YNOT at the Movies

The writer-director Jordan Peele's hilarious and creepy feature directorial debut "Get Out" (2017) was a big hit, and his eerie sophomore feature "Us" (2019) was even more entertaining. With that tremendous success, his third feature "Nope" (USA 2022 | 120 min.) has become one of the most anticipated films this year and built up a very high expectation. Unfortunately, his latest film not only less scary than the director's previous two films, but it is also subdued in his comical style. To accomplish its goal of delivering horror, the film relies on the sound effect a little bit too much, while nothing else makes the film scary.

The film's opening scene is actually quite shocking, showing the bloody aftermath of a TV production set in the '90s when a chimpanzee killed actors and crews on the set. Later we learn that the weak link between this incident and the film's story is Ricky 'Jupe' Park (Steven Yeun), who was a child actor hiding under a table at the set of the tragedy. Now, Ricky is a host at an amusement park. He is about to purchase a beautiful horse, named Lucky, from OJ (Daniel Kaluuya), who runs a ranch in California that provides horses for film and TV productions. After OJ's dad was killed in a bizarre incident, OJ and his sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) plan to sell the ranch and cash in. Selling Lucky to Ricky is OJ's first step.

But strange things start to happen around the ranch: the power goes off randomly; windstorms like tornadoes come and go; horses run off suddenly; strange lights beam on and off; and unknown objects fly around in the sky like UFOs. OJ and Emerald decide to get surveillance cameras installed at the ranch to capture the mysterious objects. The friendly hardware store clerk Angel Torres (Brandon Perea) and a legendary film cameraman Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott) later join the quest of filming the objects.

If they capture anything on film, and what they are going to capture in the sky, seem to become more important than their survival.

Even though the director Jordan Peele has only made two features before this one, he has already created a unique signature in filmmaking and established his own style for his films to be both scary and funny. It is quite disappointing when this film is neither scary nor funny enough. The only moment that makes you chuckle is when OJ says "Nope!" when he senses the danger and decides not to get out of his truck.

When mysterious objects remain unseen, they can be extremely frightening, like in "A Quiet Place" (2018). In this film, it does give us some goose bumps at first, but then the film gives in and reveals everything to you, and spoils the tension. The only scary element in the film is its sound effect, which overpowers other elements.

While Daniel Kaluuya continues to deliver his mesmerizing stares in this film, Steven Yeun is given little to play. You might scratch your head wondering why the chimpanzee matters in this movie at all when it has nothing to do with filming the mysterious objects in the sky. Maybe the chimpanzee should be the protagonist of Jordan Peele's next movie.

"Nope" opens on Friday, July 22, 2022.