its heroes immediately call to mind Western classics like Sidney Poitier’s Buck and the Preacher as OJ and Em’s ranch becomes their new base of operations where they plan to photograph and document whatever it is that’s hunting them and their neighbors. But the slick and imaginative ways that Nope repeatedly reminds you of the danger that OJ and Em must face has much more in common with the likes of M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs and Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block.

As characters, both OJ and Em are so firmly within Kaluuya and Palmer’s wheelhouses that they have a way of feeling like archetypical performances you’ve seen from them before, but it works within the context of Nope ’s slightly amped-up reality. Palmer in particular shines with an easy exuberance that feels entirely her own, and Kaluuya embodies the precise kind of laconic cowboy masculinity that defined the leading men of movies like George Stevens’ Shane .

Neither of the Haywoods feel quite like “real” people but rather like heightened personifications of artists hungry to become part of the movie-making business — no matter the cost. Foolhardy as their plan to stand their ground while documenting their confrontation with the creatures is, it makes a certain kind of emotional sense when you step back and look at Nope as a text about people pouring everything they have into getting the perfect shot.

Nope leaves itself far less open to interpretation than Peele’s previous films, and it’s better for it as the movie shifts gears in order to give itself ample time to show off its VFX budget. Nope lays all its cards on the table with a series of truly breathtaking and astounding set pieces that speak to Peele’s ability to conjure large-scale horrors that are just as nightmarish as the smaller, more intimate ones we’re accustomed to seeing from him.

Though its straightforwardness and focus on spectacle over subtlety might not quite be what audiences expect from a Monkeypaw feature, Nope ’s a strong entry from Peele and a sign that the director’s still got plenty of heat left to spare.

Nope also stars Brandon Perea, Terry Notary, Andrew Patrick Ralston, and Jennifer Lafleur. The movie hits theaters on July 22nd.

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‘Nope’ Review: Jordan Peele’s Third Film Is His Most Ambitious and Hilarious Horror Story Yet

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Watching Jordan Peele evolve as a director over the course of just three films has been fascinating to watch. While his first film, Get Out , was a precise knockout that blended horror and social commentary, while Us was a bit shaggier, yet even more terrifying, as Peele told a story that left haunting open-ended questions in its wake. With his third film, Nope , Peele is at his most expansive, his most adventurous as a filmmaker, and having more fun than we’ve seen from him in his already impressive filmography. With Nope, Peele once again proves that he’s not just one of the most interesting filmmakers working in horror today, he’s one of the most interesting filmmakers working, period.

Nope centers around the sibling ranch owners OJ ( Daniel Kaluuya ) and Emerald Haywood ( Keke Palmer ), who take over Haywood’s Hollywood Horses after their father Otis Haywood Sr. ( Keith David ) dies mysteriously. The Haywood family are direct descendants of the jockey riding a horse in the first film ever made, “The Galloping Horse,” and the Haywood’s continue in the family business, providing horses for various entertainment projects. But with the surprising death of Otis, the ranch has seen better days.

One night, OJ notices an unidentified flying object in the sky, and he and Emerald decide to try and capture footage that could help save their farm, and probably make them famous as well. With Ricky “Jupe” Park ( Steven Yeun ), a former child star and owner of the Western-themed amusement park Jupiter’s Claim offering to buy their farm, OJ and Emerald—along with the help of Fry’s Electronics employee Angel Torres ( Brandon Perea )—attempt to prove that the truth is out there.

Em and OJ, played by actors Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya, walk through an electronics store in Nope

RELATED: First 'Nope' Reactions Call Jordan Peele's Movie Indescribable, Divisive, and Terrifying

Stylistically, Nope feels in line with other iconic director’s third theatrical films, like Steven Spielberg ’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind , or M. Night Shyamalan ’s Signs . Yet instead of Spielberg’s alien films, Nope maybe feels most like Jaws , but instead of looking to the oceans for a sign of life, we’re looking to the skies for proof. Peele, along with editor Nicholas Monsour , knows exactly where to place the camera to maximize the unsettling nature of this story, as well as exactly when to cut away from a haunting moment. Peele and Monsour carefully keep the mysteries of this story close to the chest, slowly revealing details with brilliant precision and care.

But this excitement of what is really going on in the skies, and the dynamic between OJ and Emerald make this Peele’s most flat-out entertaining film, more of an exciting adventure with horror elements thrown in for good measure. Peele shot Nope with IMAX cameras, which leads to this story feeling massive in scope—even though it mostly takes place in a California gulch. Once again, Peele proves that he’s a master of tone and handling situations in just the right way. Peele blends unnerving imagery and astounding concept with just the right amount of humor that breaks the tension when it becomes almost too unbearable.

While Nope might not be as overt in its messaging as Get Out or Us , Peele explores ideas about the beauty of filmmaking and practical effects, trauma, and how Hollywood can easily dispose of its artists. But Peele does all this with a subtlety that he’s never shown at this level before, making these elements essential to the story, but without being too overt with the point he’s trying to make. While this might be his most bombastic film in terms of what he’s attempting to it, it’s also maybe his most understated in its messaging.

But not only is this maybe Peele’s most amusing film, but it’s also arguably his funniest, thanks to his fantastic cast that knows just how to react in these insane situations. From the moment she literally steals her opening scene, Palmer is phenomenal here. Emerald is a joy to watch in every scene, and her demonstrative attitude balances well with the muted and still performance coming from Kaluuya. Yet despite this, OJ is a blast to follow as well, and while he doesn’t say much, his expressive eyes say so much, and almost every time Kaluuya opens his mouth, it’s important or absolutely hilarious. Also excellent is Yeun, and his past trauma leads to some of the most uncomfortable and strangest moments in the film, while Michael Wincott is an excellent choice for documentarian Antlers Holst, Nope ’s version of Jaws ’ Quint. When Nope really gets cooking and Kaluuya, Palmer, Perea, and Wincott are working together, it’s truly some of the most captivating filmmaking in a film this year.

The real beauty of Nope , however, is watching Peele explore this playground, continuing to prove that he’s a maestro at crafting stories that are extremely weird, yet engrossing and impressive to watch. Few filmmakers can boast a filmography as fantastic as Peele already has after three films, and it’s truly exciting to watch him go all out and explore his unique visions in whatever capacity he wants. At this point, Peele has proven expertise as a director and his virtuosity in achieving his vision that no matter what the narrative, every Peele story feels distinctly his, and like the viewer is in the capable hands of a truly great filmmaker.

This might all sound hyperbolic, but it’s hard not to be blown away by this library that Peele has made for himself, and to watch yet another ingenious tale from the mind of Peele unravel on the screen. Between Get Out , Us , and now, Nope , Peele is exploring his capabilities as a filmmaker, and the more experimental and grand he gets, the more he proves that he is more than able to bring his dreams to life. Peele reaffirms that there’s nothing like his films today, and it’s truly a wonder to behold Peele in his element with a film like Nope .

Nope opens in theaters on July 22.

Movie Reviews

Jordan Peele

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The residents of a lonely gulch in inland California bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery. The residents of a lonely gulch in inland California bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery. The residents of a lonely gulch in inland California bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery.

Jordan Peele
Daniel Kaluuya
Keke Palmer
Brandon Perea
2.4K User reviews
404 Critic reviews
77 Metascore
43 wins & 173 nominations

Top cast 45

Emerald Haywood

Angel Torres

Antlers Holst

Ricky 'Jupe' Park

Otis Haywood Sr.

Ryder Muybridge

Bonnie Clayton

Fynn Bachman

Young Ricky 'Jupe' Park

Mary Jo Elliott

Phyllis Mayberry …

Tom Bogan …

Kolton Park
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Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Trivia The very early clip of a jockey riding a horse, which Emerald claims features her and OJ's ancestor, is a real 1878 animated series of photographs, one of the first moving images ever, which has come to be called Sallie Gardner at a Gallop (1878) . Sallie Gardner is the name of the horse; the two jockeys were listed as being named "C. Marvin" and "G. Domm." Neither of their identities are known, though they very well could have been black as Emerald claims. In those days many jockeys were black, such as thirteen of the fifteen jockeys racing at the first Kentucky Derby in 1875.
Goofs After the horse Clover is found wandering out in the field, the character O.J. begins to escort the horse back to its home. But once they start walking, the horse's mane changes colors between black and white (indicating two different horses were used). This happens about 45 to 46 minutes into the film.

Antlers Holst : This dream you're chasing, where you end up at the top of the mountain, all eyes on you... it's the dream you never wake up from.

