Critics call Jordan Peele's Nope both 'frustratingly perplexing' and 'unquestionable genius'
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Whether Nope scratches your itch for quality cinema or simply leaves you scratching your head, critics agree on one thing: Get Out and Us helmer Jordan Peele's terrifying third feature will likely have you screaming its title out loud in the theater.
Universal largely kept the mysterious project's plot under wraps, but new reviews for the blockbuster horror film shed light on the film's story, which stars Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya as siblings who run a horse-wrangling business that provides livestock to Hollywood productions. Their lives are interrupted by the arrival of an otherworldly presence in the skies above their rural mountain town, with many journalists likening the sense or terror (and awe) to early works by Steven Spielberg.
"Peele has never leaned this close to early Spielberg (or if you're feeling less charitable, mid-period M. Night Shyamalan). His screenplay — threaded through with flashbacks and unhurried character moments — is for a long time a tease, both elliptical and explicit when it comes to the central mystery, though it's clear he's absorbed a lifetime of Close Encounters lore, and much darker visitations too," writes EW's Leah Greenblatt, who concludes that, while the "prevailing mood is a looming, sun-drenched tension," the film's ending "will likely prove less satisfying to a plot-hungry public."
Universal Pictures Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer in 'Nope'
Greenblatt's sentiment is echoed throughout many other mainstream publications, including in Variety writer Owen Gleiberman's take that labels the film a "tantalizingly creepy mixed bag of a sci-fi thriller" that "holds us in a shivery spell," but, in the same vein as Close Encounters, Signs, and Arrival, unspools when it begins revealing its own inner-workings, proving that "anticipation works better than the payoff."
Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, Lovia Gyarkye says that the film "avoids the comfort of tidy conclusions" as an "elusive" project as it indulges "in narrative tangents and detours" that might confuse casual audiences: "It is sprawling and vigorous," she continues. "Depending on your appetite for the heady and sonorous, it will either feel frustratingly perplexing or strike you as a work of unquestionable genius."
In a glowing review, IndieWire's David Ehrlich heralds the film as a "smart, muscular, and massively entertaining flying saucer freak-out." He says that the film comes fully alive via Hoyte van Hoytema's 65mm cinematography, which lends "the carnage an intergalactic scale that makes even the film's most familiar tropes feel bracingly new, and inspire a degree of holy terror that allows the grand finale to alternate between heart-in-your-throat horror and fistpump-worthy Akira references as cinematography assumes a hands-on roll in the action (Peele keeps the film's self-reflexive streak to a low boil, but cranks it up to a delirious high in the dying minutes.)"
Nope touches down in theaters on Friday. Read on for more critical review excerpts about the film.
Leah Greenblatt (EW)
"For all of the film's escalating supernatural events, though, what's less clearly drawn, and will likely prove less satisfying to a plot-hungry public, are the whys and hows of its conclusion. Peele's scripts have always felt like meta-text; this one toggles between classic genre stuff and a deliberately fragmented play on certain all-American tropes — flying saucers, sitcoms, jump-scare terror — filtered through a fresh, keenly self-aware lens. As a sci-fi fable, Nope feels both more slippery and less viscerally satisfying than the relatively straightforward horror of Get Out or even 2019's Us, but it still sticks. The truth is out there, or up there, in that curiously immovable cloud that looms like a cotton-ball anvil above the Haywood ranch; it's Peele's prerogative to build his world below it, and leave the rest."
Kambole Campbell (Empire)
"It's often said that showbiz can eat you alive. Jordan Peele's third film runs with that metaphor further than anyone might have expected. For his latest sci-fi horror, Peele characterizes the film industry as a ruthless beast, and wonders about who gets led into its jaws, and for whose benefit. In Nope, the audience itself becomes a vast monster, demanding to be entertained by personal and historical trauma, commodified for their viewing pleasure. The film makes visceral horror of the nightmare of being consumed by something unfathomably larger than you — whether that's by a national audience or a flying Lovecraftian terror. But it's also a celebration of film crew — those in the less glamorous roles fundamental to creating cinematic spectacle."
Siddhant Adlakha (IGN)
"Equal parts comedic knee-slapper and white-knuckle thriller, Jordan Peele's Nope is a farcical love letter to Hollywood, and to the American dream. It is, at once, a no-frills version of exactly what its trailers are selling — a film about objects falling from the sky, and characters catching glimpses of something sinister in the clouds — and yet, it's entirely unlike its straightforward marketing, which provides hints of plot, but skillfully disguises its tone. It's wonderfully spoiler-proof (though you won't find major details here that haven't already been revealed), in part because it's completely unlike Peele's previous work, both thematically, and in the evolution of his craft."
