The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C+
Nope is a bit of a departure for director Jordan Peele in that it emphasizes a Spielberg-esque sense of fun over beating you over the head with social messages. I’m sure that there are social messages in this movie, but they are much easier to ignore if you are looking for entertainment rather than a lecture. That makes it easily my favorite of Peele’s films and it has several effective sequences, but also suffers from severe tone and pacing issues. There are great characters and scenes in Nope (the best of which have nothing to do with the plot, but I’ll get to that), but it is also bogged down with terrible pacing and a lack of focus that often obscures the film’s truly enjoyable moments.
The film centers on OJ and Em (a brother and sister pair played by, respectively, Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer) that have inherited their family business of handling horses for film sets after their father is killed by a nickel falling from the sky (yes, this factors in later). The siblings run the family ranch and begin to notice strange shenanigans: the electricity keeps cutting out, animals are disappearing and there is a cloud in the sky that never seems to move. They become convinced that a UFO is behind everything and, along with a small crew of odd characters, they begin to investigate and fight back.
I’m being intentionally vague about the plot because, much like Peele’s last effort Us, there is a plot twist that is critical to one’s enjoyment of the film. However, this film felt like the anti-Us for me because the twist is when the film truly comes alive rather than the moment that the film gets up on a soap box. On the downside, the leadup to the twist is long and excruciating. At about an hour into this film, I absolutely hated it and silently begged for either something to happen or for me to die a quick death, whichever was easier. Nope is a terribly paced movie with a first act that drags on for what feels like an eternity and is desperately begging for an editor. At a length of 2 hours and 10 minutes, there was no need for it to take this movie so long to get going and the poor, overly-long first act greatly impacts the overall enjoyment of the movie.
On the plus side, Nope becomes quite a bit of fun once you get to the twist. The twist is a genuinely clever subversion of expectations for an alien movie, includes several effective horror sequences (I particularly enjoyed the blood rain sequence), and allows the film to blend several genres. I am calling this a horror film, but it also combines elements of science fiction and westerns and evokes thoughts of Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Tremors at various points in its running time. I don’t think that it’s as good as any of those films (and the Jaws references become a bit on-the-nose), but there are moments of genuine fun and suspense in the film’s last two acts.
The performances are all generally strong and the quirky cast of characters elevates the entertainment value considerably (and further evokes thoughts of the cast of Tremors). Daniel Kaluuya is a particular standout as OJ and his constant “I don’t want to deal with this shit attitude” is both highly relatable to a curmudgeon like me and is increasingly funny as the threat becomes more bizarre. Keke Palmer is entertaining, though occasionally grating, as the female lead and the supporting characters are all unique and get their own little moments that add to the believability of the crew. This is a group of people that I believe could exist, even if their motivation for being there is sometimes questionable, and it is easy to become invested in them. I was disappointed that the great Keith David only appeared in a couple of scenes, but I guess some Keith David is better than no Keith David.
The true oddity of Nope, though, is the inclusion of a bizarre backstory for one of the characters that is both the scariest part of the film and oddly unnecessary. One of the side characters is a former child actor (played by Steven Yeun) and the movie provides flashback scenes to the set of a TV show that he starred in as a kid. The show was a sitcom about a family living with a chimp and the chimp goes on a rampage when filming an episode, attacking the cast and brutally disfiguring the female child star. These scenes are frigging terrifying and easily the most effective sequences in the movie….but why is it here? This backstory could be cut from the film with absolutely no impact on the narrative and it feels like you are temporarily watching a much different, and much more serious, horror movie. I can’t say that these sequences should be cut from the movie because they are so effective, but it is a jarring diversion that feels completely out of place. I realize that it is in line with the overall theme of the film, that wild animals must be respected, but damn is it tonally odd to go from a horror/comedy about aliens to a scene of a chimp mauling a teenaged girl’s face.
Just as Thor: Love and Thunder was a weak C-, this is a strong C+. With a bit of editing (well, maybe a lot of editing) in the first act, this could have been a B, but the slog of the film’s first hour is just a bit too much to overcome. Once it gets going, Nope is a fun throwback of a monster movie with an endearing cast of characters that will keep you entertained if you stick with it long enough. And this is the first time that I’ve ever said this about an alien invasion movie, but don’t go see this if you are afraid of chimps. Screw aliens, chimps are the true nightmare of this film.
Image by: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nope_(film)#/media/File:Nope_(film)_poster.jpg
