Nope (2022) | a Review
originally published on 13/09/2022;
Hello everyone, I am the negatively positive pessimist with an optimistic outlook, G.E.M.Simov, a fellow enthusiastic about science fiction and all the great ponderings that can be performed through its use, here to tell you about the movie “Nope”.
Simple review details - I rank films on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
A disclaimer - the terms 'movie' and 'film' will be used interchangeably in this review.
Presentation
This review will spoil the movie’s premise in its entirety, due to the fact that the plot is key to everything in it. The viewing experience provided by this movie loses a bit from the knowledge of the plot, but the loss is negligible.
For a horror film, Nope succeeds spectacularly and fails miserably in the field of spooks and horror. It succeeds spectacularly, due to the fact that for the first half of the movie there is absolutely nothing that is known about the foe, the horror. It also manages to succeed because there’s a surprisingly lacking number of the fabled ‘jump-scare’.
Now, the jump-scare is a combination of rapid movement (most often an appearance of something new) and a loud onslaught of sound (most often something resembling music). The jump-scare makes use of a very rudimentary build-up of tension, which relies on introducing some kind of possibility, and taking away the viewer’s certainty, urging them to constantly wonder if something is going to happen to the character on screen. It is, always, something bad that is probably happening.
That question is paired with silence, or at least a great quiet, which tells experienced viewers that the likelihood of a loud noise that will startle them is growing, which, in turn, makes the tension grow. Inexperienced viewers have a far more natural reaction, with their fright being more natural - based on a lack of knowledge and suppositions (most often unfounded) - whereas the tension of the experienced viewer stems from the knowledge that they will be forced into a state of momentary fright.
The jump-scare makes use of the phenomenon of fight-or-flight. It startles the viewer, urging them to momentarily forget their situation and wind up caught up in the whirlwind of instinctive reaction. Jump-scares work not because they are well done, but because they simply work. It is in a human, in an animal’s, rather, nature to react to something rapidly appearing before them whilst also making a loud noise.
Now, with that being said, Nope does something very interesting. It only utilizes the standard jump-scare once, and the utilization is absolutely dreadful (totally pointless) as it comes shortly after a phenomenally good scene that truly brings fright to the viewer.
That jump-scare is one of the bad parts about the performance on behalf of the horror in Nope. It is such, because the thing that causes the jump-scare was rather mundane, and, in addition to that, it was the only jump-scare that featured an added, musical pang, rather than an actual sound.
Nope uses sound very well. A lot of the time, there is no music being played by the movie itself. Music is played by characters in the movie, as a means of indicating when the threat arrives, for the threat turns off everything electrical in the vicinity. Thus, the music stops (which creates a very convenient quiet) and sharpens the senses of the viewer (and the characters).
When the music stops, something is awry. When the power cuts out, and everything goes dark, something is awry. Something is very wrong. That builds tension in a phenomenal way. Then, the tension is naturally released through a good type of jump-scare (which is still cheap and tends to lean towards being bad, but it is far more reasonable) in the form of a sound made by something, which sound is sudden.
Juxtaposing the silence and the sudden sound is enough to spook the viewer, but there’s an understanding that - hey, that’s normal. That’s a perfectly good scene and the only reason I got scared is because of the way it was built up.
So when is horror done well? When are the spooks good? When is the fright right?
When the thread is left hanging.
Let me point at the scene by the… Arena? When the power gets turned ON, mysteriously. OJ goes to check on it, turns the light off, sets off, then the light is turned on. Dead silence, safe for the sound of the lights’ whirr. Then, the spook is done perfectly. The dead quiet is present, but out of something that should be totally ordinary, totally mundane, appears something monstrously out of the ordinary.
The movements of the humanoid figure that’s mostly black, the remainder of the silence, the knowledge that this is totally unknown and something horrible could happen - those pile up. Monstrous dread hangs heavily over the characters and the viewers themselves…
That’s a good scene, even if its resolution is a bit wack. What’s even better, but made more wack, is the fact that almost every scene featuring THE horror, the foe, the villain, the monster - call it what you will - is similar in nature. It relies more on the unknown, on the generation of tension, than on the cheap scare.
