Movie review - Nope

Horses, a monkey and something in the sky.

I loved Get Out and Us and Jordan Peele’s insanely creative mind. So when my friend asked me if I wanted to watch his latest creation, Nope, in cinema I said yes faster than the groundskeeper in Get Out ran towards Chris.

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t keeping up to date much with his new movie. Everything I knew about it came from random interview clips with the cast that occasionally graced my for you page. I walked into the cinema with nothing but pure trust in Jordan Peele’s impressive filmography of phenomenal horror films – I didn’t even watch the trailer or read a synopsis. Also, I find that not having any expectation towards things makes the whole experience more enjoyable.

Alright, I’ll try my best not to spoil anything but I’m not making any promises, so proceed with caution.

First of all, the movie did a good job at capturing my attention right off the bat. After a conversation with his dad, who was sitting atop a horse, our main character starts to walk towards the house when a bunch of metal-like things fall from the sky. He turns to call his dad and next thing we see is him dropping dead off the horse. Turns out those metal things were keys. Who dropped them? Why keys? 

I liked that. I like it when movies have a quick progression within the first few scenes and lay down the central question or theme of the movie. However, I did find that it got a bit slow towards the middle of the movie. Not bad slow like The Irishman, thankfully. It still had a lot of action, plot lines and jump scares going on but I found the conversations to be a bit dull at times. Maybe it was because there weren’t any subtitles, and I couldn’t keep up with what they were saying cause Kiki Palmer’s character was talking too fast. But don’t worry, the final scenes were intense. It kept me on the edge of my seat for sure. 

So what did I think about Nope? In true Jordan Peele fashion, that man does not just hand us a horror movie simply for it to be a horror movie. They often carry very deep meanings and commentaries on modern society. This one was definitely harder to crack than the first two. My friend and I walked out going, “ok what just happened?” but that’s the thrill of it, I think. It gives you the opportunity to walk out and talk about it at lengths with your friends. 

While Mr Peele continues to redefine the horror and thriller genre with this movie, I wouldn’t say it’s my favourite of the 3 but I think it’s simply because I’m not a huge fan of aliens in movies.