A Bit Nope on "Nope"

Hihi,

Frustratingly, I've managed to leave writing this month's posts until the last conceivable moment, so I'm going to need to be mercilessly brief.

I was excited to watch "Nope" (2022), Jordan Peele's latest film.  

This excitement was of course informed by my deep adoration for "Get Out" (2017), albeit tempered by my comparatively diminished enthusiasm for the extremely inventive yet messy "Us" (2019).  I'll admit I was also somewhat anxious about "Nope" after seeing some indications online that there might be animal mayhem of some kind, but a thorough perusal of doesthedogdie.com helped me feel adequately prepared without overdoing it on potential spoilers.

So I went for it.  And while I'm glad to have watched it, I have to admit I found it pretty underwhelming. 

Starting with the good: the performances were great, the premise was interesting, and the effects were overall really good--although the quality of the set design in some scenes where you get up close and personal with the film's "monster" somewhat undercut its otherwise really cool conceptualization.  There are some little twists and turns in the discovery of the exact nature of the beast that Daniel Kaluuya's OJ and Keke Palmer's Emerald are up against that are creative and intriguing.

Moving on to the less good: "Nope" wasn't a scary movie so much as it was at times stressful or upsetting.  Instead of building to a thrilling, tense conclusion, the film's emotional impact felt really uneven to the point that the movie dragged at times.  Furthermore, while I understand was Peele hoped to accomplish with sequences related to the backstory of Steven Yeun's Jupe, those components landed simultaneously as a bit tacked-on, gratuitous, and at once overly obvious and psychologically incongruous as a way of explaining Jupe's stunning hubris.  (Surely, having previously experienced the damage that can be done by an animal run amok, he all of all people would know better than to play the treacherous role of lion tamer to a mysterious carnivorous intergalactic predator?)

Overall, this film was fine--neither terrible nor excellent.  It was fun and I am satisfied to have checked the box of watching it, but I also hope Peele's next film far exceeds this one.

Summing up my middling response to this movie, I gave "Nope" a 3.

{Heart}