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It’s surprising how little information about writer/director Jordan Peele ’s “Nope” has leaked since it was first announced. There have been a few trailers that show what may or may not be the film’s primary threat, and the marketing team has done a very good job with posters of its main cast members looking up at the sky and uttering the film’s title. All that thirst for capitalistic box office gain comes with a price, namely that it builds hype and an audience expectation that may not be met once the finished product is unveiled. This invariably leads to whiny complaints on Twitter and a plethora of think pieces I have no desire to read, even if I didn’t like the movie.  

I’ve always had begrudging respect for a filmmaker who refuses to cater to a viewer’s pre-ordained expectations, even if said viewer is yours truly. It’s why I attend David Lynch movies despite never being a fan of the director’s work. So, I’ve been replaying a throwaway line of dialogue in my head as a potential explanation for how “Nope” is constructed and executed. In response to a pitch for his services, cinematographer Antlers Holst ( Michael Wincott ) tells Emerald Haywood ( Keke Palmer ) that he “makes one movie for them, and one for me.” This is a callback to John Cassavetes ’ philosophy/excuse for appearing in trash—the pay allowed him to finance the movies he wanted to create. 

After the massively entertaining, Oscar-winning calling card of “ Get Out ,” Jordan Peele moved toward a hybrid of audience pleaser and filmmaker’s jones with “ Us .” That film was less blatant and required more work on the audience’s part, which made it fascinating for some and frustrating for others. It was also powered by a career-best performance by Lupita Nyong’o, whose dual role was unshakably strange and multilayered. There is no equivalent performance in “Nope” to anchor viewers, and it’s about three times as messy, but I got the feeling that Holst is Peele’s stand-in, that is, the director is revealing to us through a character that he made this film to amuse and please himself. If that is true, then Holst’s final scene says a lot about his creator; it’s a moment of self-sacrifice in lieu of the perfect camera shot. 

Prior to the pitch for work scene, Holst and Emerald met on the set of a commercial he was shooting. She arrived late to assist her horse-wrangler brother Otis Jr. ( Daniel Kaluuya ) with the animal hired for the ad. That shoot goes awry, but not before Peele drops some breadcrumbs that will lead viewers through the forest he’s built for us to get lost inside. He also includes a nice cameo from nighttime soap opera legend Donna Mills . Speaking of cameos, the opening scene of “Nope” features Keith David as Otis Sr., head of Haywood Hollywood Horses, the family business. The Haywood’s ancestors were the first Black stuntpeople and animal wranglers in Hollywood, going back to the earliest days of movie making. That seems like an extraneous detail, but nothing is truly extra in a Jordan Peele movie.

The rest of the cast features Steven Yuen as Jupe, a barker who runs an alien-based carnival of sorts out in the same middle of nowhere the Haywoods have their ranch, and Angel ( Brandon Perea ), a techie specializing in surveillance equipment he sells out of a Best Buy clone called Fry’s. Jupe is the survivor of a horrific freak accident on a television show that had the first use of a certain type of animal. Angel is hired to install fancy cameras on the Haywood ranch so that Otis and Emerald can be the first to capture “the Oprah shot” of a specific event I won’t reveal. All this focus on being the first to do something! Again, no detail is completely extra in a Jordan Peele movie.

With “Nope,” Peele continues to explore and repeat certain elements of his prior works. Like “Us,” there’s a Bible quote that may be another breadcrumb to follow. This time it’s Nahum 3:6, which says “I will pelt you with filth, I will treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle.” There’s also a focus on animals, with horses playing a major role here. Unlike the deer in “Get Out” and the rabbits in “Us,” symbols of creatures being preyed upon, Peele reverses the power dynamic by turning into prey the most dangerous predator of all. There’s also the unusual use of an inanimate object; in “Us” it was scissors, in “Nope” it’s a fake horse and those weird, swaying air-filled things every used car dealer seems to have.

“Nope” is not as good as “Get Out” or “Us,” but it’s definitely Peele’s creepiest movie. He’s always been more Rod Serling than Rob Zombie , and that’s most evident here. There’s humor to be had in the minority characters’ reactions to horror (yes, they say “nope” the way most people would say “oh HELL NAW!”), but the director really leans into Hitchcock’s tenet about suspense vs. surprise. The wait for something awful to happen is always worse than when it does. Additionally, Peele remains a master of misdirection, offering fleeting glimpses of something that’s amiss or keeping the most brutal violence just beyond our view. The sound mix on this is aces, and I’ll never tire of horror movies that center on Black protagonists who are more than just fodder for whatever’s killing everybody.

Peele also gets good performances out of Kaluuya and Palmer, who believably work the sibling angle with all its longstanding grudges, in-jokes and patterns based on who’s older. Wincott wields his wonderful voice as a force of nature. Yuen seems to be off-kilter and the movie’s weak link, but the more I thought about his plotline, the more his performance made sense. I think he’s the film’s biggest breadcrumb in terms of figuring it all out. As for the special effects, they’re interesting, to say the least.

Truth be told, “Nope” reaches a conventional end point that would probably be more satisfying to most audiences had the journey been more tuned to the usual ways these stories are told. After my IMAX screening, there was a smattering of audience applause but I heard lots of grumbling. Call me a sadist if you must, but this is my favorite type of audience reaction. One particularly angry guy behind me on the escalator said “I can’t wait for the critics reviews calling this ‘splendid’!” “Nope” isn’t splendid, but it is pretty damn good. I had a lot of fun trying to figure it out. It’s a puzzle with a few pieces missing; standing back from it, you can still see the picture. But does it give the viewer exactly what they want? See the title.

Available in theaters on July 22nd.

Odie Henderson

Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

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Nope (2022)

Rated R for language throughout and some violence/bloody images.

135 minutes

Daniel Kaluuya as OJ Haywood

Keke Palmer as Emerald 'Em' Haywood

Steven Yeun as Ricky 'Jupe' Park

Brandon Perea as Angel Torres

Michael Wincott as Craig

Barbie Ferreira as Nessie

Donna Mills as Bonnie Clayton

Terry Notary as Gordy

Jennifer Lafleur as Phyllis

Keith David as Otis Haywood Sr.

• Jordan Peele

Cinematographer

• Hoyte van Hoytema
• Nicholas Monsour
• Michael Abels

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Nope First Reviews: Ambitious and Well Crafted, but Possibly Jordan Peele's Most Divisive Film Yet

Critics say the writer-directors sci-fi thriller is thought-provoking and confidently made, but its big ideas and cerebral plot may leave general audiences wanting more..

TAGGED AS: aliens , First Reviews , Horror , movies

Nope marks the third feature from writer and director Jordan Peele , and the first reviews of the movie prove that Get Out and Us were no flukes. This time, the filmmaker is focused on a frightening science fiction story involving a horse ranch, a former child actor, and something mysterious lurking above the clouds. Nope stars Daniel Kaluuya , Keke Palmer ,and Steven Yeun within a praised ensemble amidst some spectacular visuals. But whether its script is brilliant or confusing is debated from one review to the next.

Here’s what critics are saying about Nope :

Does Nope confirm Jordan Peele as one of the great directors of our time?

With Nope , Peele once again proves that he’s not just one of the most interesting filmmakers working in horror today, he’s one of the most interesting filmmakers working, period. – Ross Bonaime, Collider

He continues to be one of the best in the business. – Caitlin Chappell, CBR.com

This film really might be what it takes to etch him as, no, not the next Spielberg, but an event-level filmmaker that we’ve all been worried we were losing. – Cory Woodroof, 615 Film

How does it compare to Get Out and Us ?

While still full of profound and layered ideas, Nope is closer in execution to the horror-comedy mix of Get Out than Us . – Ben Kendrick, Screen Rant

Nope is arguably the most conventional horror film of his three directorial efforts. – Matt Rodriguez, Shakefire

Peele’s most assured, confident film yet… Nope may not be Jordan Peele’s best movie to date, but it is his most enjoyable. – Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm

Compared to Get Out and Us , Nope is likely to prove more divisive… I fully expect it to be labeled his strongest and weakest flick in equal measure. – Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

Peele is capable of doing much better movies (as evidenced by Get Out and Us ), but Nope just looks like a cynical cash grab. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

Is it as good as Us and Get Out ? Nope. – Scott Mendelson, Forbes

It’s Jordan Peele’s weakest film. – Robert Daniels, Polygon

(Photo by ©Universal Pictures)

What other movies does it recall?

You can just about taste the DNA of Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and… other films that have been made in the shadow of Close Encounters , like M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs and Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival . – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

What binds this movie so closely to Close Encounters of the Third Kind  has less to do with alien visitors, in the end, than with the fervent curiosity that they can inspire. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

It captures the same thrills, tension, and strong characters of movies like Jaws , while also setting itself up to be as iconic as sci-fi movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Alien . – Caitlin Chappell, CBR.com

It’s closer to Peele’s Super 8 than Peele’s Signs . – Scott Mendelson, Forbes

This movie reminds me of Tremors … That’s a movie with swagger. And Nope has a similar swagger that Peele was smart to use. – Mike Ryan, Uproxx

The film it most resembled in spirit is a small one, Theo Anthony’s 2021 documentary All Light, Everywhere . – Cory Woodroof, 615 Film

But is it also totally original?

Nope is unlike anything you’ve seen before. – Eric Eisenberg, Cinema Blend

With stunning cinematic moments of pure dread, terror, and wonder, Peele has indeed delivered on his promise to bring audiences something unique. – Matt Neglia, Next Best Picture

This frequently monotonous and unimaginative movie is an unfortunate case of hype over substance. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

Is it scary?

The best horror movie of the year… building the tension to the point that it feels as if nowhere is safe. – Caitlin Chappell, CBR.com

Peele is able to create one thrilling, scary scene after another. – Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm

As a horror movie, Nope fails miserably to be frightening. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

How does the movie look?

Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema captures something so original visually that it is destined to become iconic. – Caitlin Chappell, CBR.com

Nope mostly delivers in terms of big-screen spectacle, visual oomph… and overdue iconography. – Scott Mendelson, Forbes

Peele’s latest boasts some of the most inspired alien design since H.R. Giger left his mark on the genre. – David Ehrlich, IndieWire

The movie’s visual effects are adequate but definitely not spectacular for a movie concept of this scope. – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

Does Nope have a compelling plot?

Nope doesn’t have a plot so much as a series of happenings that spill out in an impressionistic and arbitrary way. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

For all of the film’s escalating supernatural events, though, what’s less clearly drawn, and will likely prove less satisfying to a plot-hungry public, are the whys and hows of its conclusion. – Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly

It’s obvious that writer/director/producer Jordan Peele got this movie made without anyone stepping in to question the very weak and lazy plot of Nope . – Carla Hay, Culture Mix

Nope is an idea more than a story. It’s a collection of individually captivating scenes, as opposed to an intriguing whole. – Robert Daniels, Polygon

Is it more cerebral than entertaining?

Nope feels like something of a B-movie ouroboros, an unusually well-made and imaginative thriller that’s sometimes tripped up by its own high-mindedness. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Depending on your appetite for the heady and sonorous, it will either feel frustratingly perplexing or strike you as a work of unquestionable genius. – Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter

It will leave certain viewers more confused than exhilarated. – Ben Kendrick, Screen Rant

Peele’s strength is that he makes you lean in and talk about his film whether you like it or not. – Kathia Woods, Cup of Soul

But does it actually make any sense?

Nope establishes itself as something of an ethically minded Hollywood history lesson, with a particular focus on the industry’s long, brutal record of animal accidents and abuses on set. – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

Nope gives audiences an unforgettable experience, but forces them to reckon with exactly what types of experiences they really want, and at what cost. – Cory Woodroof, 615 Film

While this might be his most bombastic film in terms of what he’s attempting to it, it’s also maybe his most understated in its messaging. – Ross Bonaime, Collider

Even when parts of it don’t gel, Nope is a rapturous watch. – Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter

Logic often takes a back seat, and that has the unfortunate effect of lessening our involvement. – Owen Gleiberman, Variety

It’s a puzzle with a few pieces missing; standing back from it, you can still see the picture. But does it give the viewer exactly what they want? See the title. – Odie Henderson, RogerEbert.com

Does the movie have any other major issues?

Events may happen to OJ and Emerald, but outside of the plot’s story beats, we don’t really know anything about them on an individual level. – Matt Neglia, Next Best Picture

The characters would have benefited from greater depth and dimension. – Lovia Gyarkye, Hollywood Reporter

Peele is far too impressed with its handsomeness to work on populating it with fully felt characters. – Robert Daniels, Polygon

The film’s drawn-out pacing issues… leads to redundant and repetitive events and a comparatively (even compared to Us ) claustrophobic narrative. – Scott Mendelson, Forbes

Nope opens everywhere on July 22, 2022.

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Nope review: Jordan Peele’s third film is funny, weird as hell and thrillingly original

The consistently brilliant filmmaker has traded the claustrophobic, labyrinthine quality of ‘get out’ and ‘us’ for open skies and pure spectacle, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Jordan Peele. Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott, Brandon Perea, Wrenn Schmidt, Barbie Ferreira, Keith David. 15, 130 minutes.

When proof of extraterrestrial life slides its way into the lives of Nope ’s underdog heroes, their first instinct is to find a way to monetise it. That’s the most honest reaction I’ve ever seen in a horror film. It’s also exactly what I’d expect from Jordan Peele , a filmmaker who sees the social condition with such simple clarity that his films always feel like a series of mic drops. Nope is funny. It’s weird as hell. It’s a large-scale, popcorn sci-fi with a razor-sharp intellect. Otis Jr “OJ” Haywood ( Daniel Kaluuya ) and Emerald “Em” Haywood ( Keke Palmer ) recently lost their father in a freak accident. They’ve coped by running in opposite directions. OJ shuts down totally; Em lives her days as one excitable performance opportunity after another. But it’s easy to unite them under a single front, namely when an opportunity presents itself to catch “the Oprah shot”, or concrete, un-debunkable UFO footage that TV hosts would pay thousands for.

The possibility of extraterrestrials, as Brandon Perea’s tech kid hanger-on Angel explains, today seems less tied to philosophical questions about our existence, and more to pop culture fluff like the History Channel’s Ancient Aliens series. Peele’s underlying message with Nope is clear: there’s no remaining part of the galaxy that can’t be exploited for entertainment. TikTok, YouTube and the local news cycle dangle the promise of overnight fame in front of people’s eyes, subliminally training us all to view every experience – no matter how traumatic – as potential content.

And Peele, with that same exquisite imagination he brought to Get Out (2017) and Us (2019), always finds the most unexpected ways to prove his point. Take Ricky “Jupe” Park ( Steven Yeun , who can hide decades of sadness in a smile), the owner of an Old West attraction known as Jupiter’s Claim. It’s been fully Disneyfied into a ghoulish parody of the American myth, much like the pier-side hall of mirrors in Us . Jupe, as a child, starred in a Nineties sitcom called Gordy’s Home, which was swiftly cancelled after a horrific tragedy. He now relives those “six minutes and 13 seconds” of terror for a steady stream of curious visitors to his in-home museum, enthusiastically describing the subsequent Saturday Night Live sketch lampooning the incident. What an honour to have the worst day of your life turned into a punchline, right?

The Haywoods, meanwhile, have taken over their late father’s stunt horse business. Em starts every film shoot with the reminder that they, in fact, are the direct descendants of the unnamed and forgotten Black jockey in Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion – the first series of photographic cards strung together to create a moving image. The precursor to all cinema. “Since the moment pictures could move, we got skin in the game,” Em says. And yet, the Haywoods are never relieved of the burden of having to prove themselves. As with Jupe. As with people of colour everywhere just trying to carve out their path in life. They have no choice but to constantly commodify themselves. Those frustrations drive both Kaluuya and Palmer’s work here. Kaluuya is a true one-of-a-kind talent, who still turns out an intensely magnetic performance with a character explicitly written to be sullen and uncharismatic. Palmer gives us the kind of capable horror heroine that’s impossible not to root for.