And then that also contributes to the bad aspect of this whole debacle. Halfway through the movie, the monster gets solved. The secret of how to avoid being affected by it is uncovered, almost everything that one needs to know is made known and we also get to see it for such a long time that it becomes recognizable. Familiar.
That takes away any semblance of fright that might be had from the true (and good) source of tension and dread. That’s monstrously bad.
Aside from that, this movie does a few things. It features some very wonky CGI (on Gordy, the monkey, and on the latter form of the monster). It also features some very good choices in camera placement.
Example 1 - the opening sequence, which gets played twice during the entirety of the film, is phenomenal. The chimp, covered in blood, nudging its victim, and then noticing the child hiding from it… All that happening from the First Person Point of View. The camera is so situated that the viewer is seeing what the child is seeing. The viewer is being stared at by the blood-covered chimp. That was absolutely sublime.
Example 2 - when Otis Senior dies, there’s very little focus on the death of the man. The framing of the camera was so done that this was some sort of background event, not a proper, BIG deal happening. That, I feel, conveys and amplifies the sudden and unexpected death of OJ’s father. It also helps the viewer wind up in OJ’s shoes, because he barely realizes something terrible has happened, at least at first. I quite liked that.
Example 3 will not be provided. I liked a number of the shots the movie offered, but how high that number was… Well, I can’t tell. I have this feeling of some shots being exceptionally provocative and intriguing, while others were absolutely uninspired and ordinary, even if the situation in question could have benefited from something more… Interesting.
As mentioned, there’s almost no music. No music left any impression on yours truly, in relation to this movie, so it will be treated as okay, not good but also not bad.
Then there was a message that was supposedly intended to be conveyed by the director - that much is obvious. I, however, find the manner of conveyance to have been lacking. The bible citation at the beginning was indicative of what the message was, but then the white text (initially horse names, then monster name) on a black background separating ‘acts’ was very weird.
Sure, one could assume that the names in question are representative of the prey that will wind up being hunted in that ‘act’, but this is so pointless that, as a transition, something else could have been used.
Overall, the presentation of ‘Nope’ was not bad, but it was not good, either. I really feel as though I’m compelled to give it a lower rating, but I’ll settle for a decent, rather than a barely passable. 2/3
Acting
I think this movie did that quite well. The performance given by Daniel Kaluuya was very good - I found the presentation of a socially awkward, or at least shy, person winding up in the situations he wound up in to be very compelling, and then the visual play done by his face in the close-ups that the audience got was also not bad at all.
There was a measure of calmness, or rather of collectedness, to this character, which was mainly granted by the performance. He was scared and terrified, but he did not show it through the conventional means. In fact, there was very little screaming on the part of the named characters here.
Another interesting performance was provided by Keke Palmer - also quite a good one. The chemistry I perceived between Keke and Daniel, who portrayed sister and brother, was very believable. They were almost a perfect depiction of siblings, who are slightly estranged, who have their own lives and interests, but are still siblings who love one another.
Lastly, something that tickled my fancy - Michael Wincott’s voice had me very pleased. The character he portrayed was also very interesting, from a visual perspective - how he moved, how he reacted to things. His voice, however, was the most compelling thing.
I think all the actors did a really good job here. 3/3
Story
We come to this at last. The story in this film falls apart by itself, without the need for prodding, but let me go ahead and nudge it.
Horse trainers, who train horses for movies, have a nasty ‘accident’ when the big company runner (the dad, Otis Haywood Senior) dies freakishly. Half a year later, Otis Haywood Junior (OJ) and his sister, Emerald (Em), are struggling to keep things going.
After botching another job - in part due to his sister’s performance, mainly due to his apparent discomfort around strangers, OJ is revealed to have sold a number - 11 - of horses to Ricky Park, who holds a Wild West themed theme park in the area.
