Review of Nope (2022) by Umaumai — 23 Jul 2022

It’s an interesting idea and I enjoyed watching it, but it’s basically a near beat for beat retelling of “Jaws.” There are some interesting, worthwhile and excellent differences that set a good foundation for a somewhat creepy beginning, but once the “rules” are established I realized that it just doesn’t hold up.

It’s not an easy movie to describe, but it’s not a horror movie. It has horror elements not unlike most of M. Night’s work and who’s movies this reminded me of. I think the acting over all is not as good as his last two films and something felt really off with the pacing and lack of character development.

The characters are fairly static in how they behave throughout the movie. I think the casting was great, but the polar opposite attitudes of the two leads didn’t fit the tone of the movie for me. The very few other characters that populate this movie left me with way to many questions and it was obvious they where mostly devices there to drive that plot/story forward.

I didn’t like how parts of the story are introduced. Not everything was clear on my first viewing of this and I think it might make a bit more sense the next time around. There’s very little gore, but what’s there is haunting.

With all of that said fans of Peele’s other movies should absolutely check this out. In many aspects it might be my favorite movie of his so far.