REVIEW #205 Nope (2022)

After his father is randomly killed by mysterious objects falling from the sky, OJ must make ends meet on his families Horse Ranch. Once the horses begin to behave oddly, OJ and his sister notice a flying object in the sky as things start to take a sinister turn for the worse. 

Unfortunately Nope feels far from a usual Jordan Peele movie and even further from a successful sci-fi, with the horror aspects few and far between. There was never a set approach, scenes constantly switched from comedic to tense and eerie, before finding itself settling somewhere in the middle. But never sticking to one for more than ten minutes and that made the film feel a little disjointed. The cinematography for me was definitely the strongest aspect of the film, no matter what time of day the scene was set, the visuals were amazing and Peele’s decision to not just film the airborne alien at night was very ambitious and paid off nicely. The acting was okay but I’ve certainly seen better performances from every single cast member and perhaps that’s why I found it difficult to connect with their characters. Keke Palmer always landed the comedic punchlines and she did have the entire cinema laughing throughout the film, but I can’t help but think the abundance of humour prevented the film from ever even reaching the boundary of horror. Unfortunately the storyline is what made Nope so disappointing to me, the ranch idea and the concept of the alien itself has tons of potential but nothing was ever explained and why on earth does the design of it change in the final act of the film, it looked like a parade balloon which is ironic considering the final scene! Don’t even get me started on the absolutely ridiculous monkey side plot that has absolutely no relevance to the story itself, I can’t even explain it more than that because it is literally a pointless part of the film! To add fuel to that fire, there’s a certain sacrifice towards the back end of the film that just makes no sense as well. So this might be an unpopular take but as you can tell I really didn’t like it but the visuals and sound did make it a pretty good cinematic experience, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. 

Overall (5.5/10)

Thanks for reading 

Callan