Starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yuen

Directed by Jordan Peele

Universal, out now

Spoiler-free with regard to plot

“I will cast abominable filth upon you, make you vile and make you a spectacle.”

Nope is a complex beast. More complex than most commentary I’ve seen on it suggests. Yes, it’s about spectacle but the sense of what that’s about is deep and tricksy. There’re two keys to the film, both shown in the first minutes of the picture that tell you not only the structure of the movie but also its themes.

The first of these is a quote from the Bible. I saw it flash up on screen and knew there was something deep and dark about to come upon us as viewers, as consumers and participants. The second is a historical moment (fictional but real enough to reek of folk memory and as such taps into something deep in the psyche). This second moment talks about and explicates the first without banging it too hard.

Peele’s other films – US and Get Out – were simple in their main narrative, Nope is the same. However. As with Peele’s earlier two films, Nope is layered and complex and hides its smarts behind a super taut thriller that left me reeling.

I really want to talk about the design here – the film is self-referential, from that first image of a Black man on a horse through to seeing octopodes and boa constrictors eating tigers and crabs respectively and Daniel Kaluuya’s character, OJ, wearing a perfectly timed and presented Rage Against the Machine T-shirt.

And as for calling Kaluuya’s character OJ in a film about how the desire for fame and spectacle is a corruption that ends up eating you alive? I can only doff my hat.

I will not spoil the plot here – suffice to say that something odd is going on in the skies above the Haywoods’ farm and as the film progresses OJ and his sister Emerald (played by a superb Keke Palmer) become obsessed with capturing and exploiting what’s going on.

Peele here is pulling back the curtains not on show business per se but on the drive to be known, to be seen and to be adored. Every single character in the film wants that moment, wants to be seen by everyone else, to be adored and treated like a god.

And this is where the biblical quote from Nahum comes in.

I would tentatively suggest many people have misunderstood the point of the quote, and indeed the point of the story. It’s not saying that looking too long at a spectacle destroys you. It’s not some Nietzschean comment on the abyss.

The quote from Nahum is talking about being made a spectacle as a form of punishment. Indeed the spectacle in itself is not the punishment but the consequence of being covered in filth, that the one so punished has become so extreme, so contemptible in their circumstances that they become a spectacle for others.

In this view being made a spectacle is not only a warning event, it is most dangerous because of what comes before it.

For a world where spectacle is its own end, this is a deadly procession of becoming that which others wish to see because of what it signifies. The one who becomes a spectacle proceeds through an apotheosis that leaves them high and dry, Sisyphus at the top of hill just as the boulder rolls down again. At the point where relief should come but instead only reveals the yawning hole in who we are and what we’ve become.

Spectacle in Nope is about the danger of what leads to becoming spectacle and a warning about what one has to experience in order to become a spectacle.

Peele is kind of saying AVOID, AVOID, AVOID and the film is structured with a knowing look at us as consumer and as participant. In other words it points at us as the audience and asks us if this would be possible if we weren’t drawn in by spectacles like moths to a flame.

If one thinks of directors like Michael Haneke who have explored similar territory, they have often veered into challenging the consumer by making them part of the guilt associated with what’s happening on screen. They have been… on point, if you like.

Peele is more subtle and, to my mind, more devastating. He suggests, especially through Emerald’s never ending hustle, that we cannot avoid seeking spectacle. That it is fundamentally human to search for it, to seek to become the spectacle.

Not for all and not necessarily in the same way – each of the characters in the film have their own relationship to spectacle and what it means for them, but Keke Palmer’s Emerald remains the focal point for that raw desire to be known and thus mythologically secure from ever being obscured in future.

For so many the dream of spectacle is one of obtaining security – if we are known then it feels inconceivable that we could then suffer the fate of becoming insecure once again.

As if the lesson that all glory is fleeting is one that resides unlearned in the life of everyone we’ve ever met.

Peele cheekily suggests that we’d be in the audience for what the Haywoods try to achieve. He suggests that by watching the film we already are part of the ecosystem that sees spectacle as something to be aimed for in itself.

Yet he also reminds the viewer that spectacle is a predator which comes for us and cannot be controlled. It might be managed for a while but, in the end, the point of spectacle is not to make things known but to expose them instead, to destroy them through exposure, to warp and, ultimately, to wreck their nature through that self same exposure.

The things haunting the Haywoods’ ranch is this very process writ large.

And the message? Do not get seen, do not seek spectacle and certainly don’t try to control it.

Nope is a film with dozens of tiny little arcs within, from moments that harken directly to other films to little character gems that start in one place and end in another without feeling like they are the point of the film.

To say too much more would be to spoil any number of small moments in which each and every character gets to expose their natures to us – but for one which contains no spoilers for the film itself, watch for the veiled woman from the trailer because her presence is 100% not what you think it is yet speaks to the repetition of theme and form which I found so impressive.

I want to see this film again and probably again after that because the layering here is dense and satisfying. I feel like I’ve only appreciated it at the surface despite the themes around spectacle and being known and being destroyed for daring to be seen being so clear.

There is craft on display that needs seeing and appreciating entirely separately from the narrative arcs of the story.

Thing is, this film is also a lot of fun. It’s tight, taut and exciting. There are moments where you’ll be wriggling in your seat because of the tension while there are others where you’ll be slack jawed at the astounding vision on display.

The set pieces are incredible and at no point do the characters make decisions that feel inauthentic.

Verdict: Nope is a masterpiece people are going to revisit down the line and each time they do their view of it is only going to improve.

Rating? 10 trained horses out of 10.

Stewart Hotston