Crazy credits At the very end of the credits, a cartoony image/advertisement appears: "Come ride through Jupiter's Claim, as seen in Nope, at Universal Studios Hollywood, only on the World-Famous Studio Tour."
Connections Featured in Super Bowl LVI (2022)
Soundtracks La Vie c'est Chouette Music by François d'Aime Lyrics by Pierre Billon Performed by Jodie Foster Courtesy of Cinemag Bodard By arrangement with Editions Montparnasse

User reviews 2.4K

rvscript-64946
Aug 7, 2022

Women in Science Fiction

How long is Nope? Powered by Alexa
July 22, 2022 (United States)
United States
Official Facebook
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Firestone Ranch, Agua Dulce, California, USA (Haywood Ranch)
Universal Pictures
Monkeypaw Productions
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$68,000,000 (estimated)
$123,277,080
$44,366,910
Jul 24, 2022
$171,235,592

Technical specs

Runtime 2 hours 10 minutes
Dolby Atmos
Dolby Digital
IMAX 6-Track
Dolby Surround 7.1

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Common Sense Says
Parents Say 30 Reviews
Kids Say 53 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Brilliantly crafted sci-fi horror tale has gore, swearing.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 16+?

An unstable chimp covered in blood bashes a child's face (off-screen); child's f

Many uses of "f--k" and "s--t," plus "motherf----r," "a--hole," "bitch," "ass,"

A scene takes place at Fry's Electronics, and a Fry's van is used throughout. IC

Main character vapes. Brief pot smoking. Brief whiskey drinking. Characters drin

Any Positive Content?

Excellent representation on-screen and behind the scenes, including Black lead c

Showcases teamwork, inclusiveness, and problem-solving in an attempt to defeat i

Characters tackle a world-shattering problem with one eye on making a profit and

Violence & Scariness

An unstable chimp covered in blood bashes a child's face (off-screen); child's feet are seen as she lies unconscious. Kids in peril. Chimp shot with bullet from behind (blood spurt). Blood smears, spatters. Character's eye hit with projectile: blood spurts, gory wound. Lots of blood "raining" from sky above, running down windows of house. Person with mangled face. Motorcycle wreck. Scary noises. Scary stuff. Jump scares. Violent nature footage (animals killing one another) seen in film-editing bay.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Many uses of "f--k" and "s--t," plus "motherf----r," "a--hole," "bitch," "ass," "goddamn," "damn," "d--k," "pissed off," "shut up," "stupid."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

A scene takes place at Fry's Electronics, and a Fry's van is used throughout. ICEE frozen treats sold at amusement park; logo seen several times. Sour Patch Kids mentioned.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Main character vapes. Brief pot smoking. Brief whiskey drinking. Characters drink from aluminum cans (possibly beer).

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Diverse Representations

Excellent representation on-screen and behind the scenes, including Black lead characters, a major Asian character, and a Black writer-director.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Messages

Showcases teamwork, inclusiveness, and problem-solving in an attempt to defeat impossible odds. Two major themes -- which are thought-provoking, if not precisely "positive" -- involve humans' efforts to tame and control other species, coupled with our tendency to film everything.

Positive Role Models

Characters tackle a world-shattering problem with one eye on making a profit and the other on actually saving the world. Either way, they continue to fight and refuse to give up, demonstrating strong teamwork in the process.

Parents need to know that Nope is a sci-fi/comedy horror movie from writer-director Jordan Peele about humans and their fraught relationships with other species. It may not live up to Peele's previous films Get Out or Us in terms of cultural impact, but it's a diverse, well made, spectacularly entertaining movie that's highly recommended for mature horror fans. Be ready for some shocking violence: A blood-covered chimp goes on a rampage, pummeling a young girl off-screen and threatening a young boy. A character is killed after a projectile hits him in the eye in a pretty gory way. There's lots of blood overall: smears, spurts, and raining on a house, pouring down the windows. You can also expect disturbing noises, scary stuff, and jump scares. Language includes many uses of "f--k" and "s--t" and more. Characters vape, smoke pot, and drink. Alongside the horror elements are themes related to teamwork, inclusiveness, and problem-solving in the face of impossible odds. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

Parents say (30)
Kids say (53)

Based on 30 parent reviews

Great for teen plus

Nope ah, nope pass on this disaster of a movie. even a brilliant director can't win them all., what's the story.

In NOPE, OJ Haywood ( Daniel Kaluuya ) works with his father, Otis ( Keith David ), on a ranch, training horses for movies and TV. Otis is killed after a freak accident, and OJ finds himself struggling to run the business with his flighty younger sister, Emerald ( Keke Palmer ). A deal with former child actor Ricky Park ( Steven Yeun ), who now runs a Western-themed amusement park, helps for a bit. But when OJ sees what appears to be a UFO over their land, he and Emerald get the idea to film it -- and make a fortune. Angel (Brandon Perea), a tech-savvy Fry's Electronics employee who's also a UFO buff, helps the Haywoods set up surveillance cameras. But the next time the visitor comes back, its true nature is revealed.

Is It Any Good?

Jordan Peele 's sci-fi/comedy horror movie doesn't quite have the cultural impact of his earlier films, but it's an expertly constructed, hugely entertaining ride. Each intricate puzzle piece is perfectly fitted. Nope doesn't have as much to say about America and where we are right now as Get Out and Us did, but that's about where any complaints might stop. This film seems to be concerned with themes of humans attempting to tame and control other species, up to and including filming them for entertainment and profit. A subplot about a chimp that snapped and went on a bloody rampage on the set of a 1990s TV sitcom doesn't quite seem to belong to the overall plot about UFOs, but, upon reflection, it helps put everything in context. It connects everything.

Peele's skill as a filmmaker keeps improving. His camera placement, cutting, and shocking use of sound design and music combine to create a truly surprising experience. We're frequently kept off-balance as bits of mystery are doled out sparingly, then slyly answered, only to be replaced by new mysteries. Details that may seem insignificant can become important, or vice versa. Best of all, Peele lets his comedy side flow here. While his last two films had funny moments, the tension was too strong to really allow for laughter. Here, the balance allows for more big laughs, more often. Kaluuya and Palmer are responsible for many of these, as well as for all of the movie's heart. Kaluuya's stoic, monosyllabic character and Palmer's chatty, free-spirited one are opposites, but also part of a whole. They make us say "Yep" to Nope .

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Nope 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

Is the movie scary? What's the appeal of scary movies ? Why do people sometimes like to be scared?

Do you consider any of the characters to be role models ? Why, or why not?

What does the subplot about the chimp's rampage have to do with the main plot about the mysterious visitor? What do you think the movie is trying to say?

How does the movie compare to Jordan Peele's films Get Out and Us ? How does Peele's body of work shine light on the ways that Black people have always been critical to cultural production in the United States in unacknowledged ways?

Movie Details

In theaters : July 22, 2022
On DVD or streaming : August 26, 2022
Cast : Daniel Kaluuya , Keke Palmer , Steven Yeun
Director : Jordan Peele
Inclusion Information : Black directors, Black actors, Female actors, Asian actors, Black writers
Studio : Universal Studios
Genre : Horror
Topics : Space and Aliens
Character Strengths : Teamwork
Run time : 135 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : language throughout and some violence/bloody images.
Last updated : May 8, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Jordan Peele Invades the Western With ‘Nope,’ a Thrilling Salute to Spectacle

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

Early in Nope , Jordan Peele ’s thrilling new horror movie, a woman named Emerald Haywood ( Keke Palmer ) tells a story. She and her brother OJ ( Daniel Kaluuya ) are horse handlers and ranch owners by trade, who parlay their animal wrangling skills on TV and film shoots, which is where we meet them today. But the ranch is a family business, passed down to them by their father, the late Otis Haywood (Keith David), and by his father before him. Go back far enough in their family line and you’ll meet the man Emerald tells us about in her story: the Black jockey captured in Eadweard Muybridge’s 1878 photographs of a galloping horse, which, strung to together, became one of the earliest known examples of stop-motion photography — essentially, of movies. We know the name of the horse: Sallie Gardner. We know the name of the owner of the horse: Leland Stanford. What we don’t know is the name of the man astride the horse. This is the story Emerald tells us — before telling us about her side hustles and where we can find her on social media. A girl’s gotta eat. What’s any of this got to do with aliens? In Peele’s movie, everything. Nope is in large part a movie about what cannot be tamed, and spectacle — our dire, damning hunger for it — is at the top of that list. (Aliens — animals, broadly — make for a very close second.) The point of opening a movie like this with a reminder about the birth of movies isn’t just to school us on where Black people fit into that history, though that’s obviously very much to the point; even the set decor of Nope underscores the notion, down to a poster in the Haywoods’ ranch for the classic, too-little-known Black western Buck and the Preacher — a reminder that the history of movies is still in need of all kinds of intervention.

But Peele, a director who’s made a name for himself by infusing horror with healthy spoonfuls of Black common sense and a love of movies, has even more ideas up his sleeve. A lesson of Muybridge’s work was that the camera, stopping time, could see things that the human eye could not. Images are evidence. You want proof of how a horse gallops, of the instant when none of its hooves are touching the ground? Only a photo can convince you. You want proof of UFOs? You want the first stakes in that evidence before it’s ripped out of your hands, destined to become the property of a curious, shameless, hungry public? Well, you better hope those aliens are in your backyard — which, as it turns out for Emerald and OJ, they are.

