Review of Nope (2022) by Captainhowdy — 22 Jul 2022

At this point, I'm beginning to fear that Jordan Peele is very good at coming up with interesting concepts but very bad at pulling them together. This is because "Nope" is his second movie in a row that starts out intriguing but just falls apart at the end.

For the first two-thirds of the film, "Nope" maintains an aura of suspense that makes you wonder where Peele is going with this. The setup is strong, and the imagery riveting. There's a hint of something high-concept that Peele wants to get at, which is partly due to the expectations after "Get Out" but also partly due to the way he delivers information. But then it just...sort of...devolves into a regular-ass horror movie. It's not a terrible movie, but it's not what it wants to be or could have been.

What's even more confounding is that he includes flashback sequences to a horrific event that seems to foreshadow what's going on in the present. By the end of the film, however, I can only speculate on why those sequences were included other than to ratchet up the sense of dread and add length to the film.

If he had followed any one of the high-concept themes (animals rebelling, the modern phenomenon everyone watching everyone else, etc.) the movie seems to be getting at in different points of the movie, this could have been a really thought-provoking film. In the end, however, Peele is just throwing ideas at the camera while not really making them cohere.