Near-Perfect, R-Rated Sci-Fi Horror From Comedy Legend Streaming On Netflix

By TeeJay Small
| Published 6 seconds ago

When Jordan Peele first hung up his hat as a comedy sketch performer, I mourned like I was losing a personal friend. I couldn’t believe that one half of the comedic duo behind Key & Peele would make a career pivot that would deprive the world of such abject hilarity. Then, when Peele began churning out horror films such as Get Out and Us, I was forced to humbly accept that the filmmaker had grown into a career that eclipsed sketch comedy entirely. To paraphrase a line from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Jordan Peele is no longer going for laughs… he’s going for gasps.

One of Peele’s latest and greatest efforts, Nope, is currently streaming on Netflix. The film blends science fiction, western noir, horror, and a few moments of dark comedy into a near-perfect concoction of distilled creativity unlike anything I’ve ever seen. His own list of influences that inspired this movie includes heavy hitters like The Wizard of Oz, Jaws, Jurassic Park, and M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs.

Horses, Clouds, And A Failing Business

In case you haven’t seen it yet, Nope follows a pair of siblings named OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer) as they take on the family ranching business. Their family has been training and loaning horses for film productions since the earliest days of moving pictures, though the rise of CGI is causing business to slow significantly. To make matters worse, their father, played by a criminally underrated Keith David, drops dead after a mysterious freak accident causes metallic objects to fall from the sky.

Just across the ridge, a former child star named Ricky “Jupe” Park (Steven Yeun) is opening up an old West-themed amusement park, where he plans to put up rides, games, and put on nightly shows for visiting families. Park insists on buying off OJ and Emerald’s horses, though the siblings refuse to shut down their family business. As the neighbors go back and forth, they come to realize something strange is haunting their rural area, leading them on a wild goose chase against a mysterious cloud.

A Bona Fide Modern Sci-Fi Horror Classic

Nope is the kind of movie that works best when you go in completely blind, so I’m going to try to keep everything else as vague as possible. Suffice it to say, the movie monster that arrives in the latter half of the film is so creatively dreamed up, it can’t be compared to anything I’ve ever seen committed to the big screen. This movie has Keke Palmer exuding pure, unadulterated charisma; it has horseback combat against an otherworldly beast, it has a killer ape on a rampage, it has a live-action Akira motorcycle slide done to absolute perfection. Are you not entertained?

For my money, Nope might be among the best movies on the entire Netflix platform. It currently touts an 83 percent critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, and numerous accolades as one of the best horror films of the 21st century. Pound for pound, I’d still put Get Out just a little higher on my list of Jordan Peele flicks, but, perhaps quixotically, I actually like Daniel Kaluuya’s performance in Nope better. This one is a must-watch, especially if you never had the chance to see it in theaters.