Jordan Peele’s sci-fi-horror film stars Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott and Brandon Perea.
The story centres on the Haywood siblings (Kaluuya & Palmer), who run a ranch that hires out horses for Hollywood productions. They discover that the area around their ranch has become the hunting ground of a UFO-like predatory creature… so they decide to try and capture evidence of this aerial beast…
NOPE has received mixed reviews, some very positive and others criticising Peele’s exotic plot, which not only involves this extraterrestrial critter but also includes a grisly backstory that features a chimp actor from a television show going on a bloody rampage!
I, thus, went into this movie expecting it to be potentially a mess, but I actually REALLY enjoyed it!
Peele uses the film’s locations well, shooting the vast, cloudy sky effectively, providing teasing glimpses of the ‘flying saucer’ whooshing behind the cloud cover. He also creates some tense scenes and a few jump scares, and also makes good use of imagery like lights going off and inflatable tube man figures deflating whenever the creature is near.
The monster itself is a fine creation: a beast that can take the shape of a smooth-skinned, fast-moving ‘UFO’ with a central ‘mouth’ that it uses the vacuum-up victims. This thing can also unravel itself, to become more like a vast mass of unfurled membranes.
When the film reaches its climax the score is amped up, imbuing the movie with a neo-Western vibe, as the siblings confront the creature on horseback and on an electric motorbike, trying to stay alive and also still endeavouring to get an elusive shot of the hungry, floating monster.
Well worth a watch.
Here’s a bunch of shots of the lovely critter…
Finally, here’s the Dolby Cinema poster for the film…
Monster Zone 