It doesn’t quite feel accurate to say that Nope ’s sci-fi premise is indebted to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Jaws . Or to Hitchcock’s thrills. Or to classic B-movie mayhem. Rather, Peele’s innate understanding of cinematic history, which may have come from his years of lampooning movie tropes on the sketch show Key & Peele , only provides the foundations. Nope is his own creation. His own universe. Even a direct reference to Akira ’s famous bike-slide shot can’t shatter the illusion that what we’re watching is wholly, thrillingly original. There’s always been an unshowy confidence in how Peele’s films move, from the bourbon-y smoothness of his camerawork, to the symbolic potency of ordinary objects. Get Out has its porcelain teacup. Us has scissors. Nope has a tennis shoe inexplicably balanced on its heel, and wacky waving inflatable men with rictus grins plastered on their faces.

There are other images, too, that I dare not spoil but which are so elegantly composed that my mind, without question, quietly added them to the great cinematic canon of horror imagery. Nope is a film that, on top of everything, celebrates the skill of great craftspeople – not only on screen, with the Haywoods, but with the breathless beauty of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema’s work (the film was shot for Imax), and a soundscape, overseen by Johnnie Burn, that draws equal power from silence as it does chaos. You could, certainly, make the argument that Nope is the most straightforward of Peele’s films so far. He’s traded the claustrophobic, labyrinthine quality of Get Out and Us for open skies and pure spectacle. But the genius of his work is that, in the end, none of that really makes any difference. He still gets the same results. Peele, really, is the magician disguised as a filmmaker. Nope is the sleight of hand so slick you’ll never question how the trick was pulled off.

‘Nope’ is in cinemas from 12 August

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Jordan Peele's worldwide hit Get Out (2017) put him on the map as a horror writer and director, but his success didn't stop there, as he followed it up with  Us in 2019. Peele's announcement of Nope , his newest horror undertaking, and the reappearance of lead actor Daniel Kaluuya sparked rapid interest from fans.

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Known for the social commentary woven throughout his previous films, Peele's  Nope  is sure to contain layered symbolism along with classic scares. Theories swirled on Reddit following the announcement, many of which were seemingly confirmed by imagery shown in the recent movie trailer.

The Acronym

With his background as a comedic actor, Jordan Peele injects humor into all of his horror films that pokes fun at the overused tropes of traditional horror. The title " Nope" initially seemed to refer to the characters' reactions to whatever terrors they face in the film, but Redditor Lenny2theMany  proposed an alternate idea that appears more likely.

The user points out that the title may not simply be the word "nope," but an acronym for "Not Of Planet Earth" — a phrase commonly used to discuss UFOs and extraterrestrial beings. The alien imagery in the trailer backs this theory up, as the townspeople are shown looking up to the sky at a flying object disguised as a cloud.

Horror Inspiration

A horror fan himself, Jordan Peele uses elements from classic films while adding his own spin to create a uniquely scary experience. Reddit user jesse4712 writes, "I think it's gonna be his own take on the Close Encounters of the Third Kind but with more horror elements," a sentiment echoed by others in the comments.

The Spielberg sci-fi film from 1977 follows characters Roy Nealy and Jillian Guiler and their gradual obsession with UFOs after an otherworldly sighting leads them to believe they are not alone in the cosmos.

One of the most notable aspects of Nope 's promo poster depicts a horse being seemingly abducted upwards into the night sky. User  tianajade01  suggests, "maybe it’ll be the classic alien invasion movie and the horses are a metaphor for what the aliens wanna do to humans." The small alien doll floating alongside the horse also supports this theory.

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Animal metaphors are a staple of Peele's movies and often act as a warning for the human characters about what conflict they will face later in the film. In  Get Out , Chris sees himself in the deer on the side of the road, as well as the mounted deer in the basement, both hunted down by the Armitage family. The real spider shown crawling past the plastic toy spider in  Us symbolizes the arrival of the dopplegängers.

Twilight Zone

After the success of his directorial debut , Peele continued to produce horror films and even revive the iconic show, The Twilight Zone . User  Impossible-Shock-913 believes  Nope will draw inspiration from the original 1960 episode, “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street,” in which suspicion of alien invaders causes neighbors to turn on one another. They said, "Look up “the monsters are due on Maple street” season 1 episode 22 of The Twilight Zone ."

After one neighbor is shot and several more are accused of being the alien, the actual aliens stand back and watch as the humans create their own panic and chaos. The tendency of human beings to turn on one another during difficult times is a theme that Peele could easily rework into a modern horror story.

Skinwalker Ranch

While many believe  Nope will take influence from horror and sci-fi movies of the past, Redditor  EZ_Breezy1997  believes it could be an interpretation of the real-life events that took place at Sherman Ranch, later known as Skinwalker Ranch. They said, "my working theory rn is that the entire premise is a riff off of "Skinwalker Ranch" a remote ranch occupied by a small family that gets "visited" at night by otherworldly creatures." The 1996 reports of mysterious and seemingly paranormal activity from the Sherman family inspired several films and television programs.

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The Sherman family claimed to have seen countless unexplainable occurrences, including crop circles, orbs, and mutilated cattle left almost entirely drained of blood.  Nope 's ranch setting and Keke Palmer's "skin in the game" quote in the trailer make this theory a strong possibility.

Aliens Come To Collect

User  racheldeese620  proposes one of the most unique theories for the film's plot, suggesting that the ranch owners shown in the trailer are actually aliens sent from another planet and have been living on Earth for centuries. In this context, the first motion picture of a Black man riding a horse could have been the current ranch owner himself.

They said, "it would be easy for these 2 to come to earth maybe as refugees from their planet, disguise themselves as humans (shape shifter style), [and] own the ranch..." The Redditor goes on to say that the arrival of the UFOs and potential alien visitors could be extraterrestrials from their original planet returning to Earth to collect them and bring them back home.

Although many commenters believed the fist bump shown in the trailer was between a baby and a human-horse hybrid,  Lazyperfectionist25  had an interesting perspective that may give insight into the film's theme. The user pointed out that the hand could be a monkey paw, a reference to Peele's company, Monkeypaw Productions, as well as the short story by W. W. Jacobs for which it was named. They said, "when I seen it I immediately thought it was a monkey hand & thought of Jordan peeles production company “monkey paw” hahaha who knows."

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"The Monkey's Paw" acts as a cautionary tale, warning readers to be careful when making wishes as they may come with unexpected consequences. The trailer appears to show a county fair in which audiences can pay to watch a horse be abducted, a money-making endeavor that could come back to haunt them.

The Social Commentary

User  Empty_Huckleberry150  believes the aliens in  Nope will act as an allegory for the ways refugees and immigrants are treated. The use of the alien phenomena as a tourist attraction could be used as social commentary on America's handling of refugees and exploitation of immigrant workers.

Commenter Hooray4Yurei  compares the idea to  District 9  (2009), in which inhabitants of a dying alien planet are forced to take refuge on Earth, where they are relegated to living in run-down neighborhoods. They said, "Extraterrestrial aliens being a stand in on 'illegal' aliens looking for refuge, and the horror element comes from the fear driven response by the towns people to these new arrivals." Created by director Neil Blomkamp,  District 9 hoped to call out the xenophobic behavior toward the South African people who were forced to move following the 1966 apartheid.

Surveillance

While it is unclear what plot twists Jordan Peele has in store for  Nope , Reddit user  driller2x  believes it will be something related to surveillance and the symbolism of cameras being an extension of the eye. The user explains that from the beginning of the trailer, as the Haywoods are filming their commercial, the focus is on camera lenses and the concept of documenting human behavior.

The camera-like imagery of the unidentified flying object and the water well filming from above, suggests that the humans are being watched by a powerful force from above. For what purpose they are being observed is another question entirely. The Redditor backed up their theory, saying "Peele wouldn't rehash a cliche without putting a deeper layer of mystery over it."

Parallel Universes

Being one of the most highly anticipated horror movies comes with an influx of fan theories that range from extremely likely to far-fetched. In contrast with the theory that  Nope stands for "Not Of Planet Earth,"  drewcifier32  suggests an alternative acronym: "that it may stand for Not Our Planet Earth and is a parallel dimension!"

While the inclusion of parallel universes in addition to alien invasions could be excessive for one movie, the concept of the cloud anomaly pulling things through a wormhole is an interesting theory to entertain.

NEXT:  10 Best Horror Movie Fakeouts That Got Us Good

• Nope (2022)

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Nope Reviews

I can’t confidently say that everything works, but most of Peele’s latest feels as experimental and creative as it is simple and fun.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 25, 2024

With unflinching dexterity, Peele and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema juxtapose the terror of encountering a being from beyond with one of the most claustrophobic scenes ever caught on film.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 20, 2024

Nope‘s combination of stellar acting, incredible cinematography and awesome sound design makes this a cinematic experience that’s out of this world.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 15, 2024

Jordan Peele crafted an impressively well-crafted sci-fi flick that while it displays clear homage to classics, feels unlike anything we’ve seen before it.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Jul 12, 2024

Nope is simply put one of the year's best films

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 4, 2024

Jordan Peele’s mind is astonishing. He takes such large concepts and layers them upon each other, building out a metaphorical journey that only deepens with each viewing.

Full Review | Jul 3, 2024

“Nope” is really a story about the underdogs in showbiz trying to survive instead of getting out, but Peele pulls punches when it comes to showing how demented they are in that pursuit.

Full Review | Jun 9, 2024

The supporting players work together in ways that show Peele’s prowess, not only as a visual filmmaker, but as one who casts well and trusts his actors. Nope is a wild ride, and one I can’t wait to take again.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2024

Jordan Peele’s third film captures the terrible beauty of our endless fascination with events no matter how horrific.

Full Review | Oct 4, 2023

Nope, Peele’s third directorial outing, may debut in the horror genre, but there’s more to the brilliant film than audiences’ expectations.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Sep 7, 2023

More stylish than substantial.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Sep 7, 2023

I love all of Jordan's movies so far, but this one might be my favorite just because there's so much to unpack. Every time I think about it I find more things that I need to talk about and it's the gift that keeps giving.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 14, 2023

It's a very layered movie, lot of themes on Hollywood and how it uses people and kinda chews them up and spits them out - figuratively. He [Jordan Peele] is probably one of our best directors today.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Aug 10, 2023

The failure of Nope is partly because of Peele's lack of restraint in terms of mangling together mismatched ideas.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Aug 9, 2023

Although the vision is stronger than the pen this time around, the Spielberg-esque scope is all-embracing, and his craftiness in the individual horror/sci-fi set pieces is utterly remarkable.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jul 29, 2023

As with his previous films, Peele wears his inspirations on his sleeve. This time around he mines heavily from two Spielberg classics, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Jaws.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Jordan Peele takes full advantage of Hoyte van Hoytema's phenomenal cinematography and Michael Abels' memorable score to create a spectacle worthy of the big screen, but it's the sound production that really elevates the movie to that level.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 25, 2023

An almost perfect spectacle that dives into our obsessions with spectacles in our real life. A unique blockbuster that will make you afraid of looking up.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Jordan Peele has made a science fiction thriller that is one of the most visually striking films in recent memory.

Known for his powerful social commentary in US and Get Out, Jordan Peele reinvents the summer blockbuster through a neo-sci-fi western that looks at society’s obsession with spectacle.

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Jordan Peele’s Nope brings chills and thrills, but it’s all empty air

His alien-invasion movie Nope moves away from racial metaphor, but lacks a solid center to replace it

by Robert Daniels

About 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 captivated with breaking into Hollywood. She doesn’t want to be erased like her forefather, or like the other Black creatives who’ve inhabited Hollywood for decades.

Peele’s script should let the audience in on feeling her desire. There’s a justness to her frustration and hope that should prompt a swelling of the heart, or at least a rooting interest. But her rapid-fire pitch to a film crew about her artistic passions flies by so quickly that the audience can barely hold on. Who is Emerald, apart from being a classic showbiz grifter? Peele is only moderately interested in the answer to that question.

Peele’s script perpetually stops short of adding up all the moving parts into a whole

He has greater control in building out the monster component of Nope , though it’s also messy. The simplistic plot first maneuvers through tragedy: Small objects mysteriously tear through the sky, striking and killing OJ and Emerald’s father in the opening scene. From their dad, the pair inherit a ranch sunk deep in debt. They begin selling horses to local Western-themed amusement park owner Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), a former child star who survived a murderous chimp rampage on his television show in the 1990s. On the Haywood ranch, a series of strange occurrences follows the rain of coins and keys: The power zaps out, horses turn wild and sprint into the night, a cacophony of screams amid a visceral soundscape fills the brushland.

When a shocked OJ spots a UFO zipping across the sky, he and Emerald concoct a plan to film the object and use the footage to get themselves rich and possibly famous. Initially, the UFO’s intentions appear unclear: Is it a friend, a foe, or something unknowable? OJ only knows not to look directly at the ship, which it takes as aggression or interest — a major hang-up, considering that the siblings want to film the craft.

It’s important to consider the interest Nope takes in the vapidity of stardom and the machine-grinding ways in which Hollywood reduces creative spirits to shadows of themselves. Jupe surrounds himself with souvenirs from his traumatic television career. The characters, in spite of the danger, can’t help but look at the UFO, because they feel the need to take pictures of it like fans seeking selfies with celebrities. Even a TMZ photographer arrives at the ranch willing to risk his life for a photo. The whole movie is waiting for Peele to propose an incisive vantage on that heavy-handed totemic component, beyond wielding it to one-note ends.

Nope does have its flights of entertainment. The first half is genuinely a fun ride with plenty of gags, as Peele slowly pulls comedy and horror from the same well. The frustration with this alien-invasion story doesn’t reside in the script not providing easy answers. Instead, the obfuscations and unanswered questions are assets. The light details allow Peele to play in a big sandbox of references, from Fire in the Sky to Buck and the Preacher , Saturday Night Live , and a wide gamut of Steven Spielberg’s filmography.

The freedom Peele affords himself allows him to switch the tone and mood on a dime. In one particularly eerie close-encounter scene set in a stable, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema uses framing and dark lighting to foster an edge-of-your-seat dread. The tension is punctured when OJ says the film’s title, sharply dropping the horror elements in search of laughs.

Nope ’s larger issue lies in the ways in which Peele’s script perpetually stops short of adding up all the moving parts into a whole. It feels as though Peele is stuck between trying to craft an entertaining blockbuster monster movie and wanting to carve out greater thematic depth from his fascinating premise. That first impulse makes Nope one of his more approachable films, in terms of its humor and the things it leaves open for interpretation. The latter leaves the burden to Palmer and Kaluuya to create richer interior lives for their characters than Peele can provide. Both actors can sell a sight gag with the best of them, especially Kaluuya, with his deadpan face. And both actors have a real attachment to the people they’re playing, even when they’re left retooling the dialogue’s repetitive beats. Brandon Perea provides further heaps of enjoyment as a geeky IT guy who’s also left underdeveloped as a mere comedic foil.

The film’s unwieldiness could be excused if it weren’t so bloated. The narrative is split into individual chapters that destroy the pacing, particularly in the final half hour. A set-piece where OJ and Emerald bait the UFO closer to their cameras appropriately involves inflatable tube men — no pun intended, but it’s as elongated and overstretched as they are. Peele leans on wish-fulfilling moments that make little logical sense, even within the framework of this movie. The climactic sequence is muted by uneven dialogue through radio chatter, and through the late insertion of an eccentric yet brooding cinematographer character (Michael Wincott) with barely any emotional attachment for the audience. It’s another instance of an attempted swing at a bigger thematic punch that never quite lands because it’s so narrow and surface level.

It would be too much to call Nope a bad movie. Even in Peele’s lack of precision, plenty of good qualities lurk underneath the knottier shortcomings. But this horror flick doesn’t rise to the levels of Get Out or Us , either. It isn’t because in this case, Peele isn’t trying to teach white people to understand the full scope and feeling of racism. It’s because Nope is an idea more than a story. It’s a collection of individually captivating scenes, as opposed to an intriguing whole. It’s a handsome picture, but Peele is far too impressed with its handsomeness to work on populating it with fully felt characters. It might enthrall audiences, and it might frighten them, but it’ll struggle to stay with them after the credits start to roll.

Nope opens in theaters on July 22.

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'Nope' Explained: Every Question About Jordan Peele's Sci-Fi Movie, Answered

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The Big Picture

• Nope is a sci-fi horror film that deconstructs ideas about aliens and explores the concept of spectacle and attention.
• The film follows the Haywood siblings, OJ and Emerald, as they encounter a UFO named Jean Jacket and try to capture it on camera.
• Nope delves into themes of exploitation and the American dream, with Jean Jacket and Ricky "Jupe" Park embodying different interpretations and consequences of the dream.