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Maybe the siblings should consider themselves lucky. The day that we see them on a movie set with one of their horses, named Lucky, is the same day that the former child star Ricky Park (Steven Yeun) offers to buy Lucky — in fact, to buy their entire, family-owned ranch — off of their hands. When that day becomes night, the Haywoods learn why. There’s something in the sky: something making their horses go wild and disappear into the night. If you’ve seen horror movies, you know the signs. A cloud that doesn’t move by day. Brown-outs and strange noises at night. They install video cameras around their remote, lonely property, tucked away in the northern California hills, and on the roof of their house. But the suspense is not in the question of why. Emerald asks her brother early on if he thinks there’s a spaceship hovering over their front yard. All he has to do is nod yep .

Nope is not the kind of movie to obscure what it’s “about” — that’s one of the most satisfying things about it. It’s a little like the M. Night Shyamalan classic Signs in that way. That movie knew that we know the signs. It doesn’t build toward a climactic reveal of the UFOs at its center: It reveals them halfway through, in — what else? — video footage taken from on the ground, not unlike the kind that the Haywoods soon want to create. The pleasure of Shyamalan’s movie isn’t in seeing where the signs lead, which is toward the inevitable, but rather in watching its characters try to make sense of those signs, try to integrate what they’re seeing into their understanding of the world, to the point of these mysteries inspiring a crisis of faith.

Nope is similar, only it’s about the crisis of looking. What do you do when you hear tell of some awful, incredible, little-known event — a long-ago murder or freak accident, the kind of deep cut that’s only barely persisted in the cultural memory? Many of us cannot help but look it up. What’s the first thing you do when some foreign object in the sky flits over your head, just out of sight? You look up.

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Peele’s ingenious idea is to use that instinct against us. It’s more than a matter of unidentified flying objects. It’s a matter of lore, of violence — of horror, of course. Peele has rightly been noticed for his profusion of movie references, his almost scholarly, but in no way didactic or merely referential, skill at reminding us of the bedrocks of the genre. Nope is another masterclass in this trend in his work — just look at his approach to the mere idea of the UFO. The flying saucer myth is alive and well in this movie. But it wouldn’t be Peele if that trope went unrevised.

Peele’s career as a director has been overly defined by the term “social thriller.” Less remarked-upon, but equally important, is his unabashed investment in symbolism, the kind of high-concept thinking that can push a movie along the axis of its ideas, distinct from its emotional logic or its genre satisfaction. At its best, as in Get Out, Peele merges that impulse with his well-honed knowledge of tropes and his incredible sense of humor to create something as entertaining as it is thought-provoking, a movie that can end with a classic, villainous infodump without feeling overwhelmed and deflated by explanation. Us , his solid second thriller, falls prey to the latter: the concept and action were almost at odds with each other, resulting in a movie with too many symbols and too strong of a need to talk us through them, whereas its action was already doing enough.

Nope is like the cosmically perfect stepchild of the two. Peele brings the concept and the beautifully achieved terror together — including a sequence halfway through the movie, beginning when a live show goes wrong and ending with a sickening twist on a house of horrors. It’s segment of the movie that uses every resource available to threaten the senses, from the clashing thuds of heavy rain to one of the most eerie examples of a movie scream that I think I’ve heard. This is a movie that knows the power of images. It has learned, from the greats of the genre, that what we fear most is what can’t be seen, what’s merely implied. All the camera has to do is trace an arc across the sky and you’ll believe something is there. (Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who shot Dunkirk — an IMAX movie, like this one — was a perfect choice for this project, able to carve daring, evocative shapes onto the screen through what feel like the simplest means.)

None of it would work without people. Palmer and Kaluuya could not be better. Palmer is down in every way, as stylish and unflappable as Samuel L. Jackson or Jada Pinkett Smith, with a taste for stoner mayhem and, when the movie calls for it, action-movie know-how. She’s who you’d want to be in a movie like this. But you’re not Keke Palmer — sorry. She makes for a fun pair with Brandon Perea, who plays a tech-store clerk in name but is really this movie’s version of a video-store clerk: in on it, knowledgeable, reluctantly down, and ultimately in over his head.

Kaluuya, meanwhile, offers us something else. His OJ is a man of few words who seems sterner than he is, though not out of shyness. It takes a while to realize the archetype he’s drawing from here, one that belongs to another genre — the genre that the character Antlers Holst, played by Michael Wincott, with his Eastwood growl, ought to remind you of.

Nope may be a horror movie in which the most damning thing you can do is to look — but the key to the movie’s conceit is in the irony in wanting to be seen: in which the Black descendants of a man whose name has been lost to movie history find themselves eager to be handed the reins of their own story and given a chance to tell it themselves, for once. One of the terms that Emerald uses in describing her great ancestor, that Black jockey atop Leland Stanford’s horse, is “action hero.” She claims him as one of the first. And because of the horse, she goes further: He’s a Western star. Midway through, Nope dials back on the heightened frights of its horror to become something else. It becomes a story of invasion — not just of the extraterrestrial kind, but of the land-born, territorially offensive kind. It becomes a movie about protecting the homestead from the most invasive species of all: other people. It becomes a Western.

What that means for Nope should be left to the movie to reveal. But it’s not the kind of thing that can be reduced to a plot point. It’s why, as you watch, that alien life form in the sky may start to resemble something a little familiar, a movie symbol born of these same landscapes, a totem of movie heroism. Then, like the movie itself, it becomes something else: an undulating, mocking paean to spectacle. You can’t help but look. But here, looks kill.

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<i>Nope</i> Is a Resplendent Spectacle Packed With Way Too Many Ideas

Nope Is a Resplendent Spectacle Packed With Way Too Many Ideas

T he best part of writer-director Jordan Peele ’s atmospheric science-fiction extravaganza Nope is the beginning, an introduction—after a brief prologue—to a world unlike any most of us have ever seen, and a character rich with possibility. In that early sequence, we meet Daniel Kaluuya’s OJ Haywood, part of a family who has run a working ranch for generations. We’ll later learn that the business, Haywood’s Hollywood Horses, provides beautiful, well-trained horses for movies and television, and for years it’s been a lucrative operation for OJ’s father, Otis (Keith David), as it was for his father and grandfather before him. But very early in the film, as Otis sits astride a white steed named Ghost, disaster strikes. Just before it does, OJ notes the gathering of some strange clouds, and he hears a weird howling in the sky—given Peele’s penchant for biblical references and imagery, it could be the sound of apocalyptic horses freed from their riders and out for vengeance.

The next thing OJ knows, his father has been struck by an invisible something. A minute ago Otis had been crowing over how well the business had been doing, and now he’s slumped in the saddle. OJ rushes him to the hospital, to no avail. Later he stares in disbelief at the small projectile that killed, or helped kill, his father, cleaned up and housed in a baggie. This scene shows, beautifully, how a life can change in a minute, and sets up a challenge rich with dramatic possibilities: OJ now has to take the reins of a successful family business—a Black-owned one at that, with a reputation to uphold—and as Kaluuya plays him, dutiful and sensitive but a bit reticent about facing the world, we can see he’s not sure he’s up to the task.

Nope could have been all about that, or about that but also layered with elements of sci-fi horror. But the early promise of Nope doesn’t lead where you expect. Instead, it leads to dozens of unexpected places, which is oddly less gratifying. What OJ sees in the sky, and what it wants with humans, becomes a little clearer with each passing scene. There are other players in this drama: OJ’s outgoing and magnetic sister Emerald ( Keke Palmer ), is better at facing the public than he is, but she wants nothing to do with the business. (OJ’s work demands that he know how to handle animals and deal with the human egos of show business, and it’s the latter that throws him.)

Ricky “Jupe” Park ( Steven Yeun ) is a former child star who runs a schlocky Old-West tourist attraction near the Haywood ranch, but who has designs on an even bigger enterprise. He’s also scarred, it appears, from a childhood run-in with a murderous chimpanzee, a story Peele hints at in Nope ’s prologue and fleshes out later in a terrifying flashback. The other characters hovering around the vast, fringey margins of Nope include the employee of a local Best Buy-type store, Angel (Brandon Perea), and a cocky weirdo cinematographer with the assertively eccentric name Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott). At one point we’re treated to some grainy footage he’s obsessed with, which appears to show a boa constrictor getting ready to devour a tiger. This is the movie’s way of proving he’s a man of sick tastes, but it’s also an image we can’t unsee.

Steven Yeun as Ricky gestures up toward the sky

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And then there’s the mysterious thing in the sky that no one is supposed to talk about until after they’ve seen the movie. It’s a thing with a hole. There are certain things it doesn’t like. It follows no rules but its own, until Otis learns that maybe it will follow some rules, and how much you think those rules make sense—even in the highly subjective world of science fiction—will dictate how much pleasure you get out of Nope.

