For the duration of Jordan Peele’s Nope, and even at the film’s conclusion, viewers are presently with very limited information about just what’s going on at the Haywood Hollywood Horses ranch. Before OJ and Emerald identify the UAP harassing their ranch as a living alien, the movie feels and is paced like a suspenseful horror film. The tension of not knowing the nature of the ranch’s disturbance builds a type of imaginative horror that peaks when OJ is pranked by Jupe’s kids dressed as aliens.
As the protagonists gain insight into the organic nature of the ET spacecraft which has claimed the ranch, the film starts to feel more like science fiction or a scientific thriller. Once the unprecedented presence of the ET is confirmed by the protagonists, restricted narration ensures that no character or viewer has complete information about the craft’s tendencies or intentions. The focus of the film shifts from identifying what’s going on at the ranch, to documenting and proving the existence of a massive and powerful ET. The viewer, who sees the ET from OJ and Emerald’s perspective, becomes invested in this mission of documentation and no longer fears things stemming from suspense, like kids in costumes.
Moreover Jordan Peele’s Nope, is a clear example of how narration can manipulate viewer’s experience and play with typical definitions of genre. What could’ve been an action movie about an alien invasion or a horror film about the haunting of a farm, the development of restricted narration frees Nope from checking just one box of genre.
I also really enjoyed how Peele is able to morph NOPE into several different genres throughout the film. This was my third or fourth time watching this movie so I knew what to suspect but, knowing Jordan Peele, I went into the movie the first expecting to see jump scares like in Us. Before we learned it was Jupe’s kids in the bar, I was on the edge of my seat expecting to see a battle between aliens and OJ. However, once the film turned into more of a science fiction genre, I really appreciated Peele’s creativity in turning our typical image of an alien ship into the alien itself. This shift in the alien trope from little green guys running around to a ginormous predator hunting from the sky was a fun new plot to watch and exactly the creativity Peele is known for.
I also thought it was interesting to see the genre sort of shift mid-movie. It’s something that we aren’t used to in a movie. I agree it started out like a horror film building suspense about the horses disappearances. The first part of the film felt significantly more scary than the second half as the audience and the characters learned more about the alien and what caused the disappearances. It was funny to see the suspense get cut when the aliens in the barn are revealed to be kids because I was expecting something really big to happen. I liked the restricted narration and that we as a viewer didn’t know more than the characters. It created more suspense at the beginning and allowed us to go through this journey with the characters. Overall, I enjoy Jordan Peele’s creativity in all of his films. He never fails to make an interesting film that engages the viewer and defies expectations.