Beloved writer-director Jordan Peele added his long-awaited third film, Nope , to his collection in the summer of 2022. It is a sci-fi horror film that takes both of those genres to completely new and unprecedented places. Peele said about the film , “It’s a bigger adventure than I’ve ever tried to tell. From a film perspective, by far my most ambitious.” Teaming up with renowned cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema , the two created the first horror film to be shot on IMAX cameras . In typical Peele fashion, Nope induced awe into fans old and new, diverted and exceeded viewers’ expectations, and took over cultural discourse at the time , creating a slew of new conversations to be had about film and our relationship with it.

A man and his sister discover something sinister in the skies above their California horse ranch, while the owner of a nearby theme park tries to profit from the mysterious, otherworldly phenomenon.

What Is 'Nope' About?

Peele has described Nope as a film that tells "the great American UFO story." In countless yet seamless ways, Peele completely deconstructs any ideas the media have presented us about aliens in the past. Nope is an original, atypical alien film that uses the mode of otherworldly forces to explore the idea of the spectacle and “the good and the bad that come from this idea of attention.” The first notion of the spectacle that Peele introduces in Nope is the discussion surrounding the first moving picture ever created by Eadweard Muybridge in the 19th century.

This is mentioned because the black jockey who was riding the horse in those photographs has been seen by all but goes unnamed throughout history, while the white photographer lives in infamy. The even more personal connection to this is that the jockey was the great-great-great grandfather of Nope ’s two protagonists, siblings OJ Haywood ( Daniel Kaluuya ) and Emerald Haywood ( Keke Palmer ) . This concept of the spectacle quickly grows larger than life as it takes a variety of forms throughout Nope that all revolve around exploitation. The theme of spectacle is also personified by the central threat or "monster" of the film, which appears to be a UFO that is inhabiting the skies above the valleys in Agua Dulce, California , and more closely, the Haywood ranch. It consumes through an orifice that appears to be both mouth and eye, a thing that consumes as it perceives.

Take, for example, the footage that plays behind the credits: a view from Jean Jacket's rectangular, lens-like eye, pointed at the ground below. The uncanny rectangular eye was emphasized even more fully in the creature's final form , a clear part of Peele's vision according to Caltech engineering professor John Dabiri in an interview with Thrillist , who consulted on the creature. "He really wanted that rectangular geometry for the eye, that flapping motion. You don't typically see that too much in biology, those really regular features, but, in a sense, I think that was intentional here," he notes. In the opening credits, the view from the eye is immediately transitioned into the Muybridge footage.

We see the first man ever onscreen, the unnamed rider, whose cinematic legacy became merely the anonymous subject of the first-ever motion picture. He was, in effect, both observed and consumed by the camera. As Peele explains in an interview with Empire , “ The part of African-American history that this addresses more than anything is the spectacle-isation of Black people, as well as the erasure of us, from the industry, from many things.” In this vein, he details "We know who Eadweard Muybridge is, the man who created the clip, but we don’t know who this guy on the horse is. He’s the first movie star, the first animal trainer, the first stunt rider ever on film, and no-one knows who he is! That erasure is part of what the lead characters in this movie are trying to correct. They’re trying to claim their rightful place as part of the spectacle." They reclaim the consumption power of the lens by filming Jean Jacket themselves, rather than being another mere victim, consumed and spit out by the camera.

Who Are the Characters in 'Nope'?

Jean jacket.

Let’s start off with the elephant in the room: the giant flying alien that the whole movie is about, Jean Jacket. Named by the Haywoods after one of their old horses, Jean Jacket is the UFO that is haunting the valley of Agua Dulce, eating anything and everything in its wake . For nearly the entirety of Nope , viewers see Jean Jacket storming the skies in saucer form. It looks exactly like the most classic flying saucer: Large, silver, and disc-shaped. As Nope progresses, viewers learn alongside the film's characters that it is not a spacecraft with other creatures on it at all. Jean Jacket is a single entity and is the creature/alien itself in its entirety . It's a predator that consumes whatever it can suck into the sky. The audience doesn't know how intelligent Jean Jacket truly is, though it does have camouflage, and can tell when (and gets angry if) it's being observed — mere eye contact with the creature attracts its ire . It's also not clear how exactly it sees, but from the few brief scenes we have from Jean Jacket's perspective — like the aforementioned opening credit footage where we see through what seems to be its perspective — it seems like that central orifice may be both its mouth (it's how it sucks up prey) and connected to its vision of said prey.

At the very end of the film, we get to see Jean Jacket morph into its true form. It expands and re-creates itself, opening up from the inside out into an extremely large creature whose final form looks as far as possible from the saucer we once saw . This creature subverts alien imagery in an extremely innovative way. Some have compared its look to that of a biblical angel for it resembles having a vast silky wing span as it moves through the sky. In this form, the creature's central orifice appears more clearly as a sort of square, camera lens-like 'eye' as it majestically unfurls into its full shape, cementing Jean Jacket's characteristics as a sky-based predator who is always watching.

OJ Haywood and Emerald Haywood

The dynamic duo at the forefront of the film are the Haywood siblings, OJ and Emerald. At the beginning of Nope , their father, Otis Haywood (Keith David) experiences a very mysterious death one day. After his passing, OJ and Emerald were left to continue their father’s legacy, running the family business as the only black-owned horse trainers in Hollywood. Growing up, OJ worked very closely with his father when it came to horse training and handling. This led him to have a deep understanding and compassion for the animals. He is the more serious and reserved sibling whose body language and facial expressions do most of the talking for him. In contrast, his younger sister Emerald is charismatic and exuberant, confident of being her true self in any situation.

Every Jordan Peele Movie, Ranked

Should any of Us avoid these movies and Get Out of their way? Nope.

Emerald didn’t get the horse training that OJ received from their father . So, while she is dedicated to the family business, she finds that she also needs a means of expression and income outside of horse handling for films. Between the two of them, there is a real “team” energy and sibling spark. Despite their differences, their bond with each other can be felt in any scene. Once they begin to experience Jean Jacket’s presence in the skies over their ranch, the two band together, deciding that they will do whatever it takes to get photographic evidence of this beast. Together, they begin crafting plans to get the perfect money shot of Jean Jacket, what they call “the Oprah shot.” With this shot they plan to kill two birds with one stone: they can show the world the creature that has been tormenting them, and they can sell the extraordinary footage for millions of dollars. Before this, OJ was trying to accrue some money by selling horses to his neighbor, Ricky “Jupe” Park ( Steven Yeun ), who lives in the same Agua Dulce valley, just down the road from the Haywoods.

Ricky “Jupe” Park

Although the Haywood siblings are the film's main characters, in many ways, Ricky “Jupe” Park is the core character of Nope , for his backstory, and the current life that he leads personify the main themes that Nope discusses. “Jupe” Park is a washed-up child star who is desperately clinging to fame and relevance by running a self-exploitative theme park called "Jupiter's Claim" based on a film he was in in the '90s. Having resided in the Agua Dulce valley for a while, Jupe has encountered Jean Jacket the UFO and learned that Jean Jacket likes to eat horses.

At his theme park, Jupe runs a live show called “The Starlight Lasso Experience.” During the show, Jupe summons Jean Jacket. To do this, he buys horses from the Haywood ranch, and unbeknownst to the Haywoods, Jupe uses them as sacrificial bait for Jean Jacket to come down and eat the horses in front of a live audience. Through this endeavor, he exploits both the horses and the UFO in an attempt to maintain the admiration of an audience that he received throughout his childhood. The theme park is not just about "Kid Sheriff," the film Jupe was in as a child. In Jupe’s office, there is a secret back room dedicated to a sitcom called "Gordy’s Home!", which was the show in which Jupe got his television beginnings. This room is a mini-museum full of rare memorabilia from the show that Jupe charges expensive entry fees to fans to look inside.

Gordy the Chimp

The audience, without knowing it, gets their first look at "Gordy’s Home!" at the very beginning of Nope when there is an unexplained horrifying scene showing a chimp covered in blood, eating someone’s guts on a TV set . There is also a focus on a mysterious shoe that is floating perfectly upright on the ground behind the bloody chimp. There is no knowing that Jupe is connected to this incident until a bit later in the film. Fast-forward, Jupe has a meeting with OJ about horses that Jupe has purchased from the Haywoods. During this meeting, OJ is trying to buy some horses back from Jupe. Jupe, knowing that he has fed the horses to the UFO and cannot give them back, quickly diverts the conversation to his secret back room of "Gordy’s Home!" memorabilia. Here is when audiences are connected back to the first scene in Nope , as Jupe tells the Haywoods a pivotal story from when he starred in the show.

It turns out that when the chimpanzee actor went on the killing spree on the TV set, Jupe was on the set as well, and watched all the terror unravel right before his pre-pubescent eyes. What happened was, in the episode of "Gordy’s Home!" that was being filmed, it was Gordy the chimp’s birthday. Gordy was gifted some balloons, one of them popped, and that sound irreversibly triggered Gordy to act upon his animal instincts. This resulted in Gordy going on a rampage and killing and maiming many cast members of the show ; most notably a young girl who was Jupe’s co-star, Mary Jo ( Sophia Coto ) who ended up surviving, but with many injuries to her face . While this was happening, young Jupe was hiding underneath a table, barely breathing, or moving a muscle to try and not trigger the chimp to kill him too. The table Jupe was under had a slightly see-through tablecloth hanging over the table’s edge that Jupe was watching everything through.

Eventually, Gordy made his way over to the table that Jupe was hiding under. He was hovering around it very slowly and looking at Jupe through the other side of the tablecloth. This tablecloth ended up being Jupe’s saving grace for it prevented him from making direct eye contact with Gordy and setting him off. Right as Gordy was reaching to give Jupe a fist-pound, he got shot down by his handler. Jupe retells this whole story to OJ and Emerald Haywood when they are in his office. He tells it with an eerie combination of a stone-cold and comedic tone that perpetuates the idea that this highly tragic event was actually a spectacle to tell of for years to come. Meanwhile, the flashbacks the audience sees as Jupe recounts the tale are clearly monstrous and grim. Especially for a child to have witnessed and to then be boasting about later in adult life.

Jupe now believes that his survival of this near-death encounter with a wild animal is a miracle. Though, he wrongly attributed his survival to him being a “chosen one” of higher powers. The suspicious vertical shoe of Jupe’s co-star floating up-right in the background gave Jupe more fuel to believe that whatever greater energy caused Gordy to snap was the same one that allowed him to live that day. He internalized from that day forward that he must have an innate, impenetrable connection to greater forces in the universe like aliens and wild animals that would keep him out of harm's way. This directly ties into Jupe’s decisions to interfere with Jean Jacket and try to tame it by sacrificing others to it for his own profits.

Angel Torres

Angel Torres ( Brandon Perea ) is a young tech-wiz who works at a local electronics chain. He hates his job and has a pretty “over-it” attitude. We learn this quickly due to his prompt admission that his girlfriend recently broke up with him, leaving him feeling confused and heartbroken. The Haywoods meet Angel at the electronics store when they go in to buy cameras to begin recording Jean Jacket. Angel notices they are getting some pretty high-tech equipment and insists on coming over to install it. When at the ranch to help the Haywoods with the cameras, Angel makes himself at home there, trying to get as comfortable as possible with the Haywoods to uncover what exactly it is they’re doing with the cameras . He makes a joke that doubles as prodding to them, asking if they’re filming any aliens. They don’t give him the time of day, but after he pushes his knowledge about both tech equipment and aliens onto the Haywoods, they accept him and let him in more on the happenings with Jean Jacket. Soon after, he becomes an established member of the Jean-Jacket-Footage-Initiative, helping the Haywoods in their mission of getting their “Oprah shot.”

Antlers Holst

"Wizened grouchy cinematographer" Antlers Holst ( Michael Wincott ) is a cinematographer whom the Haywoods meet on a Hollywood set that they are providing horses for at the start of Nope . Once the Haywoods start getting into the thick of their encounters with Jean Jacket, they reach out to Holst for film expertise. Holst agrees to help the Haywoods when he hears that they are trying to get the legendary, perfect shot of Jean Jacket. Holst quickly becomes consumed by the idea that he may be the one to record this elite footage. Getting carried away by the plan they have all made to capture Jean Jacket on camera, Holst begins to follow his own agenda instead. With his camera recording in stride, Holst goes out into the valley in plain sight of Jean Jacket and gets obliterated by the alien as he essentially takes his own life for filming's sake .

Who Is the Real Villain in 'Nope'?

It can be argued that Jean Jacket is the villain of Nope for directly terrorizing the Haywoods and all the people in the surrounding area. Jean Jacket is a predator, after all, consuming horses and the audience at Jupe's show alike, and it's certainly intelligent enough to disguise itself and know when it's being observed or challenged. Since Nope is an exploration of bourgeois spectacle and its predatory potential, it's fitting that Jean Jacket's consumption is so tied to its perception, elevating its status as a villain since it ties into those thematic elements.

It can also be argued that Jupe is the villain for exploiting not only himself but also Jean Jacket, and all the horses he fed to the alien. In essence, Jupe learned the wrong lesson from his childhood tragedy with Gordy. When the bloody, post-rampage Gordy notices Jupe observing him, it doesn't attack: it gives him their well-practiced fist bump. Gordy appears to have taken home the lesson that a predator can be, perhaps not tamed, but placated and utilized for fame and fortune (just like how his subsequent career was built on the Gordy tragedy). It's behavior he tries to replicate with Jean Jacket, appeasing and 'feeding' the otherworldly beast to coax it out for larger-than-life performances. What Jupe doesn't get is that he survived as a child by luck, essentially, and if you try and tame a wild predator, you're putting yourself in the gravest of dangers. Jean Jacket and Jupe’s relationship can further serve as heavy symbolism for the American dream (all Jupe's errors come from the starriest of starry eyes) and how that can often be the true villain based on society’s varying interpretations of what that's supposed to mean, and, more importantly, what the idea of the American dream drives people to do.

Is 'Nope' Scary?

There's a lot about Nope t hat will surely put audiences on the edge of their seat with fear and anticipation at some point during the film, if not many points, or the whole thing. Jean Jacket, as an aggressive, predatory extraterrestrial creature, who inhales as much as it can physically handle, makes for a scary, otherworldly monster in the film . It hides among the clouds, descends from the sky, and has a variety of otherworldly stages that are beyond anything we know in our world (as well as affecting electricity and getting really angry when we perceive it). The beast's final transformation reveals how little we really understand about its nature and power.

What also proved to be frightful and unsettling in Nope are the ways in which certain events can truly change a person's character, or, have them act on their truest, darkest sides. Through this, audiences see how easy it is for humans to take traumatizing events in their lives or around them and flip them on their heads , wielding them for personal gain. Ricky "Jupe" Park exemplifies this best, both in his ability to justify and make a living from his childhood tragedy and his manipulation of that moment into his later attempts to commodify the incomprehensible predator.

Who Dies in 'Nope'?

Early in Nope , the first sign that all is not well on the Haywood ranch that viewers get is when Otis Haywood dies in an inexplicable way. Just about in the middle of Nope , Jupe is hosting his show “The Starlight Lasso Experience” when Jean Jacket decides not to take the usual horse bait, and instead, inhales everyone in the audience of the show, most of the attractions of the theme park, and Ricky “Jupe” Park and his co-star, Mary Jo, who was in the audience as well, finding their fate together in the belly of the beast. Later, when the Haywoods are executing their long-winded plan to lure Jean Jacket close to them in order to get footage of it, an indistinguishable man on a motorcycle appears.

It turns out that he is a TMZ reporter, looking for his own claim to fame by trying to get his own footage of the alien. He is unsuccessful, falling victim to the hungry clutches of Jean Jacket just like cinematographer Antlers Holst. Many horses also died at the mouth of Jean Jacket, but at the end of Nope , Jean Jacket itself also dies. After trying to eat a giant balloon of a cartoon Jupiter, Jean Jacket is unable to digest the balloon, and it implodes in the sky. Before Jean Jacket disbands itself, Emerald gets the “Oprah shot” of it on an old-fashioned well camera that was a part of Jupiter’s Claim . The camera, which is located at the bottom of a well, captures the image of what is directly above it, and lucky for the Haywoods, Jean Jacket was perfectly positioned over the well for just a moment.

What Does 'Nope' Mean for Jordan Peele Movies Moving Forward?

Since Nope ’s release, themes that audiences have been eagerly unpacking are speculation, exploitation, and what part we as humans play in the preservation of these behaviors. In this age where social media aggressively dominates all of our lives, Nope has helped to demonstrate how nobody is free of charge when it comes to engaging with spectacles, and how different people’s engagement with the spectacle is indicative of just how large the spectrum of exploitation can be. Considering the ever-constantly expanding scope of Peele's films , he will have no problem curating the team and budget he desires to make his next idea come to life. And we already can't wait for it!

Nope is streaming on Prime Video in the U.S.

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• Breaking Down the Meaning of Jordan Peele’s <i>Nope</i>

Breaking Down the Meaning of Jordan Peele’s Nope

L eading up to its release on July 22, Jordan Peele kept his highly-anticipated third film, Nope , tightly under wraps. The trailer is little more than a spooky montage of dark forces and craning necks, and Peele was very cagey about what happens in the movie in the few interviews he’s given. His elusiveness sparked a whole host of wild fan theories and predictions: that the movie is about government drones, or time travelers, or the MMA fighter Angela Hill .

Well, two TIME reporters saw the film—and walked out of it with even more theories and questions than when we walked in. Nope, which is available to stream on Peacock as of Nov. 18 as well as to rent on other digital platforms, is a transfixing and hugely ambitious movie with a perplexing array of disparate characters and symbols: a murderous chimp, inflatable dancing men, a flying saucer. By the time the film has ended, the A-plot has resolved itself neatly. But in the two packed theaters where we screened the film, theatergoers remained silent and still as the credits rolled, suggesting some sort of confusion, or at least unease, with the whole thing.

As TIME’s film critic Stephanie Zacharek put it , “Peele, it seems, is one of those ‘It means what you think it means’ filmmakers, which delights some audiences but comes off as a copout for viewers who want to know what a filmmaker is thinking, because ostensibly those thoughts are more interesting than anything we could come up with on our own.”

So, just like the movie’s characters, we’ll try to interpret what we’ve seen before us while mixing in grandiose conspiracy theories to answer one big question: What, exactly, is Nope about? Spoilers, of course, abound.

Nope is simply a summer monster movie

Jordan Peele’s movies beg to be closely scrutinized: they’re full of historical and cultural Easter eggs, double meanings and sociopolitical commentary. His first two films, Get Out and Us , have provoked endless analysis from professors, psychologists, and historians, with Get Out even inspiring a whole class at UCLA. Peele isn’t shy about his conceptual ambition and his penchant for writing Big Themes into genre storytelling: “Humanity is the monster in my films,” he told Vanity Fair in 2017.

But in the last few months, Peele has signaled that Nope is different in that regard, that his intentions may be more visceral and surface-level. “I wrote it in a time when we were a little bit worried about the future of cinema,” Peele said. “So the first thing I knew is I wanted to create a spectacle… the great American UFO story .”

And after watching Nope , it’s easy to read it purely as a summer popcorn movie; a break from what critics might perceive as heavy-handed didacticism. The main plot of the film is simple, slotting neatly into a thriller/horror lineage of a group of good guys trying to kill a scary monster. (See: Jaws , Alien , The Thing .)

Late in the movie, Daniel Kaluuya’s OJ lays out the monster’s motivations very clearly: “It’s alive, it’s territorial, and it wants to eat us.” This mute, faceless monster doesn’t seem to be a stand-in for, say, Manifest Destiny or global warming: it’s simply a vehicle for making audiences shriek, riffing on a rich cinematic history of UFOs, and capturing gorgeous shots of the expansive SoCal desert sky.

Peele spares no expense in that last regard: he hired cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, who shot Christopher Nolan epics like Dunkirk and Interstellar , to film this one using IMAX cameras. The director has made it very easy for audiences to get wrapped up in the film’s visual beauty and heart-racing motorcycle-driven set pieces; to mostly turn off their Hot Take brains and enjoy a furious battle for survival.

Nope—it’s actually a parable about the power of cinema

But for characters battling a giant sky monster that eats people, they spend an awful lot of time primarily worried about… filming it?

It seems like a quarter of all movies that make it into theaters these days are so-called “love letters to Hollywood” (see: La La Land , Mank , Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood, Licorice Pizza ). Nope repeatedly gestures toward that subgenre. The movie is very clearly attempting to place itself within several cinematic lineages: Western, horror, sci-fi, buddy-comedy. The very first shot takes place on a Hollywood television set (albeit during the rampage of a murderous chimp). Easter egg references to film history abound, whether in the form of OJ’s Scorpion King hoodie or his Buck and the Preacher poster.

But the characters aren’t just fans of movies: they’re obsessed with the act of filming and documenting life. For OJ, Emerald (Keke Palmer), and Angel (Brandon Perea), the UFO only truly exists if they’ve captured it on film. They spend the first half of the movie interacting with it mostly through screens, as if poring over their own Zapruder tape. They set up a wildly ambitious obstacle course—complete with those wacky inflatable men—not to physically capture the beast but to use the footage as their golden ticket to becoming Hollywood royalty.

The movie’s climax goes even further in centering the act of filmmaking. As the monster floats off into the sky, Emerald unleashes a giant inflatable balloon cowboy—a definitive symbol of Classic Hollywood if there ever was one—as an airbound weapon, then furiously snaps her camera as she repeatedly attempts to get one perfect shot.

It’s a curious and self-serving twist on the “final shoot-out” trope, with a film roll replacing bullets. In the battle between good and evil, the film seems to be saying, it’s the actual art of filmmaking, combined with the ingenuity of filmmakers harnessing the power of Hollywood heroes, that might be humanity’s last hope.

However, there’s another way of interpreting the movie not as a love letter, but as an outright condemnation of Hollywood instead. More on that later.

Nope —i t’s a critique of surveillance culture

We’re still not entirely sure what the gaping organ on the underbelly of our UFO-turned-predator is (a mouth? An eye? Both?), but it certainly does seem to be watching us. OJ pieces this together, too, when he interrupts a burger run to posit that maybe the creature—like a horse—spooks at direct eye contact. It wants to watch, never to be watched. And Jupe (Steven Yeun) gets close to the point when he announces to the crowd at his amusement park that “We are being surveilled by an alien species I call the Viewers.” (Maybe the one thing Jupe was right about, poor guy.)

“Surveillance” is a weighty term here, given its history and significance in relation to policing the Black community . If the alien is, in fact, always watching them from inside that cloud, then the Haywoods’ ranch starts to feel a bit like a panopticon—a central observation tower within a ring of prison cells. To the prisoners, it feels like someone is constantly watching them, and all sense of privacy is lost. In her book Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness , Simone Browne draws a comparison between the panopticon and slave ships: Both institutions police and dehumanize people, creating a system of power and control.

But when OJ whips out his cell phone—a tool often used to document police brutality —to record the kids pranking him in the barn, he’s turning the tables on the threat at hand. And when Angel helps the Haywoods install security cameras on their property, the watched become the watchers, reasserting their power. By capturing evidence of the creature, they’re ensuring that they will be believed—and that they can control the narrative. So when Emerald snaps that last, sweat-stained photo on the Winkin’ Well , maybe that’s a win, pushing back against surveillance culture.

Nope — it’s about Black historical documentation

Or maybe that Winkin’ Well photo has a different meaning entirely.

Toward the beginning of the movie, Emerald explains to a sound stage full of people that her great-great (great) grandfather was the jockey who was the subject of the first known assembly of photographs creating a motion picture. Those photos were assembled by Eadweard Muybridge, known by many as the “ forefather of cinema .” The name of the jockey, however, remains unknown. “We’ve got the first movie star of all time,” Peele told GQ . “And it’s a Black man we don’t know. We haven’t looked. In a lot of ways, the movie became a response to that first film.”

When OJ and Emerald embark on a quest to record the alien, then, maybe they’re seeking to document history, leaving their own indelible mark in the textbooks.

“Ain’t nobody gonna get what we gonna get,” Emerald tells her brother inside Fry’s Electronics. “What we gonna get?” OJ asks. “The money shot,” Emerald replies. “Undeniable proof of aliens on camera. The Oprah shot.” Securing the Oprah shot would cement the Haywoods’ place in history—which should have already been established, given the family lineage. The act of “archiving while Black,” as the academic Ashley Farmer has put it, can be inherently radical, as Black scholars, historians and activists historically have been shut out of the preservation of their own history.

The Haywood siblings make a false step in Nope , when they entrust the documentation of the creature to the eccentric filmmaker Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), who Emerald claims is the only person in the world who can get it on film, and who happens to be white.

As OJ ducks for cover inside a structure with walls made out of wooden slats, a horse gallops by in the background, evoking the praxinoscope feel of the Muybridge clip. Then we’re treated to the remake itself, the pièce de résistance: a gorgeous sequence of OJ galloping through the arid, stark landscape of Southern California, recreating and reclaiming his great-great-great-grandfather’s legacy.

“It’s about taking up that space,” Peele told GQ . “It’s about existing. It’s about acknowledging the people who were erased in the journey to get here.”

Then Antlers is gone, leaving Emerald as the last woman standing to capture this slice of history for both her family and the world at large. And with every last ounce of energy—and frankly impressive upper body strength—she succeeds, snapping the Oprah shot on the trusty ol’ Winkin’ Well.

Nope — Nope is about capitalism

You knew we’d end up here, didn’t you?

By now, it’s a cliche to yell “late stage capitalism!” about pieces of media that even reference economic structures or wage labor. But bear with us here: When you zoom out, it becomes evident that the throughline of each of Nope ’s subplots is the grave danger of wrangling the untameable into a for-profit spectacle.

First, it’s the Haywood family, whose entire legacy rests upon converting majestic stallions into show ponies to be ridden by washed-up actresses in commercials. Next, it’s the creators of Gordy’s Home , who chased viewership ratings so blindly, they ignored the Chekhov’s Ape about to detonate on his poor castmates.

The Gordy massacre clearly had a traumatic effect on poor Jupe, who witnessed his castmates getting mauled firsthand. But society taught him that the tragedy was something to be mined for commerce and comedy: We’re sure Chris Kattan killed in the SNL sketch that Jupe describes. And as a child actor, Jupe never knew anything else. It’s his Stockholm Syndrome, chained as he is to Hollywood ideals, that makes him attempt to turn the UFO into his new Gordy—because even in the worst case bloody scenario, maybe a good SNL skit and a few thousand bucks will come out of it.

Jupe’s attitude of embracing risk for the sake of success isn’t the exception, but the status quo. For the Haywood siblings, filming the UFO is the key to their family’s very survival. (It’s not like OJ could take bereavement leave after his father’s death.) In their near-suicidal quest to monetize the monster, they’re not all that different from the TMZ cameraman who begs for OJ to save his footage as he lays dying in the dirt.

This theme directly taps into that of two of Hollywood’s classic monster movies, King Kong and Jurassic Park : that the masses’ desire for believably terrifying and titillating spectacles can only end in disaster. And as long as tickets are sold, there are those like Jupe or the cinematographer Antlers who will happily create deathly shows. The line between obsessive craftsmanship and obsessive commerce-creation becomes nearly indistinguishable, as they each lead to the same violent ends.

Watching Antlers die, it’s hard not to think of Halyna Hutchins, the real-life cinematographer who was shot to death by accident last year on a New Mexico film shoot of an Alec Baldwin Western. On that shoot, crew workers had complained of safety lapses and unsafe working conditions due to a tight budget and strict productivity mandates. The incident brought to light a long history of fatal accidents on film sets, often stemming from producers cutting corners to save money. With this history in mind, the characters’ attitudes of film-above-life leaves a very sour taste, and calls into question every one of their actions.

Peele himself leaves a very strong hint toward this interpretation’s veracity in the film’s first frame, which shows a grim Bible quote from the prophet Nahum: “I will cast abominable filth at you, make you vile, make you a spectacle.” Nahum says this to justify the destruction of the city of Nineveh, which he argues is overrun by sin and vice, and must be cleansed. Peele’s UFO monster, then, can be read as making a moral judgment from on high of humanity’s obsession with money and spectacle—and raining down upon them filth and blood as punishment.

Nope. We’re overthinking it

But the question remains: Do we have to have our cake and eat it too? Do we need both a big, fun summer monster movie and a treatise on the follies of capitalism in Hollywood? Or can we just let Jordan Peele enjoy his cake: a well-deserved dessert after the daring, draining concepts of Get Out and Us ?

Both of Nope’s forerunners delved deep into dark places. The Sunken Place and the Tethered—though central to two timeless cinematic masterpieces—demanded a lot of both Peele and his viewers. The Haywood ranch, on the other hand, infuses this film with sheer thrills, edge-of-your-seat terror and the joy that can accompany it. “There’s also a way to watch this movie where you say, ‘Look, I’ve been working all day, all week,’” Peele told Uproxx . “’I want to shut off and see some wild stuff.’”

Peele, as he’s proven time and time again, is a master of cinematography and filmmaking. Maybe we should step back from all of the overanalysis (as fun as it may be) and just let him do what he does best: make one hell of a movie.

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'Nope' review: Jordan Peele takes UFOs for a successful spin with Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer

Yep, it was a good idea for Jordan Peele to have the keys to a flying saucer movie.

The subtly ambitious “Nope” (★★★ out of four; rated R; in theaters Friday) trades the writer/director’s penchant for horror – where he’s become one of the most important new voices in recent years – for some old-fashioned sci-fi terror and full-on big-screen spectacle.

Teamed again with his “Get Out” star Daniel Kaluuya and bringing a great Keke Palmer along for the ride, Peele takes sizable swings with themes amid a tasty slushie of familiar film flavors, from dark Spielbergian wizardry to wonky Tarantino Western to B-movie chills.

'Nope': Jordan Peele explains meaning behind his mysterious new movie's title

The introverted OJ Haywood (Kaluuya) and his mercurial little sister Emerald (Palmer) are Hollywood horse wranglers living on a remote California ranch. Their business is struggling six months after the untimely death of their father (Keith David), a victim of a strange downpour of coins and metal. And things are getting weirder in this dusty gulch for them and Ricky “Jupe” Park ( Steven Yeun ), a former child actor with a tragic backstory who runs the neighboring amusement park.

While Jupe readies for a major new attraction, OJ begins to notice a weirdness on the ground and in the sky. His horses start going missing. A cloud sits still and doesn’t move. Then a strange airborne object zooms around with otherworldly speed.

10 must-see movies coming out this summer: From 'Top Gun: Maverick' to 'Thor: Love and Thunder'

Wondering if aliens are involved, he and Emerald decide they need proof (and the financial windfall that might come with it), so the siblings enlist the help of an overeager tech guy (Brandon Perea) and a grizzled filmmaker (Michael Wincott).

“Nope” isn’t a particularly scary UFO film but is effectively unnerving. Peele plays with his audience in devilish ways before going big and bold with the visuals (particularly Hoyte van Hoytema’s dazzling cinematography) as well as the white-knuckle tension. Just don’t go in expecting “Get Out” or “Us” : Peele’s first two standouts are focused in human explorations, whereas “Nope” is more scattershot with its storytelling. The filmmaker touches on an array of subplots and intriguing ideas (the dangerous indifference of show business, mankind’s disparate reactions to a life-altering situation) but attempts too many between a visceral, gripping first half and the more conventional and rousing second.

Pandemic style: How Daniel Kaluuya slayed (and saved) Hollywood's red carpet season

The supporting characters are a mixed bag: Perea’s frazzled geek-squad dude adds to the movie’s dark humor, though Yeun’s modern P.T. Barnum is an interesting soul not developed enough. But the dynamic of Kaluuya and Palmer power “Nope” just as much as the overarching mysteries.

OJ is a laconic sort yearning to keep his family’s legacy going, Emerald sees the ranch as low priority on her list of side hustles, yet both grow on you in their slow-burn reconnection. Palmer especially is a fountain of magnetic energy, and Kaluuya, like usual, leaves his heart right on screen. He also gets one of the most sensational little moments, in a scene that essentially gives the movie its whimsical title.

With "Nope," Peele showcases a new sense of blockbuster flair while maintaining his signature gift for twisted modern relevance.

'The Gray Man' review: Even Ryan Gosling and evil Chris Evans can't save Netflix's so-so spy film

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Nope review: Space is the place in Jordan Peele's subversive sci-fi update

Don't look up: The fertile mind behind Get Out and Us explores unfriendly skies — and more earthbound threats — in his far-out latest.

In the arid, IP-fatigued movie landscape of 2022, Jordan Peele feels like some kind of unicorn: an auteur filmmaker whose mere presence above the title elicits a kind of collective thrill in both audiences and critics that no mad multiverse or reanimated dinosaurs can really match. And he's essentially done it with just two films over five years, cementing his signature style — spooky, high-concept, socially astute — with a speed and clarity of purpose that most directors take half a lifetime to nail down.

Nope (in theaters July 22) arrives accordingly with no small set of expectations, and not a little bit of mystery: The 35 million-plus people who have viewed at least one of two versions of the trailer online will come in with the idea that it is perhaps a play on an old-school UFO movie, or at least something vaguely extraterrestrial. And they know that it marks a reunion with his Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya , who is now, like Peele , an Oscar winner . (They've both still been under-served by the Academy, but that's a story for another time.)

It's also the first lead role of this caliber for Keke Palmer , a onetime Nickelodeon kid whose prickly, dynamic presence on the sidelines of films like 2019's Hustlers seemed to beg for a bigger closeup. Here, she gets to hold the restless center of nearly every scene she's in as Emerald Haywood, the showboating sister of Kaluuya's more cautious, introspective Otis Junior. Otis Senior (Keith David) is not long for this world, or at least this screen: He dies in the opening scene, felled by some mysterious space-junk detritus that drops from the sky one day on the family's ranch outside Los Angeles. ("What's a bad miracle, they got a word for that?" OJ asks ruefully at one point, looking like he already knows the answer.) The Haywoods hail from generations who, as Emerald brightly explains to a roomful of blank-eyed industry types, helped bring horse-training to Hollywood, earning an inaugural place for Black wranglers in movie lore.

That and five dollars won't buy them a bag of carrots, though, if they can't get their stallions to behave on a green screen. And even back at the ranch, the livestock still seem spooked. But aren't animals always the first to know when something's off? There's a man named Ricky "Jupe" Park ( Minari' s Steven Yeun) , busy running his own hustle at a retro Western-themed amusement park down the road, who may have ideas about the strange weather hanging over the valley. Jupe was once a child star himself, until something went terribly wrong with a chimpanzee on a sitcom set more than 20 years ago; now he works a sort of rhinestone-cowboy shtick with his wife and kids, though he's always eager to revisit the old glory days if somebody asks, or even if they don't.

Revealing much more about what follows seems like an unnecessary spoiler, though it also feels fair to say that Peele has never leaned this close to early Spielberg (or if you're feeling less charitable, mid-period M. Night Shyamalan). His screenplay — threaded through with flashbacks and unhurried character moments — is for a long time a tease, both elliptical and explicit when it comes to the central mystery, though it's clear he's absorbed a lifetime of Close Encounters lore, and much darker visitations too. The casting, as always, is on point: Palmer's Emerald is loose and funny and kinetically alive, the kind of final-girl hero most scary movies only feint at creating, and Kaluuya remains one of the most fascinatingly interior actors to watch on screen. His OJ doesn't speak much and often moves even less, but there's so much going on within him that the eye never wanders; his stillness is a centrifugal force.

The wide-lens cinematography, by Hoyte Van Hoytema ( Interstellar , Dunkirk ), is gorgeously expansive, and Michael Abel's score clatters and shivers. The prevailing mood is a looming, sun-drenched tension (as in Ari Aster's Midsommar , daylight doesn't signal safety here). For all of the film's escalating supernatural events, though, what's less clearly drawn, and will likely prove less satisfying to a plot-hungry public, are the whys and hows of its conclusion. Peele's scripts have always felt like meta-text; this one toggles between classic genre stuff and a deliberately fragmented play on certain all-American tropes — flying saucers, sitcoms, jump-scare terror — filtered through a fresh, keenly self-aware lens. As a sci-fi fable, Nope feels both more slippery and less viscerally satisfying than the relatively straightforward horror of Get Out or even 2019's Us , but it still sticks. The truth is out there, or up there, in that curiously immovable cloud that looms like a cotton-ball anvil above the Haywood ranch; it's Peele's prerogative to build his world below it, and leave the rest. Grade: B+

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‘nope’ review: jordan peele’s rapturous and suspenseful sci-fi ride.

A menacing force threatens a Southern California horse ranch in the director’s third film, starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer and Steven Yeun.

By Lovia Gyarkye

Lovia Gyarkye

Arts & Culture Critic

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Nope , Jordan Peele ’s latest offering, slinks and slithers from the clutches of snap judgment. It avoids the comfort of tidy conclusions too. This elusive third feature from the director of Get Out and Us peacocks its ambitions (and budget) while indulging in narrative tangents and detours. It is sprawling and vigorous. Depending on your appetite for the heady and sonorous, it will either feel frustratingly perplexing or strike you as a work of unquestionable genius.

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Release date: Friday, July 22 (Universal) Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott, Brandon Perea, Keith David Director-screenwriter: Jordan Peele

Even when parts of it don’t jell, Nope is a rapturous watch. This film, about a pair of sibling horse wranglers who encounter an uncanny force on their ranch, covers a wide range of themes: Hollywood’s obsession with and addiction to spectacle, the United States’ inurement to violence, the siren call of capitalism, the legacy of the Black cowboy and the myth of the American West. Aided by a strong cast, led impressively by Daniel Kaluuya , Keke Palmer , Steven Yeun and Brandon Perea, Peele plunges us into a cavernous, twisted reality.

Agua Dulce is a serene tract of Southern California, where large, billowy clouds appear to caress the tips of sandy, burnt-orange mountains. It’s also home to Otis Haywood Jr. (Kaluuya), or O.J. for short, and his father ( Keith David ). The two men spend their days caring for their stable of mares and stallions and running Haywood Hollywood Horses, the oldest Black-owned horse training service in the industry. After his father dies in a strange accident, O.J., a quiet wrangler, reunites with his estranged sister Emerald (Palmer), or Em, to inherit the business.

Em arrives to the shoot late, but her energy is infectious. She loves the spotlight and hungers for easy routes to fame. Most of the on-set crew are immediately taken by her boisterous energy, her toothy grin and talk-show-host delivery of fun facts: Did you know that the Haywoods are the direct descendants of the unnamed Black jockey in Eadweard Muybridge’s 1878 The Race Horse , the first film ever made? Now you do.

Behind Em stands a tortured O.J., gripping the reins of his horse. In a later scene, he admonishes Em for her style, for promoting her multihyphenate career (actor-singer-stuntperson). Em reminds him that running the ranch is her side gig, not her dream. The Haywood siblings’ relationship bears obvious scars of past wounds, but Peele shortchanges audiences when it comes to why. Their suspicious communication style establishes their inability to work as a team, but the characters themselves would have benefited from greater depth and dimension. Kaluuya and an equally impressive Palmer wring as much as they can from O.J. and Em, but they needed another scene or two to burrow into the precipitating events of their fractured relationship.

When O.J. and Em begin piecing together why strange things have been happening on their ranch, their instinct is to make money off it. In their attempts to “capture the impossible,” they meet Angel Torres (Brandon Perea), a recently heartbroken employee at a big-box electronics chain. (Watching the three work together, brainstorming and testing strategies, may bring to mind the teamwork of the characters played by Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee in the 1972 film Buck and the Preacher , which inverted Hollywood’s tradition of the Western by casting Black actors in the main roles.) A late, and unlikely, addition to this rag-tag crew is Antlers Host (Michael Wincott), a cantankerous and revered cinematographer. Although their individual motivations seem different, each of them is driven by a desire for money, fame or some combination of both.

Full credits

Distributor: Universal Pictures Production company: Monkeypaw Productions Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun, Michael Wincott, Brandon Perea, Keith David Director-screenwriter: Jordan Peele Producers: Jordan Peele, Ian Cooper Executive producers: Robert Graf, Win Rosenfeld Director of photography: Hoyte van Hoytema Production designer: Ruth De Jong Costume designer: Alex Bovaird Editor: Nicholas Monsour Composer: Michael Abels Casting director: Carmen Cuba

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• Entertainment
• Jordan Peele’s Nope is a breathtaking celebration of filmmaking as an art form

Nope stars Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, and Steven Yeun

By Charles Pulliam-Moore , a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.

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With both Get Out and Us , Jordan Peele introduced the world to some of the monsters living inside his imagination that were born out of his deep-seated love for the horror genre. While Nope — Peele’s third feature with Universal — definitely runs on the distressing, disorienting energy his projects have become known for, it also feels like the director’s first movie that’s actually about filmmaking as a thrilling and terrifying art form.

Nope tells the story of the Haywoods, a family of Black ranchers who made a name for themselves raising stunt horses for film and television productions. While patriarch Otis Haywood Sr. (Keith David) always expected that his son Otis Jr. (Daniel Kaluuya) and daughter Emerald (Keke Palmer) would eventually take over the family business, none of them ever imagined that Otis Sr. would suddenly and quite mysteriously die after a strange encounter with an innocuous cloud. 

The Haywood siblings are still grieving in their respective ways as Nope opens on Otis Jr. (who goes by OJ) doing what he can to maintain Haywood’s Hollywood Horses and Emerald making it very clear that she’s ready to become a part of the showbiz in a non-equine capacity. Like with most siblings, there’s tension between OJ and Em that Nope brushes up against without veering too far off course. But their father’s death brings Em and OJ closer in a way that properly sets Nope ’s story in motion and illustrates one of the film’s most salient ideas about what it means to work in the entertainment industry — particularly as a person of color.

Unlike OJ, the family’s soft-spoken stoic who prefers the company of horses, Emerald inherited their father’s showmanship and deep pride in their great-great-grandfather, the unnamed Black jockey depicted in Eadweard Muybridge’s The Horse in Motion cabinet 1878 card series. Blessedly, racism (or some anthropomorphization of it) is not the frightening menace that eventually gets Nope ’s characters uttering the movie’s title aloud. But the specter of it is present in the way Nope connects The Horse in Motion ’s jockey to his fictional descendants: skilled professionals whose talents go largely underappreciated and overlooked by others in the industry, like famed director Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott).

Even those willing to do business with the Haywoods, like former child actor turned local show cowboy Ricky Park (Steven Yeun), are hesitant to see them as more than the people who tend to animals — people so low on the call sheet that they’re almost invisible. That sense of being boxed in by others’ preconceptions is one of the ways Nope starts to build up an atmosphere of dread long before any of its human characters realize that they aren’t alone out there in the desert.

OJ doesn’t really want to believe his eyes when he witnesses something strange one evening while chasing down an escaped horse, and he’s loath to tell his sister. But he can’t deny hearing the sound of screams echoing through the canyons whenever one of the strange power outages that’s been plaguing their ranch sets in, and before long, Em, too, catches a glimpse of the alarming sight that put her brother on edge. If you’ve seen any of Nope ’s trailers or its very effective posters, then you likely know what kind of creatures its story revolves around. But instead of trying to present itself as a wholly new spin on the kind of film it appears to be, Nope exceeds by going a bit meta as its heroes realize that they’re going to have to fight for their lives using, among other things, cameras.

Peele has always had an eye for bold, visual storytelling, but there’s a majesty to Nope ’s sweeping shots of the California desert that feels reflective of his evolution as a filmmaker and of cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema’s artistic sensibilities. Nope ’s striking, almost portrait-like shots of its heroes immediately call to mind Western classics like Sidney Poitier’s Buck and the Preacher as OJ and Em’s ranch becomes their new base of operations where they plan to photograph and document whatever it is that’s hunting them and their neighbors. But the slick and imaginative ways that  Nope  repeatedly reminds you of the danger that OJ and Em must face has much more in common with the likes of M. Night Shyamalan’s  Signs  and Joe Cornish’s  Attack the Block.

As characters, both OJ and Em are so firmly within Kaluuya and Palmer’s wheelhouses that they have a way of feeling like archetypical performances you’ve seen from them before, but it works within the context of Nope ’s slightly amped-up reality. Palmer in particular shines with an easy exuberance that feels entirely her own, and Kaluuya embodies the precise kind of laconic cowboy masculinity that defined the leading men of movies like George Stevens’ Shane .

Neither of the Haywoods feel quite like “real” people but rather like heightened personifications of artists hungry to become part of the movie-making business — no matter the cost. Foolhardy as their plan to stand their ground while documenting their confrontation with the creatures is, it makes a certain kind of emotional sense when you step back and look at Nope as a text about people pouring everything they have into getting the perfect shot.

Nope leaves itself far less open to interpretation than Peele’s previous films, and it’s better for it as the movie shifts gears in order to give itself ample time to show off its VFX budget. Nope lays all its cards on the table with a series of truly breathtaking and astounding set pieces that speak to Peele’s ability to conjure large-scale horrors that are just as nightmarish as the smaller, more intimate ones we’re accustomed to seeing from him.

Though its straightforwardness and focus on spectacle over subtlety might not quite be what audiences expect from a Monkeypaw feature, Nope ’s a strong entry from Peele and a sign that the director’s still got plenty of heat left to spare.

Nope also stars Brandon Perea, Terry Notary, Andrew Patrick Ralston, and Jennifer Lafleur. The movie hits theaters on July 22nd.

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Jordan Peele’s Nope, explained

Unpacking the spectacle at the heart of the movie’s mysteries.

by Alissa Wilkinson

It’s gutsy to start a movie with a verse from Nahum, which is surely one of the Bible’s least-quoted books. But Jordan Peele likes a challenge.

So the text that opens Nope , the director’s follow-up to Us and Get Out , is Nahum 3:6: I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile, and make you a spectacle. Buckle up!

Nope is a bloody, creepy UFO movie, unexpectedly gross in spots, with several different ideas knocking around in its head. Since the relatively straightforward Get Out , Peele’s work has moved away from simple explanation and toward discomfiting vibes, and that’s to its credit.

But that means audiences have to lean in and work harder, and have to be okay with mystery. That helps explain why some viewers may come away dissatisfied. TV and movies over the past several decades have coaxed us to expect explanations and puzzle boxes in our entertainment, and to be annoyed when creators refuse to reveal the trick at the end of the show. But Peele is happy to leave some things to our imaginations.

Which includes his gutsy epigraph. Nahum is one of the “minor” prophets of the Bible (which basically means the book he wrote is short), nestled in between Jonah — the guy who was swallowed up by a giant fish — and Zephaniah, who like Nahum mainly foretold destruction . The target of all three was Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire, which did indeed fall not long after the prophecies, taking the empire down with it. Just before this verse, Nahum describes Nineveh as a lion’s den, the “city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims,” a place with “galloping horses and jolting chariots,” full of bodies of the dead. Basically, Nineveh arrogantly chews people up and spits them out. So, Nahum says, God will do the same to Nineveh.

Nope is not set in Nineveh, exactly; it’s set in Hollywood. The action takes place in Agua Dulce, about a 40-mile drive north of Hollywood. There, siblings OJ and Emerald Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer) run Haywood’s Hollywood Horses, named for their great-great-great grandfather Alistair E. Haywood, who rode the horse in the first moving picture ever made . They train horses for movies. But following the untimely death of their father Otis Haywood Sr. (Keith David), killed in a freak accident in which debris rained down from the sky, they’re running into hard times. Plus, the advent of CGI means the movies just don’t require real horses on set the way they used to.

Alistair Haywood’s character is Peele’s invention, though the film in which he rode a horse, made by Eadweard Muybridge in 1878, is real. Actually, there were multiple films; the one that Peele intertwines Nope with involves a horse named Annie G. ridden by an unidentified but definitely Black jockey. History remembers the horse but has lost track of the jockey’s identity , which is sort of Nope ’s point. In one scene, Emerald proudly announces on a movie set that “since the moment pictures could move, we got skin in the game.” But nobody remembers Haywood unless she reminds them.

In any case, the Haywood ranch is just up the road from Jupiter’s Claim, and OJ’s been selling horses to owner Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun) to keep the ranch afloat. Jupiter’s Claim is a goofy cartoonish amusement park lightly modeled on a fun-loving town from some old Western — and those in turn, let’s remember, were very lightly modeled on the actual West. Jupe, a former child star, picked up his nickname from his role as “Jupiter” on Kid Sheriff , a movie he starred in following a rather sudden end to a short-lived sitcom, Gordy’s Home . He now sustains a living chasing that fame any way he can: selling access to memorabilia, attracting tourists to Jupiter’s Claim, starring in reality shows with his family, and some … weirder pursuits.