OJ winds up taking his sister there, at which point Ricky is revealed to have been the actor in a sitcom revolving around a monkey living with a family in the american dream - a sitcom that ended very bloodily when the monkey - a chimp - went wild and killed, while also maiming, a number of actors.
After that, OJ and Em do a bit of drinking, only to find out that a horse - ghost - is not where he ought to be. OJ goes to pick him up, but observes it get swallowed up by something in the sky… A cloud? Meanwhile, the power goes out for a moment.
Then OJ shares with Em. They get a bit worried, but mostly start thinking about how they can hit it BIG with this - get an Oprah shot and become super famous and wealthy - and buy cameras from a UFO centered tech store, and a worker there - Angel - winds up helping them install the cameras. The siblings’ behavior and shenanigans convince Angel that something might actually be happening… And then something does happen.
Another horse, [NAME REDACTED, forgot it, lul], winds up not where it should be. Another horse - a statue with ribbons - which Em stole from Ricky’s theme park - gets sucked up by the thing, but that does not get totally picked up by the cameras because of the incredibly convenient appearance of a praying mantis that blocks the one operational camera during the event.
After things get resolved - dead horse, spooked, but certain Em and a surprisingly calm OJ - are visited by Angel, who’s seen things. He pinpoints the cloud that’s the UFO - as it does not move, unlike the other clouds - and they try to get someone’s help to film the UFO. That someone is Holst, cinematographer extraordinaire, who initially refuses.
Then, well, another event occurs. Ricky is revealed to have been using the horses he has been buying from OJ as feed for the UFO (which is a creature, not a ship) in an attempt to tame it, so that it may be used in a trick. Well, the trick goes wrong and all the park goers, including Ricky, get eaten up by the UFO.
OJ goes to get his horse back - Lucky, who was sold to Ricky, but OJ now suspects things - and finds everything empty, with a pig on a rooftop and Lucky unharmed. Things escalate slightly, then the UFO winds up over the Haywood Ranch - just as Angel is about to leave - and then the UFO barfs up a massive amount of blood on top of the house.
That’s when OJ, coming back with Lucky, manages to figure out that the UFO only eats you if you are looking at it. Convenient to know.
Word of the disappearance of those many people spreads and Holst contacts Em to let her know he’s interested. He comes in, the gang of 4 comes up with a plan, executes… With a pair of hitches.
Hitch 1 - TMZ reporter goes and gets himself killed, messing with things. Not actually that disruptive.
Hitch 2 - Holst goes crazy and decides to get some REALLY good shots of the UFO, getting eaten in the process.
That causes the UFO to gobble up everything in sight - the Haywood Ranch and the little camp used by Holst and Angel to get proper recordings of the UFO. Stuff goes down, Em manages to untie a massive helium balloon with many ribbons, right above a well that takes pictures (quite the Chekhov’s gun, as she photobombs a pair of kids at that same well in a very early scene).
The UFO gobbles the balloon up, gets its picture taken, and dies promptly. THE END.
So, this movie has a few problems, does it not?
Number 1 - what’s up with the upright slipper? No, really! In the scenes depicting Ricky with the monkey (Gordy), there’s always some focus on a slipper that winds up unnaturally staying upright, as though it is being worn by someone standing on the tips of their toes, even if there is no foot in it. This is in no way at all connected to anything - especially not the UFO, as it is never shown to be able to do that.
Not only that, but the UFO is an animal, not some sapient being, so it doing that would be totally pointless and impossible. There’s just a funky slipper in these otherwise monstrously good scenes, raising a buttload of questions without having any reason to be in the movie at all.
Now, the scenes themselves are really good, because they establish the motivation that Ricky has. Ricky gets recognized, and is known mostly as, the kid from that show with the mad monkey. Ricky wants to become known for something else, so he comes up with the idea of ‘taming’ the UFO and making that his thing. It’s somewhat reasonable, it makes sense, it is very understandable in the context of the film, and probably in reality as well, so it’s good stuff.