Because Nope , enjoyable as a spectacle but conceptually barely thought through, is all over the place. Peele can’t take just one or two interesting ideas and follow their trail of complexity. He likes to layer ideas into lofty multitextured quilts—the problem is that his most compelling perceptions are often dropped only to be obscured by murkier ones. He has an eye for dazzling visuals, but it seems he comes up with the visuals first and tries to hook ideas to them later. In this case, he decides those inflatable tube dancers you see outside used-car lots might be cool to use somehow, but their effectiveness, visually or in terms of moving the plot forward, is debatable.

Contrary to popular opinion, horror movies don’t necessarily have to be about anything: we’ve all read enough treatises on how 1950s horror films were really all about fear of the Communist threat to last a lifetime. Sometimes great horror films are about nothing more than our own shadowy inner lives, playing on fears that seem silly in the daylight but become much more overwhelming at night. Peele’s movies don’t have to be about anything—it could be enough that their imagery is often haunting, and inventive, by itself. One thing’s for sure: he’s comfortable with grand orchestrations, and he enjoys filling the expanse of a movie screen. There are plenty of gorgeous images in Nope, including one that Peele makes us wait for: the sight of Kaluuya, a regal actor, on the back of a horse, a glorious Elmer Bernstein-inflected score swirling around him, as sizzling and dramatic as a setting desert sun. Peele loves movies, all sorts of movies. It seems he loves making movies, too.

Jordan Peele in an orange hoodie, on horseback, rides toward the camera

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Jordan Peele subverts expectations (again) with 'Nope'

Aisha Harris

Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, and Brandon Perea in Nope. Universal Studios hide caption

Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, and Brandon Perea in Nope.

When the first trailer for Nope dropped, viewers almost immediately swarmed social media trying to interpret the opaque montage of shots – shots which revealed virtually nothing about the plot of the movie. This is partially of Jordan Peele's own doing, because his first two feature films as a writer-director, Get Out and Us , set up high expectations for twisty, multilayered social commentary by way of popcorn thrills. Even more so it's a product of the current cultural landscape, where seemingly every big movie or TV series is laden with twists and Easter eggs and spoiler-y cameos, lending itself to fervent Reddit threads breaking down the creator's underlying meaning.

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Jordan peele looked into the mirror and saw the evil inside 'us'.

Code Switch

The horror, the horror: "get out" and the place of race in scary movies.

Peele surely knows by now what audiences anticipate from him and other filmmakers like him, which is probably why – once again – he's managed to subvert our expectations. Nope isn't so much a plot-twisty experience to be meticulously deconstructed as it is a consistently surprising one. It's a journey that's less social commentary-forward than its predecessors, yet still stacked with plenty of meaning to tease out after you've left the theater.

First and foremost, he wants us to be in awe. And on that front, he doesn't disappoint.

The film opens by quoting a Bible verse from the book of Nahum: "I will cast abominable filth at you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle," followed by a quiet, eerie scene involving an animal that's best left unsaid for first-time viewers; the better to creep you out in the moment. Eventually, Nope drops us into the world of OJ and Emerald Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer), a pair of siblings dealing with the loss of their father Otis, Sr. (Keith David) while trying to maintain the family business. Haywood Hollywood Horses is their company, a horse wrangling outfit that's worked with TV and film productions for years and is based in the small California desert valley town of Agua Dulce.

Mysterious events and sightings from above begin to occur on the family's ranch, and the hard-hustling Emerald sees an opportunity to make some extra cash by getting the perfect shot of a UFO to sell online. Soon, she and OJ have tricked their land out with camera gear with the help of Angel (Brandon Perea), a tech salesman and quirky supernatural enthusiast who has a plethora of time on his hands. (His actress girlfriend just broke up with him, much to his dismay.) But the UFO poses more of a threat than they initially realize, and soon the three find themselves on the offensive and enlist the help of an old-school filmmaker – the kind who still shoots on actual film – played by Michael Wincott.

Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

Not my job: jordan peele gets quizzed on the teletubbies.

True to Peele's sensibilities, Nope seems to be borrowing from a plethora of cinematic references: Spielberg (particularly Jaws and E.T. ), M. Night Shyamalan ( Signs ), and Alien , just to name a few. Kaluuya plays OJ almost like the strong, silent cowboy heroes of Old Hollywood westerns, a man of few words unless the occasion truly calls for it, and the kind of guy who keeps his feelings close to the vest. This contrasts nicely with Palmer's fast-talking, looser Emerald; she's the firecracker in this powder keg, injecting energy, wit, and comedic relief into a character whose ideas on how to keep the family's legacy alive run up against her brother's intentions.

As the movie trots along, the plot is always a couple steps ahead of where the mind may go, and – at least upon first viewing – not all of the threads necessarily hold together if you think about them for too long. (For instance, a storyline involving Steven Yeun as an amusement park owner and former child star is very effective in echoing the movie's themes, but could also have been more developed.) I also suspect that, like Us , this will stir up a lot of debate about what message Peele might be trying to impart to his audiences, though I'd argue there's less there there to debate over in this case. (On the other hand, maybe that in itself is something to ponder.)

This is not to say Nope is slight; with this movie, he's contributing a new entry to the rich history of Black westerns (the Sidney Poitier-directed Buck and the Preacher is visually referenced, for one) and tapping into themes about a cultural obsession with taming nature and profiting off of pageantry. It's also significant to note how Peele playfully speaks to Black audiences and their frequent responses to horror movies through the clever title and OJ and Emerald's actions – like Regina Hall's ever-skeptical Brenda in the Scary Movie franchise, these characters are wary and smart about situations that are obviously ominous. "Nope" isn't just a phrase, it's a way of survival.

But the aims strongly prioritize thrills and mood-setting. Aesthetically, this is his most ambitious feature yet, with intensely crafted action sequences, breathtaking visuals courtesy of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, and a superbly immersive sound design by Johnnie Burn. Peele seems to be having more fun with his audience than ever before as a feature filmmaker, and in turn, it makes for a fun watch.

In an era of sequels, prequels, reboots, and franchises-within-franchises, it's refreshing to see a filmmaker working in this mode, evoking familiarity while keeping viewers on their toes. Nope has only solidified my anticipation for anything and everything Peele does next.

Jordan Peele
Daniel Kaluuya
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Nope review: a haunting & humorous twist on hollywood sci-fi.

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Nope , Jordan Peele's new movie about a "bad miracle," offers a thrilling and humorous twist on Hollywood sci-fi - and serves as a meta-love letter to filmmaking. Fans of Peele's prior horror entries, Get Out and Us , are likely to enjoy the filmmaker's latest offering; though, it's worth noting that, while still full of profound and layered ideas, Nope is closer in execution to the horror-comedy mix of Get Out than Us (which, although profound and more nuanced, was slightly more difficult for moviegoers to digest). Thematically, everything ties together but some plot threads are looser than others - serving the movie as an experience (packed with foreshadowing, homage, and clever ties to film history) more than the plot, on occasion.

Nope posits the unnamed Black jockey featured in Eadweard Muybridge's pre-motion picture photo series, "The Horse in Motion," founded a horse training ranch for the purpose of supplying the burgeoning film industry with horses for production. Generations later and Haywood's Hollywood Horses falls on rough times, following a freak incident that critically injures family patriarch Otis Haywood Sr. (played by Keith David). Without their father to manage the business (and fickle Hollywood producers who would rather use CGI than real horses in their productions), OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) and his younger sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) struggle to keep the ranch afloat - resorting to selling off their beloved horses one at a time to former child-actor turned rodeo showman Ricky "Jupe" Park ( Steven Yeun ). However, when the Haywood horses begin breaking out of their stables and disappearing into the night, OJ begins to take notice of an increasing number of strange occurrences and mysterious sounds on the property - that might just provide an opportunity to save the ranch (in more ways than one).

Related: Nope Trailer Finally Reveals Plot Of Jordan Peele's New Movie

Peele's return to the director chair is a highly successful one - shaking off concerns that the filmmaker might stumble in his junior outing (mostly due to surface-level pre-release comparisons between Nope and M. Night Shyamalan's third horror film, Signs ). Nevertheless, Peele delivers a layered subversion of horror movie (and this time science-fiction) tropes with well-realized characters that, once again, recontextualizes traditionally white story beats through a Black POV - to amusing and penetrating results. Where Get Out is Peele's most entertaining and accessible film, and Us remains the filmmaker's most ambitious and complex effort, Nope raises the bar in a number of interesting ways, perfectly balancing humor, suspense, and payoff, including several scenes that rely on masterful use of restraint and non-action. Without going into specifics, Peele's conceptualization of the movie's main threat is at the same time haunting, beautiful, and genuinely disturbing, injecting a number of unique ideas and epic visuals that transform the film's genre inspirations.

