87%
I don’t know what exactly I was expecting when I walked into the cinema to watch Nope, but it definitely wasn’t aliens. I had seen Get Out recently, which was also written and directed by Jordan Peele, and I guess I thought, ‘okay cool. So he does horror movies. Creepy stuff and scary racist people’. I think I was expecting another movie that portrayed the horrors of the evil side of humanity. Nope. Aliens.
As soon as I stopped making jokes about the movie being about aliens, and realised that it actually was about aliens, I adjusted to the idea pretty quickly. The movie follows two siblings, Otis “OJ” Haywood Jr. and Emerald “Em” Haywood, after their father is killed by a coin falling from the sky, supposedly from an aeroplane. The family owns a horse ranch, and after their father’s death, the siblings begin to notice strange occurrences happening on their property, and a strange shape moving in the sky. OJ and Em are convinced that there is a UFO hanging around their farm, but soon realise that the strange disk shaped object in the sky is, in fact, a creature- an animal that feeds on people and horses, and then spits out unwanted snacks (such as the coin that killed OJ and Em’s father).
These events, as well as the harrowing subplot about Gordy (the chimpanzee animal actor), present some thought-provoking themes. The biggest message in the movie is that a predator, such as the creature, cannot be tamed, and should not be made into a spectacle. Jupe, who, as a child actor, saw Gordy the chimpanzee masacre the cast of the show they were both on, learned this the hard way. He learned his lesson for a second time when he tried to capitalise off showcasing the creature in the sky. The movie creates a clear message that if you capitalise off exploitation, and it backfires on you, then that’s on you, bro.
The movie itself was, as I’ve mentioned, unexpected. Alien movies don’t appear in the cinemas often anymore, so it was a little jarring to suddenly find myself watching one. However, Nope is far from being a basic movie about little green men. The alien that Nope created was original and interesting. This movie posed a thought-provoking question to the audience: what if all those UFO sightings are real, but not what we think they are? What if it isn’t spaceships up there, but massive, man-eating, flying animals? Super creepy concept.
Overall, the movie was a little messy at times, but I think it worked. It was interesting and bold. Admittedly, it wasn’t my usual choice of movie genre, but I’d love to watch it again. Nope gets a thumbs up from me.