But what’s with the slipper?
Number 2 - the biggest problem is that Holst just goes crazy for no good reason. It is not conveyed whether or not he got ‘the shot’ prior to him going ham, but there’s some mixed messaging. It could be that he got the shot, but ‘because the sun has just shown up he can get a far, FAR better shot now’ or it could be that ‘because the sun has just shown up it ruined the shot/film so we still have no shot’.
Then there’s also the possibility that he decided he did not want anyone to have the shot and just committed suicide by UFO. Still, though, there is absolutely nothing that’s indicative of his reasoning to do these things. He’s shown as an intelligent and reasonable individual, who’s also incredibly cool headed. Then, he does this.
It’s so outlandish and so insane to me that he just went on and did that - and he even kept looking at the UFO, even though he knew the solution was to NOT look at it… I don’t know, this was bad.
Number 3 - what is this TMZ reporter? What is this human being? The guy goes on someone’s private property, ignores them asking him to leave, crashes with his bike and breaks all the bones in his body, and the only thing he’s raving about is his camera and asking OJ ‘why aren’t you filming this?’ whilst telling him that ‘this should be filmed/photographed’. Of course, in the setting of the film there’s an incredible attraction towards spectacle, so one could wave their hands and explain it away through those means, but it seems as though it’s really distant from reality, so much so that it isn’t plausible…
But then that’s a TMZ reporter. That’s one of those nigh-soulless paparazzi type of guys. That’s the type of person who’d rather record a school shooting, just so he can have GREAT footage, rather than intervene in said school shooting. That’s the type of person to watch a car-crash and not do anything about it.
Naturally, that’s connected to the message of the film, but it is so implausible, so unreal (at least to me, and I might be sheltered in that regard - we don’t really have paparazzi paparazzi in my land), that it really left a foul taste in my mouth.
Number 4 - why is the alien? How is the alien? Those are questions that did not really need to be answered. However, there’s another question that I suppose is very important. Why does this animal - the alien - have such an incredible effect on electronics around itself, and why does it have such immaculate camouflaging abilities?
Sure, we have chameleons who can somewhat do camouflage, and I’d be willing to let the UFO pass if its means of camouflage was to blend in with its surroundings, but it literally becomes a perfect cloud. It doesn’t just become the color of whatever is behind it, or around it - it becomes a perfect, indifferentiable from real clouds cloud… Aside from the moving part.
THEN it also has the effect of an EMP on everything around itself, and a constant effect at that. A living organism having a constant EMP field around itself is very… Pointless, especially since that EMP does not affect living organism’s electricity currents. Now, if the brain of the characters stopped sending signals properly, then I’d be willing to talk, but this is totally impossible to apply in the context of a living being.
Evidently, this creature was made by someone to disrupt humans on earth, otherwise it would not have had this EMP thing. It makes no sense, it's illogical, and I should not be looking for logic where there is none to be found, but when the movie is described as ‘science fiction’ I expect a bit of science, not a funky “don’t look at it” gimmick. That’s the Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy shit, not freaking ‘serious horror film’ garbage!
Number 5 (very minor) - the Horse in Motion, at least the 12 framed one shown to the audience at the start of the film, the rider of which is claimed to be a black man, has sparked a bit of controversy… It’s very hard to tell if that is, indeed, the case, with reality, but in the context of the film that is totally reasonable and understandable. It’s not a world that relates to reality on a 1 to 1 scale of matchingness, what with the alien eating horses and not eating those who are not looking at it, so we can let that slide if it was wrong.
Number 6 - the message.
Now, this movie has a message. It attempts to present a poignant message about spectacle, to present a query about spectacle. People lose their minds in pursuit of the spectacle, or, rather, they lose themselves - they cease their Being as people - and simply immerse themselves in the spectacle.
