Jordan Peele’s Nope brings chills and thrills, but it’s all empty air
polygon.comAbout halfway through Nope — Jordan Peele’s sci-fi Western horror follow-up to Us and Get Out, centered around two Black siblings training horses for Hollywood projects — Emerald (Keke Palmer) explains to her curt brother OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) why she lives such a disappointed life. Their father Otis (Keith David) promised her a horse of her own, but instead brought OJ in on training him for work on The Scorpion King, as a father-son project. Ever since then, she’s only been nominally interested in the family business.
As she tells her story, the lens tightens around Emerald’s face while tears stream down her cheeks. OJ sits, tight-jawed, aware of his sister’s anguish but unable to emotionally engage with her. The scene captures the siblings’ broad beats, but its deployment so late in the film keeps it from landing with the force Peele probably hoped for. It’s a recurring issue throughout Nope.
Maybe that running lack of impact has to do with Peele’s unwillingness to let Nope tell a story beyond winking references. Maybe it’s because he’s uninterested in exploring the inner lives of his characters, who largely coast on repetitive punchlines and cloying sentimentality. But the biggest surprise of the tight-lipped Nope is that it’s Jordan Peele’s weakest film.
[Ed. note: Setup spoilers ahead for Nope.]
Emerald and OJ are, as one character backhandedly calls them, “Hollywood royalty.” They’re descendants of the largely forgotten Black man riding a horse in Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion, purportedly the first film in history. Like the horses they train, the siblings live in the background of the movie business. That territory doesn’t really bother the quiet, closed-off OJ. But it’s partly why Emerald is so
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