STACK #217 November 2022

MOVIE FEATURE

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Check out more from Jordan Peele

Writer-director Jordan Peele takes on the big summer event movie with his UFO horror film, Nope . Words Gill Pringle WATCH THE SKIES

both an exploration and critique of filmmaking and film industry itself. “I set out to design something that criticised what we do as much as it honours it.” Starring Daniel Kaluuya ( Get Out ) and Keke Palmer as siblings, and Steven Yeun as a former child star, these three inhabitants of a lonely stretch of inland California bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery. Kaluuya’s OJ is the moral

centre of the film. The sudden and mysterious death of his famous father has left him struggling to run the family ranch, which trains horses for film and TV productions. And when his sister Emerald (Palmer) returns, some old tensions begin to surface… Peele hopes that the movie is a fun and entertaining ride. “ Nope was written in 2020 during the pandemic,” he says. “It was this crazy time. In a lot of ways, the film is a reflection of all the horrors that happened that year and are still happening. In a way, this film was my escape from the day to day and what I want to offer the audience is an escape from As for the title, he says, " Nope means a lot of things. I always love to get into the head of my audience. And I feel like there’s a lot of people that don’t want to see a horror movie theirs.”

F ew folk have done more than writer-director Jordan Peele, whose latest film Nope builds on a unique vision first established by his breakout movie Get Out in 2017. then Us in 2019. Not content with resting on his horror laurels, Peele was eager to expand by tackling the granddaddy of genre movies: the summer event film. “ Nope is of a bigger scope than any story I’ve ever tried to tell,” he tells STACK . One particular sub-genre of summer event films he felt was ripe for reinvention was the UFO movie. “I had this idea of making the Great to disrupt and reinvent the horror genre in recent years

alien civilisation. But what if the truth is a lot simpler and darker than we could ever imagine?” he asks. Both a dark sci-fi nightmare and complex social thriller, Nope also unpacks the seeds of violence, risk and opportunism that are inseparable from the romanticised history of the American West and, indeed, from show business itself. “The DNA of the movie has this big question about the human addiction to spectacle,” poses Peele. “And what happens when money

American UFO movie – a flying saucer horror film. And not only a flying saucer horror film, but really, the quintessential one. It’s a difficult genre and hard to pull off because it’s got this huge canvas that you have to take into account – the sky. “ Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a huge influence of mine in its scope and in its vision, but more than anything, in Steven Spielberg's ability to make us feel like we’re in the presence of something from another world. That immersive experience was something I desperately wanted to chase as well. “Within that genre, though, we often apply all these wonderful qualities to some advanced

and don’t want to see something that dark. Nope is an invitation to them, to sort of say, ‘Hey, I see you, and this movie will be scary, but at the very least, I’m bringing you in. I’m acknowledging you have a place in this genre.’ "And also because Black people have some pretty simple rules, and there’s just certain things that are just going to make us go, ’Nope! Done! Out! I’m gone!’”

• Nope is out on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD on Nov 9

becomes involved is that there’s this massive exploitation of what should be pure and what should be natural.” Moreover, he argues that Nope serves as

12 NOVEMBER 2022

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