But that’s in keeping with Agua Dulce, because there’s been a lot of weird stuff going on in the six months since Otis died. Electricity randomly browns out and audio slows down at nighttime, and the laws of physics occasionally behave strangely. And there’s something in the sky.

Yes, this is a UFO movie, or a “UAP” movie, since — as local electronics wiz and alien aficionado Angel (Brandon Perea) tells Emerald — the government switched to calling them Unidentified Aerial Phenomena after they “declassified all that alien shit years ago.” Call them what you want: Flying saucers in movies are often metaphors for invasion by unknown forces, or for paranoia that the government is keeping secrets from its people.

Peele knows all this, but with Nope , he isn’t doing pure homage. Instead, he scatters breadcrumbs along the way to his main point. This is partly a film about how frequently Black film history has been pushed out of memory. In the ranch house, you can glimpse posters for the films Duel at Diablo and Buck and the Preacher , the first Westerns that Sidney Poitier starred in and directed, respectively, in 1966 and 1972. Buck and the Preacher , in particular, was groundbreaking for casting Black actors as main characters. Coupled with the Haywood connection — and the fact that it’s still hard, 50 years later, to get a movie made starring Black actors that isn’t about trauma in some way — Nope points to Hollywood’s history of shoving inconvenient histories aside.

But that’s not all that’s going on here. Nope is centrally about how our experiences of reality have been almost entirely colonized by screens and cameras and entertainment’s portrayals of what it calls reality, to the point that we can barely conceive of experiencing reality directly, with honesty and without any kind of manipulation. It’s as if it sprung from the mind of any number of theorists, like Guy Debord, the philosopher who in 1967 wrote a book called Society of the Spectacle . “In societies where modern conditions of production prevail,” Debord wrote, “all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”

In his treatise, Debord goes on to posit that “the spectacle” — which he describes as sort of an all-consuming blanket of unreality that attracts our gaze and replaces our reality — more or less has colonized modern life. Our social life is not about living, but having.

And that’s all over Nope, from start to finish. Jupe’s offices are lined with posters commemorating TV and film history, from his earliest work all the way to an upcoming family reality show, all designed to keep eyes on him. He’s been courting the flying saucer, whatever it is, since its appearance six months ago, using Haywood’s horses to do so. And while he harbors a painfully traumatic memory of a chimp attack on the set of the short-lived Gordy’s Home , he can’t access it directly when explaining to Emerald and OJ; he recounts a Saturday Night Live sketch about it instead.

Jupe’s development of a “family show” at Jupiter’s Claim is just another harnessing of spectacle — in this case, the flying saucer — to get paying customers to his amusement park. He calls the unknowable creatures he believes are on board the saucer “The Viewers.” They are watching us , he thinks, unable to think of himself outside that paradigm. To be alive is to be watched, he believes. It’s when people stop watching you that you cease to exist.

Watching and being watched is everywhere in Nope . When OJ and Emerald first come to believe there’s a saucer in the sky, they head straight for the electronics store to get surveillance cameras, which Angel installs on their property. Angel, besotted with aliens because of TV (“Ancient Aliens, History Channel — watch that shit,” he tells them), rigs up a remote connection so he can watch at night from the electronics store. It’s like TV, till it’s real. The first night, as OJ dodges the saucer, a nearby coworker in the store, munching chips and hanging out, even breathlessly asks, “What happened to OJ?” As if he’s a character on a show, and not a real guy whose life is in danger.

OJ isn’t much for technology; unlike smartphone-toting Emerald, he still uses a flip phone, a clear sign that he doesn’t want to participate in this spectacle culture. When it comes for him, he knows not to look. He opts out. (Nope.)

But you can’t really opt out of a spectacle culture — it’s around you, and whether or not you want to participate, it tends to suck you in anyhow. When OJ and Emerald realize there’s some kind of a flying saucer in the sky, their first impulse is to film it, to own a representation of it. That’s not without reason, since they’ve grown up knowing that their family’s place in Hollywood history was essentially stolen from them by those more interested in the horse’s name than in Haywood’s. But their urge to get “the impossible shot” is greater than their urge to run away from the danger itself.

Yet it might help to explain why OJ is the first to realize that the saucer isn’t a saucer at all, at least not like the kind they’re used to seeing in the movies. It wasn’t crazy to assume the object in the sky was a ship carrying aliens. Many of the things we believe about the world around us and about our history come from representations of them on screens, not reality. (Debord again.) Our ideas of what war is like, what cities are like, what love is like, how the West was “won” — they all come through movies. They have since the pictures started moving, as Emerald puts it.

And as time has gone on, we’ve grown more hungry for bigger, better representations. The mirror ball that spooks the horse on set is a VFX ball , a key tool for digital video artists in making today’s spectacle-driven CGI blockbusters.

• Why visual effects artists love this shiny ball

Which is why it matters what we see. But OJ gets it: the saucer is alive, and it isn’t trying to help them or study them or warn them. It just wants to eat them. It’s less saucer than spectacle to gawk at. And it has a screen-shaped rectangle at its heart which, as we see at the start of the movie, contains Muybridge’s film of Haywood riding the horse. But it’s insatiable. It wants blood. The spectacle consumes all.

There are other deliciously unexplained breadcrumbs scattered throughout Nope , which could be clues or references or just delightful red herrings. There’s a tiny reference to Poltergeist when the alien arrives. There’s also a tennis shoe that balances on its heel, for no apparent reason, during Gordy’s on-set rampage; it later shows up in Jupe’s back room of memorabilia. The name of the TMZ reporter who shows up on a motorcycle — with a mirrored helmet, no less — is listed in the film’s credits as “Ryder Muybridge,” which is obviously a reference to the man who shot the film starring Alistair Haywood and who has gone down in history with all the credit. (Emerald is desperate that he not steal their impossible shot.)

In the end, of course, there’s a great irony to Nope , and one of which Peele is undoubtedly aware; he ends the film, after all, with the “impossible shot” being captured as a still by an old-fashioned film camera. (Which is not a guarantee that they’ll be believed — you can fake a photo, right?) Nope is a big, very loud, very effects-driven spectacle. It’s a movie with a thousand references to the past. It’s also a riotously entertaining thrill ride that owes portions of its plot to some of Hollywood’s most successful summer blockbusters, Jaws and Independence Day . It’s part of the culture; it can’t stand outside of it.

But it functions at least a little bit as a warning, or maybe a prophecy, or a call for a reboot, or a reminder to care about what, or who, gets our attention. When midway through the film, the saucer rains guts and blood down on the ranch house, you have to think of Nahum’s words: “I will cast abominable filth upon you.”

A culture built on spectacle can only get more spectacular, coaxing us to always look at it, to never tear ourselves away, to gorge ourselves on it. The impossible trick is to just say nope.

Nope is playing in theaters beginning July 21.

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Nope Is Jordan Peele’s Darkest Horror Comedy to Date

There’s a speech that Otis Haywood Sr. (Keith David) used to give during safety meetings on sets where he’d work as a provider and handler of trained horses. You can tell by the way his son, OJ (Daniel Kaluuya), mutters it on a soundstage at the start of Nope , just six months after Otis’ bizarre and disturbing death, that these words have been a familiar, perhaps daunting refrain in his life. OJ may be dedicated to maintaining his father’s legacy, but he’s no talker. When his little sister, Emerald (Keke Palmer), makes her late arrival, he immediately cedes the floor to her, and she picks up easily where her brother trailed off.

The spiel has to do with the series of photos from the late 1800s of a galloping horse that was projected as one of the earliest instances of a moving image. The photographer was Eadweard Muybridge, but, Emerald asks, does anyone know who the unnamed jockey riding that horse was? She then reveals that he’s the siblings’ great (x3) grandfather, proof that the Haywoods have been in showbiz since its pre-dawn era. Now, though, they’re barely holding on, having inherited the horse business right around when Hollywood has started finding it easier to opt for computer-generated animals.

Nope is a work of sly devastation from writer-director Jordan Peele that, like his previous films Get Out and Us , is a horror comedy with a speculative premise — in this case, by way of the saucer-shaped UFO lurking in the clouds about the Haywood Ranch in Agua Dulce. Unlike in Get Out , where Kaluuya’s character Chris discovers he’s been lured into a trap by a cabal of body-snatching white liberals, or Us , where malevolent doppelgangers swarm out of the earth like collectors coming for a long-overdue bill, in Nope , the danger is, to a certain degree, opt-in. The title is a slasher movie joke, a sentiment to be howled at characters who traipse obliviously to their doom by venturing into unlit basements or following mysterious sounds into the woods.

OJ, a laconic modern-day cowboy sprung from the unlikely confines of Los Angeles county, and Emerald, a swivel-limbed goofball who pitches her services in everything from directing to craft services, really do know better. They just can’t stay away. Nope has some revelations up its sleeve, but it isn’t as twist-driven as Get Out or Us . Its tension comes from OJ and Emerald’s determination to get footage of the UFO before the rest of the world finds out about it — not just some YouTube video, but what they deem “the Oprah shot,” the incontrovertible documentation that will vault them into adjacent notoriety.

They aren’t alone in these efforts. Angel Torres (Brandon Perea), an extraterrestrial-obsessed Fry’s Electronics employee, inserts himself into the process after installing security cameras for the Haywoods. Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), a leathery veteran cinematographer who has the same look and desiccated aura as Viggo Mortensen’s character in Crimes of the Future , gets lured in with the promise of a legendary shot and the challenge of capturing something that temporarily disables whatever electronics it comes near. But the most interesting side character isn’t a co-conspirator but a neighbor — Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), a former child star who with his wife Amber (Wrenn Schmidt) now runs Jupiter’s Claim, the chintzy Western theme park that borders on the ranch.

Jupe’s heyday as the sidekick on a movie called Kid Sheriff was decades ago, but he still has the easy smile and smooth affect of a trained performer, qualities that remain unsettlingly consistent even when he’s talking about a nightmarish incident from his past. Nope goes to some gnarly places with its alien flyer, which darts through the cloud cover and down toward the ground with an agility that’s nothing like a human aircraft. Peele and his DP Hoyte Van Hoytema make the most of the vast skies over the gulch the Haywood place is tucked into, the bright days and overcast nights equally alarming reminders of how much space there is overhead, and how vulnerable the tiny human figures below it seem.

But nothing in the movie is as troubling as the intermittent flashbacks to what happened on the soundstage of the short-lived multicam sitcom Jupe starred in in the ‘90s. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to stay in the business after enduring that, but Jupe, like Emerald and OJ, lingers on its outskirts as though there were no other options, with posters on his office wall for a reality program about this family, as well as a live show addition to the theme park that turns out to be ill-advised. Nope proposes that we are trapped in a dysfunctional relationship with celebrity and spectacle that we can’t extricate ourselves from, and it’s not always subtle about this — one of the film’s few off moments involves a would-be video journalist in a mirrored helmet talking up the wonders of getting famous off footage even as he’s in peril. The explanation’s unnecessary when the plot of the film rests on the characters’ first impulse, upon seeing signs of alien life, to put it on camera to prove that they’re first.

Well, to prove they’re first, and also to have ownership of those images. Everyone knows Muybridge’s name, after all, and no one knows the jockey’s. Emerald and OJ, with their contrasting personalities, jostle against each other in ways exacerbated by a childhood in which Otis trained OJ in the job while neglecting his daughter. And yet the shared gesture of love the siblings came up with involves pointing at their own eyes and then pointing at the other — I see you . It’s why Otis can’t bring himself to walk away from his father’s failing ranch, because it was a game-changer, a history-maker, the only Black-owned horse business in Hollywood. It’s why Jupe, having had his moment of fame as “the Asian kid” in some long-ago children’s flick, nevertheless sits surrounded by memorabilia of his tokenized past.

There’s power in images, and in having the world’s eyes on you for something, for anything , even if it can be a fleeting, ridiculous sort of affirmation — the saddest refrain of “representation matters” possible. “This dream you’re chasing, where you end up at the top of the mountain?” Antlers informs Emerald. “It’s the one you never wake up from.” In Peele’s thrilling, astringent movie, the characters risk everything in their attempts to clamber up that summit, to grab something for themselves, to continue having skin in the game. Sure, that may sound foolish, but what else are you supposed to do when it’s the only one in town?

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The jaw-dropping 'Alien: Romulus' ending sets it apart from other blockbusters. Here's what happens.

• "Alien: Romulus" is set on a derelict space station where a group of scavengers face the Xenomorphs.
• The final act of the film cranks up the horror with a stunning twist.
• Here's the ending of "Alien: Romulus," explained.

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for "Alien: Romulus."

" Alien: Romulus " is set in between the events of 1979's " Alien " and 1986's "Aliens" when a group of scavengers from the Jackson's Star mining colony raid a derelict space station, looking for a way to escape their bleak existence.

Predictably, the group sticks its nose where it doesn't belong, and a young woman named Navarro (Aileen Wu) ends up on the wrong side of a Facehugger. This leads to a bloodthirsty fight for survival as the Xenomorphs overrun the station.

"Alien: Romulus" could easily have replicated the other films in the franchise and simply focused on the terrifying nature of the Xenomorph.

But " Evil Dead " director Fede Alvarez pushes things further in the second half of the film when he ties it to the 2012 prequel "Prometheus," and cranks up the body horror with a stunningly gruesome twist.

Here's the ending, explained.

Weyland-Yutani experimented with the black goo from "Prometheus."

Rain ( Cailee Spaeny ) travels with a crew, including her adopted android brother, Andy (David Jonsson), to the "Renaissance" station, which is divided into two sections. They find themselves in the section called "Remus," where all the Facehuggers are kept in cryo-storage.

When the crew's ship, the Corbelan IV, gets accidentally knocked over to the other side of the station, called "Romulus," Rain and Tyler (Archie Renaux) have to fight their way over to the second half.

They discover that Weyland-Yutani, the nefarious company that owns the station and the colony, has synthesized a black serum from the Xenomorphs and the Facehuggers.

It's the same black substance that appears in Ridley Scott 's "Prometheus." It drastically alters the DNA of a living organism to evolve it into something more monstrous. Weyland-Yutani wants to use the goo to create a workforce that doesn't get sick when they terraform planets or mine alien worlds for resources.

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But when they continue to make their way to the ship, Kay (Isabela Merced), who is pregnant, gets taken by the Xenomorph. She narrowly survives the ordeal, albeit with some injuries, and she injects the goo into her neck in an attempt to save her unborn child.

Fast-forward 20 minutes, and Kay endures a hideous birth because the serum has accelerated her baby's growth — and also genetically altered the fetus. She painfully delivers an alien egg, which contains a Xenomorph/human hybrid inside.

The "Offspring" feeds on Kay.

The creature — called the "Offspring" in the credits — almost immediately grows to a towering size and starts feeding on Kay because her body secretes more of the gooey substance seen in the Romulus lab.

It's a horrific twist on the Renaissance-era painting seen on the wall of the station earlier in the film, which depicts a newborn baby suckling on its mother's corpse.

Kay's Xenomorph/human baby also looks notably similar to the 10-foot-tall Engineers who appeared in "Prometheus" and were essentially responsible for creating mankind.

Rain slips into a spacesuit while the Offspring suckles on its now-dead mother. When the Offspring eventually chases Rain, she detaches the ship's cargo container into the asteroid field below so the monstrous being gets bombarded by the debris.

Like any good horror film though, the Offspring manages to rear its ugly head into the camera for one last jumpscare before it gets seemingly annihilated in space.

The whole sequence, filled with practical effects, feels like an instant adrenaline rush that sets it apart from many other blockbusters, which often deliver predictable fight scenes filled with dull CGI.

Rain and Andy survive and head to Yvaga III.

Rain and her adopted android sibling are the only surviving members of the crew after their ordeal on the Renaissance station, and Rain puts them both into stasis pods as they set the ship on a course to Yvaga III — a supposedly peaceful planet.

In a narration that mirrors Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) at the end of the original "Alien" movie, Rain notes that she's not sure if the ship will make it to Yvaga III, but she's hopeful about the future.

This is a considerable shift in her demeanor considering how worried she was about life at the start of the story.

"Alien: Romulus" has no post-credits scenes, but the ending leaves plenty of room for a sequel.

Audiences don't have to stick around while the credits roll, as there isn't an extra scene waiting at the end. (Although it's always worth noting all the people who worked hard on the film!)

But the absence of a post-credits scene doesn't mean that a sequel isn't possible.

It would be very easy for 20th Century Studios to find a way to bring Spaeny and Jonsson back for a follow-up mvoie. As fans have seen in previous "Alien" films, all it takes is for one Facehugger to have snuck onboard the ship, and this could all start again.

Alternatively, the story could pick up with Weyland-Yutani searching for the remains of the Xenomorph/human hybrid, since the company is so concerned with creating the perfect organism.

The film also specifically points out that androids are not welcome on Yvaga III, which could be a problem for Rain and Andy if they make it to their destination.

Watch: Going behind the scenes of 8 horror movies, from 'Nope' to 'X'

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"Chimp Crazy," the latest from maker of "Tiger King," is disturbing in more ways than the obvious

Eric goode's look at pet chimps and their owners is weirder than his netflix hit. it raises other questions too, by melanie mcfarland.

“Things are getting kind of strange” is what you’d expect someone in a docuseries called “ Chimp Crazy ” to say. By the time someone drops that line, Tonia Haddix has already recalibrated our bar for strangeness. 

The four-part series opens with Haddix in what looks like a child’s nursery, with stuffed animals and bunk beds. As she presses her nose to the face of a diapered baby animal she says, “Monkey love is totally different than the way that you have love for your child,” going on to explain that the bond is much deeper.  

Haddix’s son, introduced later, has come to accept his lower place in his mother’s emotional hierarchy, and her husband appears to do the same. Haddix’s heart is ruled by Tonka, a 32-year-old chimpanzee who appeared in several Hollywood movies, including 1997’s “Buddy” and 1998’s “Babe: Pig in the City.”

Haddix thinks of all her primates as her kids. She feeds them McDonald’s Happy Meals and Gatorade through the doors of their cages. What she views as playful antics look like stressed-out apes bouncing off their steel mesh walls. 

Out of all of them, Tonka is special.  “Tonka always makes me feel safe,” Haddix says, later adding, “He’s just a very kind and loving person.” 

We’ve also watched Haddix spill her secrets to a former circus clown claiming to be making a documentary about her legal plight, but who isn’t really directing it.  

Eric Goode, the filmmaker who gave us 2020’s “ Tiger King ,” is behind “Chimp Crazy.” Although he’s been documenting exotic animal keepers for many years, his “Tiger King” notoriety also made it difficult, if not impossible, to approach exotic animal brokers like Haddix head-on.  

Instead he sent “proxy director” Dwayne Cunningham to interview her and capture other footage using hidden cameras, including a game-changing turn HBO has deemed a spoiler. 

Like other docuseries with a knack for being in the right place at the right time, Goode and Cunningham are deeply insinuated in Haddix’s life as the situation evolves from garden-variety chimps in cowboy hats “strange” to “taking a kidnapping turn.” The culmination is funny but troubling; enraging at times but also somewhat empathetic to both the apes and the people loving them to death.

A story this bizarre didn't escape the national media’s notice. (If you simply can't wait for four weeks to see how it turns out, plug Haddix’s name into a search engine or click the above link.) But “Chimp Crazy” is less fascinating for the story’s outcome than its insight into the types of people who are obsessed with chimps regardless of the dangers they pose. 

Haddix’s fixation with Tonka is the series spine, but Goode uses each development in her odd case to look at other stories of housebound chimps that turned on humans. There's Travis who in 2009 mauled his owner's friend so severely that it left her blind and with a featureless face. (His story inspired the Gordy subplot in Jordan Peele's "Nope." ) Or Buck, the chimp shot dead by police after mauling his owner’s adult daughter in 2021.

One look at Haddix is enough to suspect Goode has caught lightning in a bottle twice with “Chimp Crazy."

Without explicitly saying so, Goode reveals in Haddix and others a breed of human drawn by a dark neediness to these animals that nature designed to grow beyond their control. 

Originally Goode sought to interview Connie Casey, a breeder the series says is responsible for three-quarters of the captive-bred chimpanzees in the United States. Casey rented out chimps for events or to model for Hallmark cards through her for-profit company called Chimparty. 

She later rebranded it to Missouri Primate Foundation and made it a non-profit, but it remained a chimp mill until a friend of Casey’s reached out to PETA. Casey refused to work with the filmmakers but Haddix, who volunteered at the facility, happily spoke on Casey’s behalf. Eventually she took custody of the chimps to try to nullify the PETA’s lawsuit, but they simply added her name to it. 

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Once Cumming learned his beloved co-star had not retired to Palm Springs, as he was told, but was being kept in a filthy cage in Missouri, he fortified PETA's efforts by lending his celebrity to the cause. The organization was nearly successful at relocating all the chimps to a well-managed sanctuary. But when the authorities came to seize them, Tonka was missing. Haddix told them he died suddenly. PETA's lawyers don’t believe her. 

Unlike Joe Exotic’s trashy lewdness, however, Haddix’s personality is simultaneously maternal and juvenile. She defends her right to keep chimps by calling Tonka a “humanzee,” half human, half chimpanzee, and therefore happier with her than other primates. Other reasons she gives for loving chimpanzees, however, say more about her deep-seated needs than theirs. 

“They don’t break your heart,” she says. “They don’t grow up and get a mind of their own.” “They’ll be your friend for life.” 

Haddix was made to star in a docuseries. She's easily flattened into a heavily painted cartoon with eyelash extensions and clacking acrylic nails. There’s very little she says in “Chimp Crazy” to the lawyers and judges hounding that’s true, but the biggest whoppers she tells highlight her self-delusion. She and other chimp owners insist the animals are better off with them even though reasonable people can see they're imprisoned in miserable cages.

But she’s also the type of person whose extremity and selfishness make it easy for the audience to overlook the filmmaker’s ethically questionable choices, beginning with having Cunningham stand in for him.  ( A Rolling Stone story about Haddix’s case also implies that Cunningham and the other crewmembers didn’t reveal to her who was funding the film, which might have impacted her willingness to participate.)

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter , Crash Course.

Of course, this resumes the argument over whether this style of nonfiction filmmaking should be held to what are understood to be common editorial standards and practices. "Chimp Crazy" is constructed as entertainment, with a soundtrack and framing choices that accentuate the absurd comedy of this situation alongside the tragedy.

Does it serve the audience’s understanding of the difference between filmmakers like Goode and journalistic documentarians? Hard to say. “But we like to look at ourselves differently, don’t we?” Goode muses late in the story. “I don’t know . . . we like to believe our own truth.” 

Exactly. It’s much simpler to persuade the audience to glom onto the spectacle of Haddix’s poor choices and forgive whatever murky choices Goode and his team make to thwart it. Nothing strange about that at all.

"Chimp Crazy" begins airing Sunday, Aug. 18 at 9:45 p.m. ET on HBO, across four weeks.

about this topic

• "Baby Chimp Rescue" is just as adorable as you expect, and surprisingly emotional as well
• How to study PTSD in chimpanzees
• The privileged craziness of "Tiger King"

Melanie McFarland is Salon's award-winning senior culture critic. Follow her on Twitter: @McTelevision

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Sins of a Solar Empire 2 review

Forgive me father, for i have sinned. a lot., our verdict.

Ironclad's impressive sequel has made me proud to be a sinner.

PC Gamer's got your back Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware.

What is it?  A 4X-RTS hybrid full of massive space battles. 

Release date  August 15, 2024

Developer  Ironclad Games

Publisher Stardock Entertainment

Reviewed on  RTX 4090, Intel i9-13900k, 32GB RAM

Steam Deck  Unsupported

Link   Official site

Sins of a Solar Empire 2's journey to launch has been an extremely confusing one. It technically left early access on the Epic Games Store (very quietly) a while ago, but that 1.0 version was actually missing some big things, like the final faction, and in sore need of polish. Now it's finally arrived on Steam, though, and I have some good news: it's brilliant. 

The original Sins and its beefy expansions pretty much nailed the cosmic combination of RTS and 4X, impressively marrying the two disparate genres in a way that maintained the excitement of real-time space battles and the measured pace of the kind of empire-building typically relegated to turn-based games. With so little left on the table you could be forgiven for thinking that this is not especially fertile ground for a sequel, but Ironclad has found plenty of ways to justify Sins 2. 

Move heaven and earth 

The dynamism inherent in each map is the headline attraction this time. Sins 2's solar systems are not static maps. Planets and asteroids—collectively referred to as gravity wells, the territory in which all the game's action takes place—now move along predetermined paths. The impact of these celestial mechanics depends on the configuration and size of the map—but if you don't pay attention to the movement of the heavens, you're just inviting marauding aliens into your backyard. 

In my first game, the solar system started off as an orderly chain. Each faction began surrounded by its own lattice of gravity wells waiting to be colonised and exploited, and each lattice was connected to another by a single phase lane. This allowed us all to focus on our own local area, knowing that our rivals only had one route into our part of the solar system. And for a long time there was an uneasy and unofficial peace. We just ignored each other. 

This was ideal, because Sins 2 is full of complexities that need to be unpicked. It does really try to make this endeavour less Herculean, though. A robust tutorial breaks down every mechanic and UI element, and there's a welcome amount of automation. Scouts immediately start exploring the moment they are constructed; new ships can be created right from an individual fleet's menu, before automatically travelling towards said fleet; and if you try to build something that has a tech prerequisite, the game will start researching it for you. But there's still a lot to juggle. 

As I pored over menus, fiddled with fleets and built up my empire's infrastructure, an hour went by—an hour where I'd only blown up a few enemy scouts and some unaffiliated ships hanging out around the territory I had started claiming. In that time the solar system had changed shape. Dramatically. 

Now there wasn't just a single phase lane connecting me to the rest of the system—there were multitudes, and every single one of my rivals now had a clear path to my territory. And everyone else's. The peace was broken. At one point, all four of us converged upon a single planet, with lasers and projectiles and tiny strikecraft filling the screen in a glorious spectacle. After pottering around at a leisurely pace for an hour, this cataclysmic lightshow was like a shot of adrenaline right to the heart. 

Celestial mechanics bless Sins 2's wars with incredible texture, giving each map a unique rhythm and lively pace. Lively, but not always fast. As the phase lanes shift you can become unmoored from your opponents, getting some breathing room before everything links up again and the map becomes engulfed in explosions and ship debris. So you switch focus, maybe start expanding in a new direction, shore up your defences, or explore the new gravity wells that have appeared. And since you can see how much the map will shift within the next hour, you can plan accordingly, preparing your fleets for a big assault when the planets align once more. 

Going full Ferengi 

As a broke-ass videogame critic I have a penchant for playing economic superpowers whenever I dive into a 4X, so I've always been fond of Sins' Trader Emergency Coalition. This faction, which is split into the TEC Enclave and TEC Primacy, boasts a bunch of wealth-building features, like trade ports that send out automated trading vessels—accompanied by armed ships once you unlock the appropriate tech—and bolster your passive income. It's an incredibly strong feature, and by the mid-game I had a relentless economy that ensured my military might was only limited by my fleet cap. 

Each of the three factions' subfactions can broadly be divided into aggressive and defensive playstyles. So the Primacy nets you a powerful long-range titan—ships of such scale and power that each faction can only field one at a time—and an orbital cannon that can devastate entire worlds, as well as the ability to pal around with pirates and use propaganda to buff ships fighting around other gravity wells. The Enclave, meanwhile, is the only subfaction that can plonk down two starbases in a single location, which makes slapping them with an eviction notice a tall order.  

So the TEC is rad, but I'm hard-pressed to pick a favourite faction. The cyber-spiritualists of the Advent Wrath enjoy one of the smoothest early games thanks to their ability to immediately colonise gravity wells adjacent to a location where they've constructed a Greater Temple of Pilgrimage after the gravity well has been cleared of hostiles. Their psionic abilities can also convert enemy ships, improve production and buff their own vessels. The ravenous aliens of the Vasari Exodus, meanwhile, use labour camps and their unique ability to strip worlds of all their natural resources to feed their apocalyptic warmachine. Instead of focusing on expansion and construction, they consume, giving playthroughs with this lot a very different flavour. 

One thing each faction shares, however, is that they are all built for violence. Even the Vasari Alliance, with features designed to encourage cooperation, is ultimately trying to win a war. Sins 2 leaves concepts like science victories and galactic councils to the other 4Xs, while its other half, the RTS layer, demands blood, ravaged worlds and ruined ships.

One thing each faction shares, however, is that they are all built for violence.

This does leave the diplomatic side of things—especially in singleplayer—feeling a bit perfunctory. I found the AI largely disinterested in engaging with the barebones system, even when I offered stupid amounts of cash and resources. The treaties you're able to offer are limited to cease fires, sharing vision, or a full alliance, as well as the secret fourth option: constant rejection. It would help a lot if I had some idea of what my opponents actually wanted, but nope, I just had to wing it. Want some credits? A planet? Why won't someone be my pal?

With human players, the system is a bit more impactful thanks to the ability to actually communicate and tailor deals to your rival's needs. Meatbags are untrustworthy, of course, but that's why the alliance lock timer is such a welcome addition. When you're making a deal, you set a specific duration, during which neither side can break the treaty. So you don't need to trust the opposition's intentions. Of course, nothing is stopping them from building up a massive fleet to attack you the moment the timer hits zero—but that blesses these treaties with some lovely, sweat-inducing tension.

Minor factions can be handled with a different system: influence. You spend influence to unlock four reputation levels, each offering handy rewards, at the cost of more influence. These can be ship or planet items (traits or buildings that let you customise your fleet and empire), temporary alliances, or exotic resources that are necessary for constructing capital ships. 

Working with these minor factions absolutely needs to be part of your strategy, and their name belies their substantial impact. They run resource markets (which vanish if they're destroyed) and auctions, placing them at the heart of the economic side of the game. They can also serve as both a shield and a sword in your war with the other factions. But the way you engage with them, it's all very mechanical. They don't have agendas or personalities—there isn't even a hint of flavour. This goes for all the factions, major or minor. They all exist in service of this—admittedly very grand—war. 

Star destroyer 

Stellaris has been my go-to 4X for years because even as a sandbox with no campaign, it can't help but generate intricate, flavorful stories. This is true of less narrative-driven 4Xs, too: Mention Montezuma or Gandhi to a Civ player and you're bound to get an emotional response. There's absolutely none of this in Sins 2, despite boasting a setting and factions that could absolutely facilitate it. Ultimately, Sins 2 really just wants you to blow up loads of spaceships. But that's OK. Better than OK, really. Because it makes blowing up spaceships an extremely good time.  

Sins has never been about the micro, but it would be a mistake to ignore the details. Every vessel in your huge fleet is a complex machine where size, speed, weapons and defensive capabilities define its role and determine what you need to do to keep it alive. Or at least alive for long enough to mess up your adversary a wee bit. The greater the class of ship, the more complex they become. So while you can just let your tiny strikecraft burst out of their hangars and swarm enemy ships, when you're dealing with your cruisers and capital ships—and especially your precious and costly titan—you need to be more hands-on. 

The ship AI is reliable enough that composition and big picture strategies can get you far, so you don't have to pick every target and keep repositioning them—unless you notice a bunch of ships randomly trying to blow up a trade port instead of the wall of unescorted drone-spewing support craft. You want some punchy front-liners, some long-range bad boys spitting out missiles from the edge of the gravity well, and some ships with point-defence capabilities to shoot enemy projectiles out of the sky. With just those bases covered, you'll get some wins under your belt—at least on the default difficulty.  

Pick a fight with some more challenging adversaries, however, or some human opponents, and you'll need to stop watching Netflix on the other screen, sit up straight and perform the Picard manueover. Between their shields, hulls and special abilities, most ships can take a bit of a beating, but that just lulls you into a false sense of security—look away for a second and you could lose the fight. I almost lost my homeworld in one game because my dog started loudly grunting (he got stuck trying to get under the sofa), distracting me just long enough for a bunch of missile boats to sneak through a new phase lane and start blasting my extremely surprised fleet from the rear. Pro tip: If you need to investigate some grunting, at the very least you should pause the game. 

