In the Flesh: Nope (Patreon)

“That’s the dream you don’t wake up from,” growls renowned cinematographer Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott) in his tar-and-whiskey voice. He’s speaking to fast-talking, relentlessly self-promoting Emerald “Em” Haywood (Keke Palmer), whose desire for fame and success drive her like a motor through a life of hookups and half-assed gigs. Even her quiet, socially withdrawn brother OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) spends his life chasing the dream of Hollywood fame, albeit through the more reserved avenue of horse training. Early on we meet Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun), a former child actor whose office is half-buried in a memorabilia collection that extends into a hidden back room. Like the Haywoods, who trade on their famous forebear’s starring role in the very first motion picture, Jupe is working with the exploitation and tragedy he’s been through in his own life in an attempt to transmute it into the fickle, amorphous currency of fame.

The opening scene — later revealed as part of Jupe’s history as a child actor — forms the thematic framework on which the rest of the film slowly, subtly expands. In an abandoned film studio a young Jupe (Jacob Kim) huddles shivering under the kitchen table of a cutaway sitcom household while his chimpanzee co-star, Gordy, mutilates and partially devours fellow child actor Mary Jo Elliott (Sophia Coto). Mary Jo later returns, played by an uncredited actress under heavy prosthetics, as a kind of memento mori at Jupe’s ill-conceived rodeo attraction, her face a skull-like horror of scar tissue half-concealed by a gauzy black veil, a living reminder of the fatal error of judgment that led to their show’s tragic end even as Jupe recreates that same mistake on a grand scale. Lack of respect for performers and crew, and in particular for animals, runs through Nope from beginning to end. Gordy the chimp, Lucky the horse, even the otherworldly filter feeder named “Jean Jacket”, a sort of tremendous airborne sand dollar/jellyfish by way of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s angels.

Jean Jacket both represents the faceless, inscrutable enormity of success/fame and embodies the exploitation necessary for its production. It is, as OJ states, an animal. It has no higher reasoning, no ability to think or plan. It gets hungry, scared, angry, curious, and that’s about it, but rather than run for help, the siblings and a few oddball hangers-on and late additions try to film Jean Jacket for the rewards of being the first to capture proof of its existence. They’re risking their own lives against its unknowable enormity, but they’re the ones with the faculties to make that decision. All Jean Jacket knows is that there are people in its territory. Visually, Peele’s monster is a triumph, a factory of horrors into which we watch horses, people, and debris get hoovered up like dust and then forced through wet digestive membranes as they scream and wriggle. There is little like it in contemporary horror, and Peele effortlessly melds his unique vision with subtle, oblique social commentary and a vein of humor which has matured substantially since Us’s Edgar Wright-esque cracks about kill counts. It's a real goddamn movie.