That said, at times Nope leans too heavily into homage and thematic juxtaposition - which, like any thoughtful piece of cinema, will reward repeat viewers with intriguing motifs to unpack. Still, moviegoers who are hoping to switch off their brains for an entertaining horror thrill-ride will find that select aspects of Nope (especially Gordy, an ape character played by Planet of the Apes series actor Terry Notary) don't outright connect. Again, this isn't to say that these elements aren't worthy of inclusion (they absolutely are) but, given a significant amount of emphasis and runtime are dedicated to them, they result in a hefty price for certain moviegoers to pay - a price that, when it comes to these tangents, will leave certain viewers more confused than exhilarated.

Daniel Kaluuya Keke Palmer and Brandon Perea in Nope

Peele's prior films provided a showcase for memorable characters as well as great performances and Nope is no exception. Breakout Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya is back in the leading role of OJ - and it is Kaluuya that sells several of the film's most outrageous and tense scenes. Kaluuya plays OJ as stoic, but tender, making for an especially entertaining mix when the buttoned-up character is thrust into an increasingly bizarre situation (and series of encounters with the villain's malevolent threat). A scene in which the actor actually says "Nope" sums up why Peele's take on horror is so refreshing - and, along with another intense scene in which Kaluuya is stuck inside his truck, are sure to illicit some genuinely cathartic laughs (in the face of impending death).

Similarly, Keke Palmer ( Scream: The TV Series ) delivers a charming turn as Emerald - OJ's aspiring actor-director-stunt-woman younger sister who is as outgoing as OJ is understated. She's a scene-stealer and served well by Peele's writing and direction - who provides Palmer with a rich character arc that, by the end of the film, unleashes a transformed and downright steely Emerald upon the third act.

Supporting actors Brandon Perea, Steven Yeun, and Michael Wilcott are mostly confined to exposition and comic relief - making room for Kaluuya and Palmer to shine. Yet, Perea's tech guy-turned-accomplice to OJ and Emerald, Angel Torres, is a standout - especially in his scenes and banter with Keke Palmer . Meanwhile, Yeun ( The Walking Dead ) does his best to turn exposition machine Ricky "Jupe" Park into a defined character; unfortunately, Jupe's child actor backstory is heavily tied to a set piece that does more to build motif than advance the core storyline. As a result, while Yeun has some great moments, his overall contributions are a bit of a mixed bag.

Nope is another insightful and inventive twist on a genre staple from Peele. It's packed with great performances and entertaining characters - who react in unique ways to the movie's unique threat. All the same, select aspects and characters do not come full circle by the end, resulting in a movie that flirts with interesting tangents but doesn't always deliver a worthwhile return on time spent. Still, there's no one making movies like Peele and Nope is a welcome addition to his catalogue - one that, for all the reasons it might be overindulgent to certain viewers, provides a lot for fans to analyze and unpack.

NEXT: Nope Cast Reacts To Theories For Jordan Peele Movie In Hilarious Video

Nope opens in theaters July 22. The film is 135 long and is rated R for language throughout and some violence/bloody images.

Written and directed by Jordan Peele, Nope follows the owners of a family-run Hollywood horse ranch whose lives are changed by extraterrestrial phenomena. Siblings Otis (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer) scramble to understand events that seem to defy all explanation, even as their neighbor (Steven Yeun) tries to turn the strange occurrences into a alien tourist attraction.

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Nope Review

22 Jul 2022

It’s often said that showbiz can eat you alive. Jordan Peele ’s third film runs with that metaphor further than anyone might have expected. For his latest sci-fi horror, Peele characterises the film industry as a ruthless beast, and wonders about who gets led into its jaws, and for whose benefit. In Nope , the audience itself becomes a vast monster, demanding to be entertained by personal and historical trauma, commodified for their viewing pleasure. The film makes visceral horror of the nightmare of being consumed by something unfathomably larger than you — whether that’s by a national audience or a flying Lovecraftian terror. But it’s also a celebration of film crew — those in the less glamorous roles fundamental to creating cinematic spectacle. Peele is no stranger to turning American pathologies into demonic monsters: Get Out found uncanny frights in white liberal racism via Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner and The Stepford Wives ; while Us reimagined C.H.U.D. as a reflection on class warfare and displacement.

Nope looks at the multiple meanings of “spectacle”. It unpacks cinema’s romanticisation of the American frontier, itself a site of historical trauma. The dominance of white producers, feeding their movie and television machine with the misery of minorities, is played just as terrifyingly as the later, more uncanny horrors; with this, Peele turns whiteness into another monster. But he isn’t too preoccupied with what Nope signifies. It’s satisfyingly resistant to the temptation of recent horror movies that overexplain their meaning, limiting themselves to a single interpretation.

Peele is masterful at manipulating and restricting perspective, delighting in leaving just enough out of view to allow the imagination to worsen the horror.

Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer show delightful chemistry as OJ and Emerald ‘Em’ Haywood, children of a renowned Hollywood horse trainer, apparently descendants of the jockey in the 1878 photography series The Horse In Motion (a key milestone in motion-picture history). Between clashes of Palmer’s manic energy and Kaluuya’s cool stoicism, their close encounter with the unknown becomes an obsession and a potential solution for their inner turmoil, maybe even a route to fame. Another dynasty marred by tragedy is included: Steven Yeun plays former child star ‘Jupe’ Park, attempting to leave behind a tabloid incident by taking refuge in a nostalgic, whitewashed, Gold Rush-styled theme park. Also fascinating is genre cinema legend Michael Wincott, playing a Quint-from- Jaws -type as a hermit cinematographer, ominously growling a rendition of the 1958 novelty alien song ‘The Purple People Eater’, among other poetic and vaguely creepy turns of phrase.

While there’s commonality with Jaws in its quest to capture something monstrous on film (the sky taking the place of the sea), Nope doesn’t limit itself to straightforward pastiche, embracing its influences but looking to make something new of them. 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).

Peele’s regular composer Michael Abels fashions a score that cuts between the plucky tension of past work and something more grandiose, recalling the motifs of classical Westerns. Visually, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema opens up the frame through IMAX photography, and even with that newfound height, Peele is masterful at manipulating and restricting perspective, delighting in leaving just enough out of view to allow the imagination to worsen the horror. One such moment, featuring Steven Yeun, is among the most exciting set-pieces of the year, an astonishing moment of pure, visceral sci-fi terror. Despite some often claustrophobic horror, van Hoytema and Peele even make bright, wide-open spaces feel threatening as characters struggle to catch a glimpse of the terror from above.

Through all of this, Nope sees Peele distinguish between the making of entertainment for an audience — a ravenous, uncaring beast, bloodying its teeth with the spectacle of other people’s lives — and the act of filmmaking for yourself, capturing something impossible on camera, making a dream real. In the exploration of these ideas, the mythmaking of the Haywood ranch dovetails with Peele tearing away classic cinematic imagery from white-supremacist, manifest-destiny roots. The director repurposes it as a spectacle of the more triumphant kind, framing Kaluuya as a cowboy in a bright-orange The Scorpion King crew hoodie. In defining such liberation he wrangles film and television production history as the Haywoods do horses, pulling in all of his favourite cinema and lovingly demolishing and rebuilding it. Nope is as much a celebration of what’s great about film as it is a parody of its monstrous tendencies.

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Nope review: Jordan Peele’s third film is funny, weird as hell and thrillingly original

The consistently brilliant filmmaker has traded the claustrophobic, labyrinthine quality of ‘get out’ and ‘us’ for open skies and pure spectacle, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Jordan Peele. Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott, Brandon Perea, Wrenn Schmidt, Barbie Ferreira, Keith David. 15, 130 minutes.

When proof of extraterrestrial life slides its way into the lives of Nope ’s underdog heroes, their first instinct is to find a way to monetise it. That’s the most honest reaction I’ve ever seen in a horror film. It’s also exactly what I’d expect from Jordan Peele , a filmmaker who sees the social condition with such simple clarity that his films always feel like a series of mic drops. Nope is funny. It’s weird as hell. It’s a large-scale, popcorn sci-fi with a razor-sharp intellect. Otis Jr “OJ” Haywood ( Daniel Kaluuya ) and Emerald “Em” Haywood ( Keke Palmer ) recently lost their father in a freak accident. They’ve coped by running in opposite directions. OJ shuts down totally; Em lives her days as one excitable performance opportunity after another. But it’s easy to unite them under a single front, namely when an opportunity presents itself to catch “the Oprah shot”, or concrete, un-debunkable UFO footage that TV hosts would pay thousands for.

The possibility of extraterrestrials, as Brandon Perea’s tech kid hanger-on Angel explains, today seems less tied to philosophical questions about our existence, and more to pop culture fluff like the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series. Peele’s underlying message with Nope is clear: there’s no remaining part of the galaxy that can’t be exploited for entertainment. TikTok, YouTube and the local news cycle dangle the promise of overnight fame in front of people’s eyes, subliminally training us all to view every experience – no matter how traumatic – as potential content.

