Nope film review: A 'limping, would-be romp'

The much-anticipated Nope, from acclaimed director Jordan Peele, "isn't quite horrifying or entertaining or suspenseful enough," writes Caryn James.

There is a spectacular scene toward the end of Jordan Peele's new sci-fi-horror-meta-extravaganza ­– an apocalyptic rainstorm traps Daniel Kaluuya in his truck, where he delivers a well-placed, comic "nope". The episode is just right, funny, frightening and mysterious. That's the good news, and pretty much all the good news. If only the rest of Nope worked nearly as well. For months the trailer has been teasing us with the sight of a frightened Kaluuya and Keke Palmer looking up at the sky, Steven Yeun in a cowboy hat and hilarious bright red suit, and a glimpse of what seems to be a flying saucer. It promised a frothy, entertaining popcorn movie, infused with Peele's usual layers of social commentary. But Nope turns out to be a would-be romp that often limps along instead.

Expectations were high even before the trailer, of course. Peele's Get Out (2017) was a true instant classic, effective as horror and trenchant as a critique of racial stereotyping. Us (2019) leaned even more into horror as it dealt with class and race.

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Nope has a bigger scale and huge ambitions, reaching for ideas about fame and the entertainment industry. With Kaluuya and Palmer as siblings who have inherited their father's ranch and business, wrangling horses for film and TV, the film borrows tropes from sitcoms, 1950's space-invader movies, and the myth of the old West. It has a house straight out of Psycho, and a plot that might as well have Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a template. The problem isn't that it's messy. Plenty of great films are sprawling messes. It's that not one of those individual strands is quite horrifying or entertaining or suspenseful enough.

Peele teases these threads in the first minutes, with the chatter of sitcom dialogue and a shot of a bloody chimp on the show's trashed set. Then we are at the California horse ranch, where OJ Haywood (Kaluuya) and his father (Keith David) hear a strange screeching in the sky. The father soon dies.

Kaluuya's calm but intense manner serves him well through the film. "Your name is OJ">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });