Jordan Peele's "Nope" left some audiences saying
"Hell yeah!" Others, however, were ready to "Get Out" — of theaters.
The opening scene of "Nope" is a viscerally horrifying experience that puts viewers on
edge while setting up the themes of the film all at the same time.
It's almost entirely quiet and comprised of a single, simple shot.
A chimp in a birthday hat covered in blood on the set of a television show. It's clear
that the chimp has run amok and savagely mauled the girl, who may or may not be dead.
Chimp attacks on their own are terrifying, but coming at the very start of a film supposedly
about aliens, it's as upsetting as can be. One Reddit user wrote,
"It's truly the scariest scene in my opinion in this movie... It makes you want to look away
but the feeling of needing to know what happens next is curiosity taking over."
Following the opening scene, we meet Otis Haywood Sr. and his son OJ. Unfortunately, the Haywood
patriarch is badly wounded by falling debris. He abruptly stops moving and sags atop the horse he
is riding. After he's rushed to the hospital, we find out that a nickel fell from the sky,
through Otis Sr.'s head, and fatally embedded itself in his brain. While
that would be upsetting enough, some fans have picked up on a more insidious part of the scene.
As one Reddit user points out,
"The overall theme of Nope is trying to profit off things you really probably shouldn't profit
from... what kills Keith David's character is money falling from the f**king sky."
By the sheer number of comments, it's obvious that one of the most upsetting sequences in
"Nope" is when the saucer sucks up the crowd at Jupe's show. The scene itself is gruesome,
but the implications of what comes next are even worse. The saucer is no alien aircraft but rather
an animal itself, which means that the crowd is actually being digested instead of just abducted.
An exchange between two Reddit users sums up the scene's implications well:
"So what, they're being slowly digested while suspended in air for hours?"
"I guess until it blenders them or something."
Sporadically throughout "Nope," chillingly vague screams echo throughout the canyon, usually when
the saucer is in sight. The movie spends a long time sprinkling the screams throughout before it
ever even hints at an explanation. On top of that, the screams seem to come from multiple
beings at once, sounding like any number and combination of people and animals. Even before
the spine-chilling sounds are explained, they managed to upset fans to their cores.
One Reddit user was one of the first to cite the pervasive screams as one
of the most upsetting parts of "Nope," saying that
"Their screams from the clouds was horrible too...and then suddenly cut off. Chills."
The screams make the digestion scene even worse, implying that the saucer carries its
victims in its stomach for days, slowly and painfully digesting them. One fan writes,
"I'd never seen that in a monster movie before. The monster's victims still alive
inside it and screaming, giving you a sense of the being's location but in
a way that is more terrifying than useful. And then it swallows them."
"We're making something
new and special and something that is a testament to why I love movies."
And, of course, the digestion scene leads directly to one of the most horrifying
moments in the entire film: the blood rain scene. The scene, which is already
being compared to the infamous elevator blood scene from "The Shining," sees Em and Angel
trapped in the ranch house overnight, the saucer menacingly hovering directly
over them. Like we had seen before, small metal objects began falling from the sky,
clinking against the house's walls and windows. Then, the rain switches to a torrent of dark red
blood, which repaints the formerly white building red for the rest of the movie.
"Heh. They repainted your house."
As we gradually come to realize, the blood and all the metal objects that had ever fallen from
the sky were actually the saucer creature expelling its waste. One user wrote that,
"...we see the Jean Jacket vomit the objects it cannot digest, and you wonder what's next.
Will it destroy the house attempting to kill Em and Angel? Nope,
blood starts to slowly pour in a terrifying Shining-esque sequence."
We already covered the opening scene, which jumpstarts fan terror with images of a bloody
Gordy and his victim, but "Nope" has much more Gordy violence to parade out later in the movie.
After some balloons unexpectedly popped on set, the chimp burst into a murderous rage,
brutally mauling his co-stars. The one exception is a young Jupe who Gordy leaves unharmed.
The sequence did not sit well with fans at all. One Reddit user wrote that
"The entire scene... was so nerve-wracking, especially when he sees young Jupe under
the table and just stares into the camera. My anxiety was so high."
While another fan wrote,
"The Gordy scene was masterfully done and stuck with me as truly unsettling."
The vast majority of "Nope" moments that upset fans were pretty purposefully meant
to invite discussion. They either delivered on the film's promise of horror or delivered on
its social commentary, in both cases nailing that sweet spot so typical of Peele's work.