And Peele, with that same exquisite imagination he brought to Get Out (2017) and Us (2019), always finds the most unexpected ways to prove his point. Take Ricky “Jupe” Park ( Steven Yeun , who can hide decades of sadness in a smile), the owner of an Old West attraction known as Jupiter’s Claim. It’s been fully Disneyfied into a ghoulish parody of the American myth, much like the pier-side hall of mirrors in Us . Jupe, as a child, starred in a Nineties sitcom called Gordy’s Home, which was swiftly cancelled after a horrific tragedy. He now relives those “six minutes and 13 seconds” of terror for a steady stream of curious visitors to his in-home museum, enthusiastically describing the subsequent Saturday Night Live sketch lampooning the incident. What an honour to have the worst day of your life turned into a punchline, right?

The Haywoods, meanwhile, have taken over their late father’s stunt horse business. Em starts every film shoot with the reminder that they, in fact, are the direct descendants of the unnamed and forgotten Black jockey in Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion – the first series of photographic cards strung together to create a moving image. The precursor to all cinema. “Since the moment pictures could move, we got skin in the game,” Em says. And yet, the Haywoods are never relieved of the burden of having to prove themselves. As with Jupe. As with people of colour everywhere just trying to carve out their path in life. They have no choice but to constantly commodify themselves. Those frustrations drive both Kaluuya and Palmer’s work here. Kaluuya is a true one-of-a-kind talent, who still turns out an intensely magnetic performance with a character explicitly written to be sullen and uncharismatic. Palmer gives us the kind of capable horror heroine that’s impossible not to root for.

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It doesn’t quite feel accurate to say that Nope ’s sci-fi premise is indebted to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Jaws . Or to Hitchcock’s thrills. Or to classic B-movie mayhem. Rather, Peele’s innate understanding of cinematic history, which may have come from his years of lampooning movie tropes on the sketch show Key & Peele , only provides the foundations. Nope is his own creation. His own universe. 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. There’s always been an unshowy confidence in how Peele’s films move, from the bourbon-y smoothness of his camerawork, to the symbolic potency of ordinary objects. Get Out has its porcelain teacup. Us has scissors. Nope has a tennis shoe inexplicably balanced on its heel, and wacky waving inflatable men with rictus grins plastered on their faces.

There are other images, too, that I dare not spoil but which are so elegantly composed that my mind, without question, quietly added them to the great cinematic canon of horror imagery. Nope is a film that, on top of everything, celebrates the skill of great craftspeople – not only on screen, with the Haywoods, but with the breathless beauty of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema’s work (the film was shot for Imax), and a soundscape, overseen by Johnnie Burn, that draws equal power from silence as it does chaos. You could, certainly, make the argument that Nope is the most straightforward of Peele’s films so far. He’s traded the claustrophobic, labyrinthine quality of Get Out and Us for open skies and pure spectacle. But the genius of his work is that, in the end, none of that really makes any difference. He still gets the same results. Peele, really, is the magician disguised as a filmmaker. Nope is the sleight of hand so slick you’ll never question how the trick was pulled off.

‘Nope’ is in cinemas from 12 August

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Johnny Oleksinski

‘nope’ review: jordan peele puts his unforgettable stamp on sci-fi.

The adrenaline rush of not knowing what’s coming next — rarely found in movie theaters anymore, unless it’s a dumb Marvel Cinematic Universe cameo — invades Jordan Peele’s “Nope” like a ruthless alien civilization.

Running time: 135 minutes. Rated R (language throughout and some violence and bloody images). Opens Friday.

Suspense and scary uncertainty are also what make this singular director’s career so addictive to follow. Fans salivate when they see the words “Untitled Jordan Peele Project” on a calendar at this point, far more than they do for “Avatar 2.” Every Peele picture is a mystery we crave solving.

Of course, nothing will ever completely re-create the magic of “Get Out,” the 2017 horror hit nobody saw coming, which thrust Peele and star Daniel Kaluuya into the stratosphere and netted a Best Picture Oscar nomination.

But pass-the-popcorn “Nope,” which reunites the pair, is entertaining, smart, artful summer fare with its heart planted firmly in the 1980s heyday of blockbuster films. Just when you think, “They don’t make ’em like this anymore,” Kaluuya rides in on a horse.

Daniel Kaluuya plays OJ, a Hollywood horse trainer.

I’ll be careful not to reveal more secrets than I have to, but it’s OK to say that Kaluuya’s character OJ and his extrovert sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) are California animal trainers for film sets.

Their family-owned ranch is called Haywood’s Hollywood Horses, and lately, business has been in a slump since their more experienced dad died mysteriously — he fell off his steed, and a quarter was found lodged in his brain.

Soon after the tragedy, the horses begin having mysterious temper tantrums and regularly run off into the mountains. OJ, quiet and skeptical, starts witnessing strange phenomena in the sky.

With the help of an electronics store employee named Angel (Brandon Perea), the siblings attempt to film what they believe to be a UFO.

OJ (Daniel Kaluuya), Emerald (Keke Palmer) and Angel (Brandon Perea) are on a mission in "Nope."

Where Peele treks from there isn’t to a land of shocking twists, per se, but a clever take on alien lore that we’ve never seen before — bolstered by striking imagery not usually associated with little green men.

That’s especially true of the character Jupe. The very funny Steven Yeun plays the owner of a novelty ranch — a roadside attraction with a cartoony Old West town. We learn that this is his second act in life after starring in a popular TV comedy called “Gordy’s World,” about a little kid who befriends a chimp.

The film’s most visceral scene — brilliant in what it decides to show and not to show — relates to Jupe’s traumatic past, and adds a troubling layer of dread to the broader plot.

When it comes to performances, Peele borrows the philosophy of Thai food: sweet, sour, salty, bitter. Palmer is gregarious and hilarious; Kaluuya is reserved and downcast a la “Get Out” and nothing like his forceful Fred Hampton in “Judas and the Black Messiah”; Perea is a sassy puppy dog; and Michael Wincott, as a Hollywood filmmaker named Antlers, is jaded and has seen it all . . . almost.

Jupe (Steven Yeun) unveils a shocking attraction.

“Nope” is a horror movie, I suppose, but there is more awe at play here than abject terror. And diverse genres are fused together rather than 100% fear-mongering. Peele melds Westerns, comedy, science fiction, action-adventure and spookiness into one cohesive, seemingly simple film with a lot of laughs. Michael Abels’ score, for instance, sounds like an unsettling and kinda funny blend of Hitchcock movies and the theme from “Gunsmoke.”

The movie is a bit long, and the culmination overstays its welcome. That is the only section of the movie where the viewer is a step ahead — and therefore it doesn’t sizzle like what came before.

Yet the visual splendor of the sequence also proves the director has a flair for the epic we didn’t know about before. And that makes me all the more excited for the next “Untitled Jordan Peele Project.”

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, chaz's journal, great movies, contributors.

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"Rob Peace," based on a true story, is a kind of movie that doesn't get made too often anymore.

The title character, played by Jay Will with the laser-focused intelligence and charisma of young Denzel Washington , was a science-obsessed young man raised in East Orange, New Jersey, a suburb of Newark. Rob had a drug dealer father and a mom who worked three jobs to send him to a private school run by Benedictine Monks. He ended up going to Yale to study biochemistry and might've become a world-altering scientist had it not been for the drag of his tragic personal life: his father Skeet was sent to prison for killing two women with a handgun. The case had odd prosecutorial details that suggested police tampering (the killing firearm that was entered into evidence didn't match Skeet's gun, for one thing), and even though Rob was dogged by worries that his father might be guilty anyway, he worked tirelessly to free him, even diverting some of his science brain into growing and selling "designer weed" to cover legal fees through many years of court actions.

"Rob Peace" has been made in the spirit of Black New Wave films of the 1980s and '90, often modestly budgeted movies about poor or working-class people facing real problems. It would not have existed without actor Chiwetel Ejiofor . He directed the film and adapted the script from a nonfiction book by Jeff Hobbs , who knew the title character. He also plays Skeet, a big-hearted, raucous man who loves his son but is limited, even broken, in a lot of ways.

Did Skeet commit two murders? He says he didn't, and a lot of people in the neighborhood are convinced he didn't, and he had no criminal record of any kind prior to being arrested for the killings. Rob's beloved mother Jackie Peace ( Mary J. Blige , who's as good an actress as she is a musical performer) won't go so far as to say that she has doubts, only that she kept a few of the more unsavory details of Skeet's life from their son so that he could enjoy the same privilege so many other sons have, of looking up to their fathers. The story of Rob and his imprisoned father is the backbone of the movie.

But it's not the only element that Ejiofor focuses on. There's a lot, and I mean a lot , going on in this adaptation, in good and bad ways. It's impressive to consider the screenplay and direction from the standpoint of craft. It's simultaneously an example of compression (trying to get in and out of a scene as quickly as possible, for the sake of economy and momentum) but also expansiveness (trying to make every moment do more than one thing: establish or developing characters, plant bits of foreshadowing, make comments on life beyond this one true story).

