Writer, director and producer Jordan Peele has brought us yet another spine chilling horror.
Peele has an array of successful films behind him such as his 2017 directorial debut Get Out, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
Nope
Nope follows two siblings running a horse ranch in California. They quickly discover an unknown object in the sky which begins to attack them and their horses. Alongside the two trying to figure out what is happening, the owner of an adjacent theme park tries to profit from the otherworldly happenings.
Casting
One half of the sibling duo is played by Academy Award- and double-Bafta-winning Daniel Kaluuya. He was also in Peele’s 2017 film Get Out.
Emerald ‘Em’ Haywood, Kaluuya’s sister in the film, is played by actress, singer and personality Keke Palmer.
The owner of the theme park ‘Jupiter’s Claim’ is portrayed by The Walking Dead’s Steven Yeun.
Other notable cast members are Brandon Perea (The OA), Michael Wincott (Alien: Resurrection), Wrenn Schmidt (For All Mankind), Keith David (Muhammad Ali) and Donna Mills (The Secret Storm).
Inital Reviews
Nope has been recieving revies from critcis and the general public alike, and the opinion seems to be mixed.
The Guardian’s Mark Kermode gives the film three stars and labels it a ‘brilliantly horrifying ride to nowhere.’
Kermode writes, ‘As with the brilliantly horrifying sitcom bloodbath that serves as Nope’s attention-grabbing curtain-raiser, the film too often seems to be heading somewhere extraordinary, only to disappear into an ambitious conceptual hole.’
However, Alan Corr for RTE gives Nope a four star review. He describes Nope as having a ‘stillness and mercurial compulsiveness that elevates it way above an extended episode of The Twilight Zone.’
While Corr talks about some positives of this film, he also points out that it ‘does seem to stumble about too much in the dark before reaching any sense of a satisfying conclusion.’
Away from professional critics, Nope has a 68% audience rating score on Rotten Tomatoes. One reviewer called the film ‘ambitious and eerie, imaginative and expertly crafted.’