Owen Gleiberman (Variety)
"Jordan Peele's Nope is a tantalizingly creepy mixed bag of a sci-fi thriller. It's a movie that taps into our fear and awe of UFOs, and for a while it holds us in a shivery spell. It picks the audience up and carries it along, feeding off spectral hints of the otherworldly. Yet watching the movie, you can just about taste the DNA of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Nope mirrors the trajectory of other films that have been made in the shadow of Close Encounters, like M. Night Shyamalan's Signs and Denis Villeneuve's Arrival. Here, as in those films, the anticipation works better than the payoff."
Lovia Gyarkye (The Hollywood Reporter)
"Nope, Jordan Peele's latest offering, slinks and slithers from the clutches of snap judgement. It avoids the comfort of tidy conclusions, too. This elusive third feature from the director of Get Out and Us peacocks its ambitions (and budget) while indulging in narrative tangents and detours. It is sprawling and vigorous. Depending on your appetite for the heady and sonorous, it will either feel frustratingly perplexing or strike you as a work of unquestionable genius."
K. Austin Collins (Rolling Stone)
"This is a movie that knows the power of images. It has learned, from the greats of the genre, that what we fear most is what can't be seen, what's merely implied. All the camera has to do is trace an arc across the sky and you'll believe something is there. (Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, who shot Dunkirk — an IMAX movie, like this one — was a perfect choice for this project, able to carve daring, evocative shapes onto the screen through what feel like the simplest means.)"
David Ehrlich (IndieWire)
"With great patience and tremendous craft, Peele steers these characters (and a handful of others) from one masterful set piece to the next, all of them flecked with popcorn-spilling jolts but more fundamentally driven by a profound sense of big-screen, body-rattling awe. On some level, Nope is Peele's smallest film so far; almost the entire story takes place on the Haywood ranch and its surrounding areas. At the same time, however, it also feels like his largest. Sometimes literally: Hoyte van Hoytema's 65mm compositions lend the carnage an intergalactic scale that makes even the film's most familiar tropes feel bracingly new, and inspire a degree of holy terror that allows the grand finale to alternate between heart-in-your-throat horror and fistpump-worthy Akira references as cinematography assumes a hands-on roll in the action (Peele keeps the film's self-reflexive streak to a low boil, but cranks it up to a delirious high in the dying minutes)."
Ross Bonaime (Collider)
"Watching Jordan Peele evolve as a director over the course of just three films has been fascinating to watch. While his first film, Get Out, was a precise knockout that blended horror and social commentary, while Us was a bit shaggier, yet even more terrifying, as Peele told a story that left haunting open-ended questions in its wake. With his third film, Nope, Peele is at his most expansive, his most adventurous as a filmmaker, and having more fun than we've seen from him in his already impressive filmography. With Nope, Peele once again proves that he's not just one of the most interesting filmmakers working in horror today, he's one of the most interesting filmmakers working, period."
Stephanie Zacharek (TIME)
"Because Nope, enjoyable as a spectacle but conceptually barely thought through, is all over the place. Peele can't take just one or two interesting ideas and follow their trail of complexity. He likes to layer ideas into lofty multitextured quilts — the problem is that his most compelling perceptions are often dropped only to be obscured by murkier ones. He has an eye for dazzling visuals, but it seems he comes up with the visuals first and tries to hook ideas to them later. In this case, he decides those inflatable tube dancers you see outside used-car lots might be cool to use somehow, but their effectiveness, visually or in terms of moving the plot forward, is debatable."
Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian)
"Jordan Peele's strange, muddled, indigestible new UFO mystery looks like it had a good fairy and a dodgy fairy present at the birth. The good fairy is Steven Spielberg, to whose Close Encounters and Jaws the film pays an overt tribute. The dodgy fairy is M. Night Shyamalan, of Signs and The Happening: the sometimes brilliant, sometimes exasperating high-concept showman whose influence is also present – but unacknowledged, un-homaged. It feels like an event movie in the Shyamalan style, all about the prerelease conjecture and trailer buzz: what on earth can it be about?"
Hear more on all of today's must-see picks on EW's What to Watch podcast, hosted by Gerrad Hall.
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