Among all the other things that it is, "Rob Peace" is a portrait of a type of extraordinary individual whose prodigious gifts are yoked into service by those who don't have such blessings. Rob's father is the number one example. Watch how he goes from being tearfully grateful for his son's help to seeming like he feels entitled to it, and making the lad feel guilty for not spending every waking moment living for his pop. But Rob is also a beacon of what's possible for neighbors, teachers, and high school and university classmates (he has the rare ability to draw people from a lot of different demographics together to party). There's a even a subplot about Rob and a couple of his friends realizing there's money to be made in buying and "flipping" houses, to make a little money off the gentrification that started transforming a urban neighborhoods after the turn of the millennium, including East Orange's and Newark's. Rob's got the vision, but he also has the skills. It soon becomes apparent that the skills helped give him the vision. You see this idea expressed even in little moments, like when Jackie and Rob have a budgeting talk and she reflexively has him do the math.

"Rob Peace" is an ambitious, probably overstuffed movie that tries to pack an eventful life and all of its wider implications into two hours; it could easily have run three, or been reimagined as a TV miniseries. Some elements feel truncated or skipped-over. But that's the nature of the project—another tragic inevitability, maybe. (Old movie biographies used to be able to get away with focusing on the highlights of a life: they'd give you 20 minutes on a character's childhood, then glimpses of three or four distinct parts of their existence, then wrap things up and roll the credits, and somehow nobody in the audience felt cheated.)

"Rob Peace" is stylistically out-of-step in another way: it's a populist work aimed at a wide audience. It's a shame that movies like this no longer get mainstream theatrical distribution (unless they star Will Smith —and even then it's a dice roll) because it seems to have been made with audience reactions in mind. Ejiofor's direction and Masahiro Hirakubo's editing leave space for laughs, tears, gasps, and side-talk. There are moments where Rob is knocked down by a challenge, overcomes adversity, or makes what we know is a big mistake even though he doesn't realize it the time, and you just know you'd be able to feel the collective connection to the material at a cellular level if you were in a crowded theater.

The best thing about this movie, though, is that it never holds your hand and tells you that if a certain character feels one way about something and you feel differently, you're somehow "watching it wrong." If anything, "Rob Peace" errs on the side of telling you that you're going to come out of this movie feeling as if you've seen a story that doesn't fit into one box, or even several boxes, because nobody's life does.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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The Good Half

Film credits.

Rob Peace (2024)

120 minutes

Jay Will as Robert DeShaun Peace

Mary J. Blige as Jackie Peace

Chiwetel Ejiofor as Robert E. 'Skeet' Douglas

Camila Cabello as Naya

Michael Kelly as Edwin Leahy

Mare Winningham as Professor Durham

Chiwetel Ejiofor

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The jaw-dropping 'Alien: Romulus' ending sets it apart from other blockbusters. Here's what happens.

"Alien: Romulus" is set on a derelict space station where a group of scavengers face the Xenomorphs.
The final act of the film cranks up the horror with a stunning twist.
Here's the ending of "Alien: Romulus," explained.

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for "Alien: Romulus."

" Alien: Romulus " is set in between the events of 1979's " Alien " and 1986's "Aliens" when a group of scavengers from the Jackson's Star mining colony raid a derelict space station, looking for a way to escape their bleak existence.

Predictably, the group sticks its nose where it doesn't belong, and a young woman named Navarro (Aileen Wu) ends up on the wrong side of a Facehugger. This leads to a bloodthirsty fight for survival as the Xenomorphs overrun the station.

"Alien: Romulus" could easily have replicated the other films in the franchise and simply focused on the terrifying nature of the Xenomorph.

But " Evil Dead " director Fede Alvarez pushes things further in the second half of the film when he ties it to the 2012 prequel "Prometheus," and cranks up the body horror with a stunningly gruesome twist.

Here's the ending, explained.

Weyland-Yutani experimented with the black goo from "Prometheus."

Rain ( Cailee Spaeny ) travels with a crew, including her adopted android brother, Andy (David Jonsson), to the "Renaissance" station, which is divided into two sections. They find themselves in the section called "Remus," where all the Facehuggers are kept in cryo-storage.

When the crew's ship, the Corbelan IV, gets accidentally knocked over to the other side of the station, called "Romulus," Rain and Tyler (Archie Renaux) have to fight their way over to the second half.

They discover that Weyland-Yutani, the nefarious company that owns the station and the colony, has synthesized a black serum from the Xenomorphs and the Facehuggers.

It's the same black substance that appears in Ridley Scott 's "Prometheus." It drastically alters the DNA of a living organism to evolve it into something more monstrous. Weyland-Yutani wants to use the goo to create a workforce that doesn't get sick when they terraform planets or mine alien worlds for resources.

The "Offspring" feeds on Kay.

The creature — called the "Offspring" in the credits — almost immediately grows to a towering size and starts feeding on Kay because her body secretes more of the gooey substance seen in the Romulus lab.

It's a horrific twist on the Renaissance-era painting seen on the wall of the station earlier in the film, which depicts a newborn baby suckling on its mother's corpse.

Kay's Xenomorph/human baby also looks notably similar to the 10-foot-tall Engineers who appeared in "Prometheus" and were essentially responsible for creating mankind.

Rain slips into a spacesuit while the Offspring suckles on its now-dead mother. When the Offspring eventually chases Rain, she detaches the ship's cargo container into the asteroid field below so the monstrous being gets bombarded by the debris.

Like any good horror film though, the Offspring manages to rear its ugly head into the camera for one last jumpscare before it gets seemingly annihilated in space.

The whole sequence, filled with practical effects, feels like an instant adrenaline rush that sets it apart from many other blockbusters, which often deliver predictable fight scenes filled with dull CGI.

Rain and Andy survive and head to Yvaga III.

Rain and her adopted android sibling are the only surviving members of the crew after their ordeal on the Renaissance station, and Rain puts them both into stasis pods as they set the ship on a course to Yvaga III — a supposedly peaceful planet.

In a narration that mirrors Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) at the end of the original "Alien" movie, Rain notes that she's not sure if the ship will make it to Yvaga III, but she's hopeful about the future.

This is a considerable shift in her demeanor considering how worried she was about life at the start of the story.

"Alien: Romulus" has no post-credits scenes, but the ending leaves plenty of room for a sequel.

Audiences don't have to stick around while the credits roll, as there isn't an extra scene waiting at the end. (Although it's always worth noting all the people who worked hard on the film!)

But the absence of a post-credits scene doesn't mean that a sequel isn't possible.

It would be very easy for 20th Century Studios to find a way to bring Spaeny and Jonsson back for a follow-up mvoie. As fans have seen in previous "Alien" films, all it takes is for one Facehugger to have snuck onboard the ship, and this could all start again.

Alternatively, the story could pick up with Weyland-Yutani searching for the remains of the Xenomorph/human hybrid, since the company is so concerned with creating the perfect organism.

The film also specifically points out that androids are not welcome on Yvaga III, which could be a problem for Rain and Andy if they make it to their destination.

Watch: Going behind the scenes of 8 horror movies, from 'Nope' to 'X'

Main content

Review: Well-intentioned ‘Rob Peace’ flattens out the complexity of a true story of race and fate

A Black student sits in a college class.

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Statistics about the social mobility of Black lives don’t always do justice to what it looks like up close for one person. That’s where movies come in handy as vessels of understanding and, in “Rob Peace,” a dramatization about a real-life Yale student whose trajectory defies easy categorization, writer-director Chiwetel Ejiofor (following up his impressive 2019 directing debut, “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” ) proves more earnest than skillful at bringing heartfelt complexity to another tale of whiz-kid promise and resourcefulness.

Growing up in a blighted section of East Orange, N.J., 7-year-old Rob (Jelani Dacres) shows a flair for numbers, a gift his aspirational single mom, Jackie (a strong Mary J. Blige ), who works three jobs, wants to see nurtured in private school and college. But spending time with his big-hearted, drug-dealing dad, Skeet (Ejiofor) introduces this observant boy to the realities of survival in an underserved community. “You look out for people, they look out for you,” he tells him.

A mother speaks to her young son seated on her lap.

Both systems of individual progress — a mother’s hope for escape, a father’s belief in reaching behind you on the way up — are put to the test after Skeet is sent to prison for murder when Peace is still a boy establishing his academic prowess. Though he sails his way through a supportive prep school and gets accepted to Yale with a free ride, Peace (Jay Will takes over the role in adolescence), who dives into molecular biology with dreams of curing cancer one day, still toils at getting his father freed, believing him innocent. That sense of duty, coupled with an opportunistic boldness, leads this thoughtful, socially skillful collegian down a path that, while setting him apart as a purposeful prodigy, eventually puts his carefully cultivated future at risk.

Ejiofor, adapting a 2014 book about Peace by Jeff Hobbs, who was his roommate at Yale, is rightly convinced that the multitudes within his easy-to-admire protagonist are film-worthy. But Peace’s fascinating contradictions can awkwardly bump up against the think piece about two Americas that Ejiofor is also after, which results in a framework where anyone who isn’t Rob Peace — a classmate, a girlfriend (Camila Cabello), a professor (Mare Winningham), even a parent — can seem more like a thematic sounding board than a flesh-and-blood figure. (Sample dialogue: “You deserve your shot at being happy.” Or: “You bring people together.”)