The range of role-specific ships, tech upgrades and ship items means there's an abundance of fleet customisation, without the need for a ship designer. And honestly, that's ideal. Ship designers used to get me salivating, but they rarely justify the faffing around, and the benefits they do provide can be created with much simpler systems, as evidenced here. Select the right things and you can create unstoppable juggernauts with nigh-impenetrable hulls that constantly repair themselves; mobile, planet-killing warhead factories; and absolute beasts that murder everything that enters their vicinity. 

Sins 2 also approaches space combat as this more tangible, physical event, simulating individual projectiles and actually taking into account what's sitting between them and their target. This means you can use your big lads, like your titan, as a literal shield, blocking enemy salvo. Obviously you don't want to sacrifice your titan, though, so you won't be wanting to use it as a shield all the time, but that's why you should field things like flak frigates, which use their turrets to knock out projectiles and strikecraft. 

This is great stuff, though Ironclad makes some boasts about how the tracking speed and pitch of turrets is taken into account, and while that sounds cool, this information is not presented in-game and honestly it's hard to tell what impact it has. All I know is that more point defence = fewer shipwrecks. 

Despite the absence of a campaign or discrete objectives, the individual fights and larger wars still spit out their fair share of novelties. A game on a small, resource-scarce map where every agile ship is precious is a uniquely different proposition to one with multiple solar systems, where each faction begins safely nestled away in its own corner, able to slowly expand and build massive armadas before finally saying "howdy" with a wall of warheads. And then human opponents throw in another wrinkle. 

Join the fleet 

When it comes to 4Xs, I'm more of a singleplayer guy, but Sins 2's RTS DNA makes human-on-human violence more attractive, buoyed by features like AI hotseat and AI takeover, which lets players dip in and out; time-locked alliances; optional infinite pauses; and replays that immortalise your greatest victories and most embarrassing failures. All the boxes have been ticked, so I'm hopeful that it's going to be able to secure a long-term future and spit out infinite multiplayer wars. 

It would be a sin to end this review without mentioning how much eye candy these cosmic conflicts provide. Sins 2 is a kaleidoscope of deadly lasers and colourful space hulks, elevated by absurdly minuscule details and appropriately dramatic lighting. And while it's not the first game to play with scale like this, it's still so impressive to seamlessly switch from looking at a map of one or more solar systems to being able to pick out individual lights on a ship, rust on a hull or a missile zeroing in on its unfortunate target. 

The RTS has been making a comeback over these last few years, but there have been far more stumbles than successes. My time with Sins of a Solar Empire 2, though, has been plain sailing, from the performance—which I never noticed dipping below 70 fps with everything cranked up—to the new features like celestial mechanics. I'd love to see more meat added to the 4X layer, with deeper diplomatic systems and some narrative colour, but when it comes to pure war, nobody does it better. 

Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog. 

Sins of a Solar Empire 2 comes to Steam this month, after almost two years of Epic exclusivity

4X RTS Sins of a Solar Empire 2 is finally coming to Steam this summer with a new faction and modding tools

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nope movie review

This is going to be a short review but I literally fell asleep watching it 3 times and woke up to the ending that was entirely hilarious considering how movie was setup.

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Celebrity birthdays for the week of Aug. 25-31

Blake Lively poses for photographers upon arrival at the UK Gala Screening for the film ‘It ‘Ends With Us’ on Thursday, Aug, 8, 2024 in London. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)

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Celebrity birthdays for the week of Aug. 25-31:

Aug. 25: Actor Tom Skerritt is 91. Director John Badham (“Saturday Night Fever”) is 85. Singer Walter Williams of The O’Jays is 81. Actor Anthony Heald (“Boston Public”) is 80. Singer Henry Paul of BlackHawk (and Outlaws) is 75. Actor John Savage is 75. Bassist Gene Simmons of Kiss is 75. Singer Rob Halford of Judas Priest is 73. Keyboardist Geoff Downes of Asia is 72. Musician Elvis Costello is 70. Director Tim Burton is 66. Actor Christian LeBlanc (“The Young and the Restless”) is 66. Actor Ashley Crow (“Heroes”) is 64. Country singer-actor Billy Ray Cyrus is 63. Actor Ally Walker (“Profiler”) is 63. Actor Joanne Whalley is 63. Guitarist Vivian Campbell of Def Leppard is 62. Actor Blair Underwood is 60. Actor Robert Maschio (“Scrubs”) is 58. DJ Terminator X of Public Enemy is 58. Singer Jeff Tweedy of Wilco is 57. Actor David Alan Basche (“The Exes”) is 56. TV chef Rachael Ray is 56. Actor Cameron Mathison (“All My Children”) is 55. Country singer Jo Dee Messina is 54. Model Claudia Schiffer is 54. Actor Nathan Page (“Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries”) is 53. Actor Eric Millegan (“Bones”) is 50. Actor Alexander Skarsgard (“Succession,” “Big Little Lies”) is 48. Actor Jonathan Togo (“CSI: Miami”) is 47. Actor Kel Mitchell (“Kenan and Kel”) is 46. Actor Rachel Bilson (“Hart of Dixie,” “The O.C.”) is 43. Actor Blake Lively is 37.

Aug. 26: Singer Vic Dana is 84. Singer Valerie Simpson of Ashford and Simpson is 79. Singer Bob Cowsill of The Cowsills is 75. “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker is 73. Actor Brett Cullen (“Falcon Crest,” “Person of Interest”) is 68. Bandleader Branford Marsalis is 64. Guitarist Jimmy Olander of Diamond Rio is 63. Actor Chris Burke (“Life Goes On”) is 59. Singer Shirley Manson of Garbage is 58. Guitarist Dan Vickrey of Counting Crows is 58. Drummer Adrian Young of No Doubt is 55. Actor Melissa McCarthy (“Mike and Molly,” ″Gilmore Girls”) is 54. Latin pop singer Thalia is 53. Actor Meredith Eaton (2017′s “MacGyver,” ″Family Law”) is 50. Singer Tyler Connolly of Theory of a Deadman is 49. Actor Mike Colter (“Luke Cage,” “Jessica Jones”) is 48. Actor Macaulay Culkin is 44. Actor Chris Pine (“Wonder Woman,” new “Star Trek” movies) is 44. Actor-comedian John Mulaney is 42. Singer Brian Kelley of Florida Georgia Line is 39. Singer-actor Cassie is 38. Actor Evan Ross (“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay”) is 36. Actor Danielle Savre (“Station 19,” ″Heroes”) is 36. Actor Dylan O’Brien (TV’s “Teen Wolf”) is 33. Actor Keke Palmer (“Nope,” “Akeelah and the Bee”) is 31.

Aug. 27: Actor-singer Tommy Sands is 87. Actor Tuesday Weld is 81. Actor G.W. Bailey (“M.A.S.H.,” ″The Closer”) is 80. Actor Marianne Sagebrecht (“The War of the Roses”) is 79. Guitarist Alex Lifeson of Rush is 71. Actor Peter Stormare (“Fargo,” ″The Big Lebowski”) is 71. Actor Diana Scarwid (“Mommie Dearest”) is 69. Bassist Glen Matlock of The Sex Pistols is 68. Gospel singer Yolanda Adams is 63. Guitarist Matthew Basford of Yankee Grey is 62. Bassist Mike Johnson (Dinosaur Jr.) is 59. Percussionist Bobo of Cypress Hill is 57. Country singer Colt Ford is 55. Actor Chandra Wilson (“Grey’s Anatomy”) is 55. Bassist Tony Kanal of No Doubt is 54. Rapper Mase is 49. Actor Sarah Chalke (“Scrubs”) is 48. Actor RonReaco Lee (“Madea Goes To Jail”) is 48. Actor Demetria McKinney (“House of Payne”) is 46. Actor Aaron Paul (“Breaking Bad”) is 45. Guitarist Jon Siebels of Eve 6 is 45. Actor Shaun Weiss (“The Mighty Ducks”) is 45. Keyboardist Megan Garrett of Casting Crowns is 44. Actor Patrick J. Adams (“Suits”) is 43. Actor Karla Mosley (“The Bold and the Beautiful”) is 43. Actor Amanda Fuller (“Last Man Standing”) is 40. Singer Mario is 38. Actor Alexa PenaVega (“Spy Kids”) is 36. Actor Ellar Coltrane (“Boyhood”) is 30. Actor Savannah Paige Rae (“Parenthood”) is 21.

Aug. 28: Actor Sonny Shroyer (“The Dukes of Hazzard,” “Enos”) is 89. Actor Ken Jenkins (“Scrubs”) is 84. Actor Barbara Bach is 78. Actor Debra Mooney (“The Practice,” ″Everwood”) is 77. Singer Wayne Osmond of The Osmonds is 73. Actor Daniel Stern is 67. Actor John Allen Nelson (“24,” “Santa Barbara”) is 65. Actor Emma Samms (“Dynasty”) is 64. Actor Jennifer Coolidge is 63. Actor Amanda Tapping (“Stargate: Atlantis,” “Stargate SG-1”) is 59. Country singer Shania Twain is 59. Actor Billy Boyd (“Lord of the Rings”) is 56. Actor-singer Jack Black of Tenacious D is 55. Actor Jason Priestley (“Beverly Hills, 90210″) is 55. Actor Daniel Goddard (“The Young and the Restless”) is 53. Actor J. August Richards (“Kevin (Probably) Saves The World,” ″Angel”) is 51. Singer-bassist Max Collins of Eve 6 is 46. Actor Carly Pope (“Outlaw,” ″24,”) is 44. Country singer Jake Owen is 43. Country singer LeAnn Rimes is 42. Actor Kelly Thiebaud (“General Hospital”) is 42. Actor Armie Hammer (“The Lone Ranger,” ″The Social Network”) is 38. Singer Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine is 38. Actor Shalita Grant (“NCIS: New Orleans”) is 36. Singer Cassadee Pope (“The Voice”) is 35. Actor Katie Findlay (“How to Get Away With Murder”) is 34. Actor Samuel Larsen (“Glee”) is 33. Actor Kyle Massey (“Cory in the House,” ″That’s So Raven”) is 33. Actor Quvenzhane Wallis (“Annie,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild”) is 21. Reality TV personality Honey Boo Boo (Alana Thompson) is 19.

Aug. 29: Actor Elliott Gould is 86. Actor Deborah Van Valkenburgh (TV’s “Too Close For Comfort,” film’s “The Warriors”) is 72. Keyboardist Dan Truman of Diamond Rio is 68. Actor Rebecca DeMornay is 65. Bassist-singer Me’Shell NdegeOcello is 56. Singer Carl Martin of Shai is 54. Actor Carla Gugino is 53. Guitarist Kyle Cook of Matchbox Twenty is 49. Actor John Hensley (“Nip/Tuck”) is 47. Actor Kate Simses (“Dr. Ken”) is 45. Bassist David Desrosiers of Simple Plan is 44. Actor Jennifer Landon (“Yellowstone,” “As the World Turns”) is 41. Actor Jeffrey Licon (“The Brothers Garcia”) is 39. Actor Lea Michele (“Glee”) is 38. Actor Charlotte Ritchie (“Call the Midwife”) is 35. Singer Liam Payne of One Direction is 31.

Aug. 30: Actor Elizabeth Ashley (“Evening Shade”) is 85. Actor and former U.S. Rep. Ben Jones (“The Dukes of Hazzard”) is 83. Actor John Kani (“Black Panther”) is 82. Cartoonist R. Crumb is 81. Comedian Lewis Black (“The Daily Show”) is 76. Actor Timothy Bottoms (film’s “The Last Picture Show,” TV’s “The Paper Chase”) is 73. Jazz saxophonist Gerald Albright is 67. Actor Michael Chiklis (“The Fantastic Four,” ″The Shield”) is 61. Actor Michael Michele (“ER,” ″Homicide: Life On The Street”) is 58. Country singer Sherrie Austin is 53. Guitarist Lars Frederiksen of Rancid is 53. Actor Cameron Diaz is 52. TV personality Lisa Ling (“The View”) is 51. Singer-guitarist Aaron Barrett of Reel Big Fish is 50. Actor Raul Castillo (“Looking”) is 47. Actor Michael Gladis (“Reckless,” ″Mad Men”) is 47. Singer Rachael Price of Lake Street Dive is 39. Guitarist Ryan Ross (Panic At The Disco) is 38. Actor Johanna Braddy (“Quantico”) is 37.

Aug. 31: Singer Van Morrison is 79. Violinist Itzhak Perlman is 79. Guitarist Rudolf Schenker of Scorpions is 76. Actor Richard Gere is 75. Actor Stephen Henderson (“Fences,” ″Manchester By The Sea”) is 75. Drummer Gina Schock of The Go-Go’s is 67. Singer Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze is 67. Singer Tony DeFranco of The DeFranco Family is 65. Keyboardist Larry Waddell of Mint Condition is 61. Actor Jaime P. Gomez (“Nash Bridges”) is 59. Guitarist Jeff Russo of Tonic is 55. Singer Deborah Gibson is 54. Bassist Greg Richling of The Wallflowers is 54. Actor Zack Ward (“A Christmas Story,” ″Titus”) is 54. Actor Chris Tucker (“Rush Hour”) is 52. Actor Sara Ramirez (“Grey’s Anatomy”) is 49. Singer Tamara of Trina and Tamara is 47.

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‘Duchess’ Review: Neil Marshall and Charlotte Kirk Shoot and Miss with This Guy-Ritchie-Wannabe Crime Thriller

Harrison richlin.

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Right from the get-go, “ Duchess ” unveils itself as paint-by-numbers contrivance with an in media res sequence that drops us into the middle of a scene between main character, Scarlett ( Charlotte Kirk ), and an unseemly goon trying to get his rocks off. A fight ensues, blood is spurt, the goon goes out the window, Scarlett goes downstairs with a shotgun to finish the job, then BOOM, we flash back to the ACTUAL beginning of the story. And by flash, I literally mean a full rewind that features shots from the entire story leading up to that point. Subtlety has never been a feature of Marshall’s oeuvre, but at this point, it just feels like he doesn’t even care.  Related Stories Ethan Hawke, Richard Gere, Sigourney Weaver Headline Venice Talks Lineup ‘Skincare’ Knows That, in the Right Light, Nothing Is Weirder Than 2013 Hollywood

Every character receives a freeze-frame as they’re introduced, followed by their name being superimposed beside them. Are their names or who they are important? Not necessarily. Does it factor into the narrative at all? Nope. But Marshall has committed to the bit and clearly feels some way about acknowledging everyone’s presence, so freeze-frames and superimposed titles it is. Every choice in the film seems to follow this logic, whether it’s the comically bad cutaways of henchmen beating people up or staging and lighting every romantic scene in the style of either a Lifetime movie or a soft-core porn. 

While he faces some challenges, namely the threats of a rich socialite named Charlie (Stephanie Beacham), who also happens to enjoy pulling people’s tongues through a hole cut in their throats, Rob eventually finds a way back to his diamond-cutting business on the Spanish Island of Tenerife. But he’s not only carrying a big rock, he’s also got his new lover Scarlett, now referred to as Duchess by those who pledge their fealty to Rob. And Scarlett truly does feel like she’s living the royal life. Beautiful home, stunning beaches, her very own Spanish servant she can make into her best friend. What more could a girl want? It’s at this moment, over halfway through the movie, that the story chooses to spin in a new direction. It’s not that wide of a spin, but jarring enough to make one wonder why the shift occurs at the point it does. 

Shooting action is by no means an easy feat, but Marshall’s staging offers little-to-no excitement, often framing scenarios from a mix of centralized points, then cutting them together, neglecting the fact that every shot looks exactly the same. In terms of dialogue, every line, whether it be shared between characters or through voiceover, feels indistinct, like it could come from the mouth of any badass chick or nondescript gangster. What’s worse is that everytime you start to build an interest in the story, the narrative pivots, seemingly bored with what it was covering before and forcefully creating new beats to lead us in a new, overly-manufactured direction. 

Additionally, performances from Beacham as Charlie and Meaney as Scarlett’s prison-bound father do provide “Duchess” with enough bona fide talent to subdue questions over whether this is an actual feature film and not some student project thrown together after watching “Snatch” or “Kill Bill” too many times. It may not meet the standards of these films, let alone make a mark of its own, but you can’t fault “Duchess” for at least trying.

“Duchess” will be available on VOD on Friday, August 9 from Saban Films.

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