NOPE
Roland Barthes famously associated photography with death, every photo a signifier of “that has been.” And as Susan Sontag notes that even the language around film implies violence; you shoot with a camera, as you would a gun. In fact, photographic images have always been tied to mortality, memory, exploitation, fear, mystery, excitement, and dread. And as a film that's largely about memory, and hinges on the quest for a specific image (a "magic shot"), Jordan Peele's NOPE (trailer here) plays with all of this—while unabashedly being, at its core, a spectacle.
The movie follows Otis "OJ" Haywood Jr. (Daniel Kaluuya) and his sister Emerald "Em" Haywood (Keke Palmer), descendents of the jockey in Eadweard Muybridge's "The Horse in Motion," struggling to keep their family's Hollywood horse business afloat in the California desert, begrudgingly selling horses one by one to a kitschy theme park down the road owned by a former child star (Steven Yeun). But soon, to put it in the least spoilery way possible, weird shit starts happening. Instead of sharing spoilers, I’ll tell you my favorite things about the film (and the list is long): a truly jarring opening sequence; Peele's slow and masterful build; a score by frequent Peele collaborator Michael Abels that combines the sounds of classic westerns and horror pictures with Spielbergian wonder; Hoyte van Hoytema's jaw-dropping cinematography; some of the most interesting creature designs our stunted, STRANGER THINGS-saturated culture has seen in a long time; a buddy-comedy dynamic brought to life by some great supporting characters; and the layered sibling relationship between Kaluuya (his incredible subtlety and eye-acting at their best) and Palmer (a for-real movie star who can make anyone with a soul smile). The movie’s faults mainly lie in the human story underlying the science fiction one; I felt like there was so much cerebral stuff to chew on about analog vs. digital media technology, voyeurism, surveillance, and our obsession with seeing and being seen, but wanted the emotional throughline with OJ, Em, and their father Otis Sr. (Keith David) to resonate a bit more. But Peele has said this is a popcorn movie that also caters to Easter Egg viewers, those ravenous types who watch something dozens of times to make sure they get every last crumb; let's hope those revisits substantiate the characters just as much as the plot. Whether you're going one time or a hundred, go see this one in IMAX, because metaphors aside, NOPE is just a blast to watch.
—Alicia Devereaux, Development Assistant