Whenever someone sees something really incredible and breathtaking - breathtaking is a key word - they often have no words to describe it. That’s owed up to the fact that they are so taken by the thing they see that they barely have the mental capacity to think about it. They do not consider anything other than that, and they do not even conceptualize it.
In fact, people are so engrossed by the spectacle that they FORGET TO BREATHE. That’s why it is breathtaking. The spectacle takes its viewer and completely consumes them, forcing them to forget everything else. That’s almost showcased in this film, with the spectacle being the UFO.
It quite literally consumes its viewers, leaving nothing for them but itself, until they wind up being parts of the spectacle, no longer their own beings. Quite interesting, considering the reality of the situation currently affecting the world - you, dear reader, know what I speak of. Everything that happens winds up being recorded by someone. A fight - oh, yes, people are recording it on their phones, rather than breaking it up. A scandal - yup, record that, it’s a spectacle.
Absolutely everything that can take the ordinary, or just any, person out of their otherwise mundane, monochrome life - yikes, don’t get me started - is a spectacle. And when life is monstrously dull - as is the case with the life lived by the grand majority of people who work 9 to 5, 5 days a week, all weeks a year - everything is a spectacle. And spectacle causes one to forget oneself, to lose oneself.
Imagine how easy it would be for those who benefit from lack of self awareness, and any other kind of awareness or conceptual understanding, to just create a spectacle that takes over people? Why did Trump win the 2016 election? Because he was a spectacle, and people did not want the spectacle to end. That’s one way of using the spectacle.
Another way would be to distract people from certain things. Oh, your rights are being taken away via some legislation? Very convenient that there’s the world cup taking place right at that point in time. Or, if you will, look at the government - it keeps falling apart and the National Assembly is in shambles every time it is held. It’s so bad it’s like a 5th grade classroom in there - and the teacher is absent, too! That’s spectacle. We see that and we fail to notice the fact that NOTHING is being changed, and that suits those performing the spectacle just fine, does it not?
Let’s not get political, even though we already did. Back on the message. Is it well conveyed? Well, if the individual to whom the message is being conveyed is a person who would think about a movie after watching it, a person who would contemplate it… Yes, indeed, it is so well conveyed that it almost felt as though I was being hit over the head with it. The fact that the UFO looked like a Peacock at the end did not fly past me, the fact that it resembled a monstrously gaudy ball gown did not evade my eyes. It’s very discernible.
But am I the movie’s target audience? No, the movie’s target audience is the general audience. I was lucky enough to go see this movie with 3 representatives of the general audience - people who go to see movies, even if they are science fiction, just for the sake of going to see the movie. It’s recreation to them, and they don’t think about the movie afterwards, especially not unprovoked by others.
The message is lost on them, most likely, and that’s not that neat, is it?
Well, with that being said, the end is ambiguous. They did get the shot, but what they do with it - that doesn’t matter. It’s the lesson on spectacle they take from the experience, which lesson might have wound up being lost on them as much as the message is lost on the audience.
An interesting story that gets ruined by itself in the middle. I’m really upset by it. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this film get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Well, I wanted to say yes, for a while. Then I realized I don’t actually want to say yes, I was just being pretentious in my craving to award some kind of recognition to the actors who took part in this film’s creation, but NO, Nope does not get the Legendary Point. I feel as though it could have been… Well, better. 0/1
Conclusion
6/10. It’s actually not a bad movie, but it is definitely not one I would want to rewatch. I’d recommend it to… Well, who would I recommend it to? It’s almost a good recommendation for fans of horror, but it shoots itself in the leg, so I wouldn’t want to recommend it. I can’t recommend it to anyone who likes science fiction, because this was more along the lines of fantasy that science-y… Maybe to fans of Jordan Peele movies? Or maybe as something to be put on as noise on the TV whilst doing other things.
I tuck it under my belt, though it is frightfully close to the bag of mediocrity. It does have some dust on it, and it’s very rough and imperfect, but it’s got… It's got charm.