Nope (Jordan Peele, 2022)

Gulp

("--Will this little piece keep key details and plot twists hidden from those who haven't seen the movie?" "Nope.")

--Is this latest picture Peele's funniest?

Nope.

--Is it his scariest?

Nope.

--Is it a bad movie?

Nope.

--Did you miss all the movie and literary references? Everything from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Rio Bravo by way of The Thing, Moby Dick by way of Jaws, the Grimm's "Hansel and Gretel," Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," The Birds, Q The Winged Serpent, Tremors?

Nope. 

--It's a very movie movie but the key event happened years before, in a TV show called Gordy's Home. Did you dislike the scenes involving the show?

Nope. 

--Did you dislike the rest of the movie?

Nope. 

--Don't you have a problem with how the show seemed to have nothing to do with the rest of the movie?

Nope.

--Really? So you think the show did have a strong narrative connection with the rest of the movie?

Nope.

--Did the show have zero connection at all with the rest of the movie?

Nope.

--You don't have a big problem with that?

Nope.

--Don't you think horror movies should have a linear structure with distinct progression, clearly marked protagonists menaced by a well-defined antagonist?

Nope. 

--Gordy's Home with its unnatural silences, unrevealing camera angles, and overbright studio lights seems to satisfy our need for an unsettling horror fix; the rest of the picture with its wide-open valley, echoing stereo sound, and vast sidling clouds provoking both the agoraphobic and the claustrophobic seems to satisfy our need for an action/thriller fix and, to a lesser extent (the screams, that rain of blood), kaiju horror fix. Don't you think the movie should have focused on satisfying just one fix?

Nope.

--Did you think the final creature was more frightening than Gordy?

Nope.

--You didn't think a vast bizarre creature you've never seen before is more frightening than an animal you're familiar with? That you see pictures of, perhaps every day? That you might find cute, funny, even lovable?

Nope. 

--Don't you think a final creature should be more frightening?

Nope.

--Peele's Get Out confirmed the African-American's fear of the racism hiding deep inside ostensibly liberal whites; Us suggested the chasm between one social class literally living atop another, and the hope (or horror) of being able to transcend one into another; Nope is about-- or so Peele tells us-- past trauma and how people tend to exploit them, for sympathy and profit. Do you think Nope's theme is as substantial as that of Peele's previous films?

Nope.

--You don't think exploration of trauma, or the nature of exploitation, or the nature of spectacle is as profound or substantial a subject matter as racism, or social division?

Nope.

--Wasn't Nope's treatment of trauma, spectacle, and exploitation as deft or canny as Get Out's treatment of racism or Us' treatment of class?

Nope.

--Is there something deeply wrong with using a true incident to inject dread and horror in a movie that's really about something else-- with in effect practicing a bit of that same exploitation in real life that Peele deals with onscreen?

Nope.

--Don't you mind that Nope isn't as deft or profound or substantial? Is perhaps indulging in its own exploitation?

Nope.

--Anything you wanna add?

Nope.