Nope
Jordan Peele, we've missed you.
Perhaps I've not been looking hard enough, but genuinely smart cinema has been hard to come by this year. So, regardless of whether there's any merit in that comment, the return of Peele is most welcome.
Nope is arguably his most ambitious film to date, in the sense that it is so unpalatably anti-blockbuster. Daniel Kaluuya may be back, but the mass appeal of Get Out certainly isn't. This is a feature that wrestles with many thematical concepts, most of them underlying, in a way that isn't immediately easy to comprehend.
One of the key narrative features that I picked up on was Nope's interest in spectacle, and how we as a society have become conditioned to not only be beholden to it, but also feverishly document it using our camera phones. On the way into the cinema, I griped to my girlfriend about the amount of people we'd seen in Birmingham filming inane shit (including one chap who filmed the outside of a Nando's) and, while I was no doubt just being cantankerous, it was fitting that the film we saw would also be pre-occupied with this odd modern phenomenon.
Interestingly, the spectacle at the heart of Peele's film draws from sci-fi but, in an ode to old school Hollywood, is fused with aspects of the Western. In doing so, the filmmaker continues his neat trick of playfully infusing his work with important socio-political messages, in this case the unheralded contributions of African Americans to the early days of cinema. Such directorial slights of hand ensure that, even when Nope is at its most playful, it retains an edge that keeps it from slipping into all-out farce.
As always, proceedings are aided by an excellent cast. Kaluuya is typically great as intense protagonist OJ, while Keke Palmer arguably steals the show as his wild sibling Emerald. But, as with any great horror, the real star is often what lies in the shadows (or in the case of this film, the clouds), meaning that much of the film's best moments are when you're not exactly sure what's going on. Peele has already proven himself to be a master of suspense, and Nope is no different to its predecessors in that regard.
Whether this matches up to the groundbreaking Get Out or the criminally underrated Us is another question entirely. As said, it doesn't hold the broad appeal of the former and is not as visually delectable as the latter. But it is an intriguing hybrid of genres that definitely challenges its audience in a way unbecoming of many modern-day horrors.
With three distinctly different features under his belt, Peele has certainly forged himself out as one of the foremost filmmakers of his time. I'm fascinated to see what he delivers next.