PARK CITY, UT - JAN 21: Jay Will, Camila Cabello and Chiwetel Ejiofor of "Rob Peace" at the LA Times Studio at Sundance Film Festival presented by Chase Sapphire at Park City, Utah on January 21, 2024. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)

Entertainment & Arts

Camila Cabello with Chiwetel Ejiofor on the importance of empathy in their film, ‘Rob Peace’

Jan. 22, 2024

Will is magnetic as Peace, his personality and heft often making up for Ejiofor’s overuse of close-ups. (There’s also an inexplicable dependence on orange and red in Ksenia Sereda’s otherwise unfussy cinematography.) Will imbues Peace with a flowing, cagey charm, alternating between humor, wisdom and a breezy I-belong-here confidence. But he also knows when to let slip that his high-wire act is a burden, bringing underplayed pain to a wonderfully tense, defensive moment when he says to a doubter, “I’m the person you think I am.”

The actor is so good at casually upending our notion of an underclass hero that his portrayal hints at how richer a miniseries might have been at fleshing out the narrative around him, those situations and circumstances that made Peace’s approach to destiny so exhilarating and tragic. The movie that bears his name is good enough at conveying breadth and can articulate its nuances, but like the life itself, pinging with promise, it leaves you expecting more.

'Rob Peace'

Rating: R, for drug content and language Running time: 1 hour, 59 minutes Playing: In limited release

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IMAGES

Nope Movie Review
Nope Review: Jordan Peele’s Best Movie Yet
Nope Movie Review
Nope (2022)
Nope : Movie Review
Nope Movie (2022) Cast & Crew, Release Date, Story, Review, Poster

COMMENTS

Nope movie review & film summary (2022)
That film was less blatant and required more work on the audience's part, which made it fascinating for some and frustrating for others. It was also powered by a career-best performance by Lupita Nyong'o, whose dual role was unshakably strange and multilayered. There is no equivalent performance in "Nope" to anchor viewers, and it's ...
Nope
Christi This was such a HORRIBLE, poorly made movie. A waste of my time and money. Rated 0.5/5 Stars • Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 10/05/23 Full Review WYLD Absolutely amazing had me at the edge of ...
Review: Jordan Peele's 'Nope' Gets a Hell Yes
Jordan Peele's genre-melting third feature stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as brother-and-sister horse wranglers defending the family ranch from an extraterrestrial threat.
Nope
Jeffrey Peterson Naija Nerds. Nope, Peele's third directorial outing, may debut in the horror genre, but there's more to the brilliant film than audiences' expectations. Full Review ...
Nope Review
A hilariously bleak vision of the American dream, Jordan Peele's Nope is a farcical love letter to Hollywood filmmaking. A sci-fi-horror-comedy that builds cinematic myths before casually ...
Nope First Reviews: Ambitious and Well Crafted, but Possibly Jordan
Nope marks the third feature from writer and director Jordan Peele, and the first reviews of the movie prove that Get Out and Us were no flukes. This time, the filmmaker is focused on a frightening science fiction story involving a horse ranch, a former child actor, and something mysterious lurking above the clouds.
'Nope' Review: Jordan Peele's UFO Thriller Has More Mood Than Story
Nope. 'Nope' Review: Jordan Peele's UFO Drama Has a Mood of Exciting Unease but an Arbitrary Story. Reviewed at AMC Empire, July 19, 2022. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 135 MIN. Production ...
'Nope' Review: Daniel Kaluuya in Jordan Peele's Rapturous Sci-Fi Ride
Nope. The Bottom Line As fun as it is ambitious. Release date: Friday, July 22 (Universal) Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott, Brandon Perea, Keith David. Director ...
Jordan Peele's Nope review: a breathtaking celebration of filmmaking
Jordan Peele's Nope — in theaters July 22nd — isn't just another sci-fi thriller; it's a genre-bending meta-narrative about the agony and ecstasy of filmmaking.
Nope Review: Jordan Peele Is at His Most Ambitious and Hilarious
RELATED: First 'Nope' Reactions Call Jordan Peele's Movie Indescribable, Divisive, and Terrifying Stylistically, Nope feels in line with other iconic director's third theatrical films, like ...
Nope (2022)
Nope: Directed by Jordan Peele. With Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Brandon Perea, Michael Wincott. The residents of a lonely gulch in inland California bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery.
Nope Movie Review
Nope Movie Review. 1:05 Nope Official trailer. Nope. Parent and Kid Reviews. See all. Parents say (30) Kids say (53) age 14+ Based on 30 parent reviews . Nicole S. Parent. July 21, 2022 age 13+ Great for teen plus There is swearing and pot smoking. Most disturbing is a chimp that kills a girl and bites off her face.
'Nope' review: Jordan Peele's thriller forces us to look up
Review: Say yup to Jordan Peele's 'Nope,' the rare thriller Hollywood can look up to. Keke Palmer in the movie "Nope.". Given all the surreally unnerving sights there are to see in ...
'Nope' Review: Jordan Peele Invades the Western
Early in Nope, Jordan Peele's thrilling new horror movie, a woman named Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer) tells a story.She and her brother OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) are horse handlers and ranch owners by ...
Nope Review: A Glorious Spectacle Packed With Too Many Ideas
There are plenty of gorgeous images in Nope, including one that Peele makes us wait for: the sight of Kaluuya, a regal actor, on the back of a horse, a glorious Elmer Bernstein-inflected score ...
Nope
The New Yorker. Jul 26, 2022. Nope is one of the great movies about moviemaking, about the moral and spiritual implications of cinematic representation itself—especially the representation of people at the center of American society who are treated as its outsiders. It is an exploitation film—which is to say, a film about exploitation and ...
Nope film review: A 'limping, would-be romp'
Nope film review: A 'limping, would-be romp'. The much-anticipated Nope, from acclaimed director Jordan Peele, "isn't quite horrifying or entertaining or suspenseful enough," writes Caryn James ...
Jordan Peele's 'Nope,' reviewed : NPR
True to Peele's sensibilities, Nope seems to be borrowing from a plethora of cinematic references: Spielberg (particularly Jaws and E.T.), M. Night Shyamalan (Signs), and Alien, just to name a few ...
Nope Review: A Haunting & Humorous Twist On Hollywood Sci-Fi
Nope, Jordan Peele's new movie about a "bad miracle," offers a thrilling and humorous twist on Hollywood sci-fi - and serves as a meta-love letter to filmmaking.Fans of Peele's prior horror entries, Get Out and Us, are likely to enjoy the filmmaker's latest offering; though, it's worth noting that, while still full of profound and layered ideas, Nope is closer in execution to the horror-comedy ...
Nope Review
Release Date: 22 Jul 2022. Original Title: Nope. It's often said that showbiz can eat you alive. Jordan Peele 's third film runs with that metaphor further than anyone might have expected. For ...
Nope movie review: Jordan Peele's third film is funny, weird as hell
It doesn't quite feel accurate to say that Nope's sci-fi premise is indebted to Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Jaws. Or to Hitchcock's thrills. Or to classic B-movie mayhem.
'Nope' review: Jordan Peele's unforgettable twist on sci-fi
Jordan Peele's pass-the-popcorn "Nope," out July 22 and starring Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer, is entertaining, smart, artful summer fare with its heart planted firmly in the 1980s heyday of ...
Nope (film)
Nope (stylized in all caps) is a 2022 American Western science fiction horror film written, directed, and produced by Jordan Peele, under his and Ian Cooper's Monkeypaw Productions banner. It stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as horse-wrangling siblings attempting to capture evidence of an unidentified flying object in Agua Dulce, California.Appearing in supporting roles are Steven Yeun ...
'Greedy People' Review: Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Loopy Cop Tops ...
Well into the new dark crime comedy, Greedy People, I had to check iMDB to make sure this wasn't some movie one or both of the Coen Bros had actually made and somehow I didn't realize before ...
Rob Peace movie review & film summary (2024)
"Rob Peace," based on a true story, is a kind of movie that doesn't get made too often anymore. The title character, played by Jay Will with the laser-focused intelligence and charisma of young Denzel Washington, was a science-obsessed young man raised in East Orange, New Jersey, a suburb of Newark.Rob had a drug dealer father and a mom who worked three jobs to send him to a private school run ...
"Alien: Romulus" Ending Explained, Including If There's an End-Credits
"Alien: Romulus" is set on a derelict space station where a group of scavengers face the Xenomorphs. The final act of the film cranks up the horror with a stunning twist. Here's the ending of ...
'Rob Peace' review: Flattens out complexity of a true story
Statistics about the social mobility of Black lives don't always do justice to what it looks like up close for one person. That's where movies come in handy as vessels of understanding and, in ...