Movie Review: Nope

In an internet era where people get off on spoiling movies and TV shows, being afforded the opportunity to walk into a mainstream blockbuster without knowing what it's actually about feels like a borderline miracle. The fact that the project in question is a heavily promoted film from rising auteur Jordan Peele makes this feat even crazier. Sustaining an aura of mystery around Nope prior to its release and seeing how it's able to shatter and subvert any of the expectations of what it was expected to be is a big part of the reason why Nope is so exhilarating to watch.

To "spoil" one mystery about Nope right out of the gate, the movie does indeed deal with aliens. The extraterrestrial beings are introduced pretty much right away when a cloud containing a UFO mysteriously appears at the secluded ranch of a second-generation family (Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer) of Hollywood horse trainers. The confirmed presence of alien life is the beginning and end of Nope making an expected creative choice.

In terms of the alien invasion subgenre at least, there's never been a movie like Nope. It builds a slowly escalating tension by consistently raising questions about what is exactly is going on with the aliens, breeds some fascinating commentary about humanity's nature by putting a collection of characters (Steven Yuen, Michael Wincott and cast MVP Brandon Perea join Kaluuya and Palmer at the forefront of this story) with various personal agendas into the path of the UFO and does an exceptional job of giving the viewer little nuggets about the aliens without completely destroying the terrifying ambiguity of a mysterious species that's just arrived on Earth. This slow, human-driven approach to the alien invasion genre allows Peele's exceptional instincts as a storyteller (his understanding of when to let things breathe and when to go for the throat is particularly masterful) to take center stage while also showing off a skill for crafting huge setpieces that he wasn't able to showcase in his previous, more modestly budgeted films. There are certain bigger thematic ideas that it introduces that would've benefited from being further developed, but the volume of creativity, excitement and stellar craftsmanship on display here are more than enough to forgive a couple of small scripting issues. Peele's status as a generational talent is all but fully cemented with this stunning summer blockbuster and Universal deserves all the credit in the world for trusting him to make an original film of such a big scale.  

Grade: A