This review is brought to you by Kathy Kaiser
DIRECTOR/WRITER/PRODUCER: Jordan Peele
STARRING: Keke Palmer, Daniel Kaluuya, Brandon Perea, Michael Wincott and Steven Yeun
The master of psychological thrillers is back, and this time he is taking us into an Alien encounter of his own kind, as we meet brother/sister tag team OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald Haywood (Keke Palmer), who find themselves deep in the west, trying to keep their late father’s horse ranch thriving…
When a strange phenomena seems to be spooking not only the animals, but OJ and Emerald too, they venture into town to see about purchasing a few cameras, as to catch a glimpse at what is lurking about. Lucky for them, they happened upon the most customer service oriented salesperson around named Angel (Brandon Perea), who is willing to come out to their ranch , set up their cameras, and stay a while too, just to make sure that everything is working out superberly…
When OJ decides to take a trip to the neighbors rodeo show, to get their take on the happenings about, he finds that Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Juen) is a man with many hidden secrets, especially when it comes to his past, and how he plans for he, and his family, to stage their own alien experience…
With people start disappearing at an alarming rate, and that cloud in the sky seems to be ever present, it’s going to take cinematographer Antlers Hoist (Michael Wincott), OJ, Emerald and Angel too, to figure out a way to outsmart those creatures in the sky, who are most definitely not related to you, or I…
I give NOPE a rating of 2 out of 5: The Wild, Wild West meets Close Encounters for this psychological Sci-Fi thriller, as Peele fuzes together another really warped storyline, with a twinge of Horror, to keep us on our toes. And unlike the storylines for both 2017’s GET OUT, and 2019’s US, NOPE managed to keep me perplexed, giving me a sense of uneasiness and uncertainty, the whole way through. But, as I settled into the feeling of not really knowing what’s going to happen next, it did become apparent too that Jordan Peele likes making movies that aren’t necessarily meant to be explained, or understood within it’s two-hour timeframe, because when I left the theater I had more questions, than answers, but maybe that’s the point. It also becomes very apparent that Peele enjoys directing Academy Award winning Actor Daniel Kaluuya, first, because he made him the lead character in this film too, after casting him in the lead of his first psychological thriller GET OUT, and second, because he manages to get a fabulous performance from Kaluuya yet again, for his next go-round. I was extremely pleased when it was all said and done, that Peele saw fit to cast Keke Palmer for his little excursion into Sci-Fi, as I feel that without her exceptionally engaging, funny and top notch performance throughout almost every inch of this film, I don’t think the men in this cast could have carried this film to the finish line. And even though a fellow critic shared with me prior to viewing that what popped in the media about NOPE standing for “Not of planet earth” was true, I felt that after I viewed it, it was named NOPE because that was going to have to be my response to the studio rep after the movie, when she asked me if I enjoyed this film. NOPE would also have to be my answer to if I felt this was Peele’s best film to date. And NOPE would also have to be my response to whether or not I would tell you to rush out to the theater to see this one, this weekend, at a theater near you…
2 out of 5
MATINEE CHAT with Kathy Kaiser 