But a few of the upsetting moments seem to be drawing such ire from viewers because the
suspension of disbelief is being broken. Case in point: the praying mantis, which has already
begun to generate its own discussion threads for its absurdity and convenience to the plot.
The insect in question appears at the exact moment the Haywoods try to film the saucer.
It covers the digital camera that Angel prepared beforehand throughout the entire alien encounter
and flies away of its own accord the moment the saucer leaves, preventing any useful
recording. As one Reddit user commented, the use of the mantis felt "weak" and "flimsy."
"Their setup would've worked fine if not for the praying mantis though,
and they abandoned that setup after 1 try."
They're right, given that OJ specifically comments on how rare the bugs are in that area,
making the moment even more frustrating. And though other users consider the insect's
presence just another "bad miracle," the sheer coincidence of the insect
being such an obstacle to the Haywoods success doesn't make it any less upsetting. That said,
it's worth noting that Peele likely meant for this moment to be upsetting to fans on purpose.
The scene becomes even more suspenseful not just because of the danger that the saucer poses to OJ,
but because it's up to Emerald to try to remove the insect in time to capture the saucer on video.
If fans were upset that the Haywoods didn't succeed when the movie wasn't even half over,
that just shows that they were invested in the characters.
To some fans, the choices and actions of Antlers Holst may be the most annoying parts
of "Nope." The character, superbly played by Michael Wincott, is presented throughout
the film as a true master of his craft – he's an old-school, guerrilla filmmaker
and an incredibly talented cinematographer. He chooses his projects carefully, and it's clear
that he values integrity and intelligence over all else in his career. That's why
it's so aggravating when Holst agrees to help the Haywoods film the saucer and seemingly blows it.
The supposedly expert filmmaker decides to take both himself and his never-before-seen,
world-changing footage of the saucer creature and voluntarily feed himself and it to the saucer.
After all this time trying to capture the perfect shot of the creature, he succeeds,
but only by throwing his own life away. The act has prompted a number
of dedicated discussion threads, such as "What was up with Antler Holst in the
climax?" "My theory about Holst & his sacrifice" and the most direct of all,
"What antlers holst did was very stupid can you guys explain why he would've done that?"
With all of the intersecting messages in "Nope" centered around the dangers of dehumanization,
disrespecting living beings, trying to control predators,
and putting spectacle ahead of empathy, some inattentive viewers think it was
an odd choice for the movie to end with the creature murdered by Em.
To these fans, the scenes involving Gordy and his effect on Jupe's later life were meant as
examples of what not to do. Those who try to dominate dangerous animals and harm them for
selfish gain risk violent retribution and moral compromise. The same is seemingly true for the
scenes involving O.J. and his horse Lucky, and how the pair were treated on a commercial set.
The theme supposedly carries into the third act,
as the cast prepares to get the perfect shot of the creature.
However, one fan believes that the third act actually leads to OJ "taming the creature."
"That was [Jean Jacket] showing respect to OJ. OJ challenged it and won,
and after that revealed its true self to him, seeing him as an equal and let him live."
Another fan added that,
"Respect is given, shown, and taken in most animal species,
it's not a human specific characteristic."
These fans seemed to believe that the scene featured a genuine bond between OJ and Jean
Jacket, which would make the creature's death a confusing choice. Of course,
considering that Jean Jacket is directly responsible for the death of OJ and Em's father,
on top of being a bloodthirsty killer of both people and horses,
it's maybe safe to say that Jean Jacket's comfort wasn't exactly the top priority for the Haywoods.
By its end, "Nope" reveals itself to be anything but the alien movie most viewers expected.
What is initially believed to be a spaceship containing alien visitors from another planet
turns out to be an organism itself, a massive, flying predator that sucks
people and animals into its saucer-like body to eat them, not probe them. Sorry, Angel.
"They're just waiting for the perfect time to shove metal probes up our asses."
And while the film's characters still seem to believe the creature is alien in origin,
there is not necessarily anything in the film to
suggest that the creature is anything but a previously-undiscovered species of animal.
This twist, turning an alien invasion movie into a creature feature,
is playful and fresh, but that doesn't stop fans of alien invasion movies from being disappointed.
Peele certainly billed the movie as an alien movie, even citing the recent release
of previously-unseen government footage of U.F.O.s as an inspiration. However,
the lack of explicit confirmation within the world of the film seems to have angered some viewers.