Jordan Peele‘s much-anticipated third film, “NOPE,” hits theaters this weekend, and Universal Pictures has done a great job keeping the movie’s secrets under wraps. Plot details for the film remain scarce even days before its release. So, what do we know so far? Well, Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya play sibling Hollywood horse breeders who try to capture a UFO on video after their father dies. But obviously, that’s just the set-up for Peele’s commentary on something else entirely.
Now, on the eve of its release, Peele offers an answer on what the movie’s about: rubbernecking, ie: our collective inability to look away from spectacle, even when we should. “Making a movie that involves the moviemaking process is just so inherently meta,” Peele told IndieWire in a recent interview. “I mean, when you’re on a set that has a set [within it], it gets very confusing. The first thing we have to acknowledge is we’re making something about what we do and we’re trying to uncover some of the insidiousness of it, and the horror specifically that comes from the search for spectacle, the addiction to spectacle, and the negative sort of whirlpools of trauma that you can get in through this industry by being addicted to the attention.” So, Peele uses the inherent spectacle of UFOS as the basis of horror in “NOPE.” Sounds promising to us.
“When you’re on a road, and there’s an accident [and people are rubbernecking], what you’re talking about trauma as entertainment,” Peele continued, “It’s intrinsic enough in our DNA that traffic slows down when there’s a spectacle to be seen, a bad spectacle.” One can’t help but think of Kaluuya’s line “What’s a bad miracle?” from the first trailer for “NOPE” at Peele’s statement. Peele went on, “Everyone likes some form of horror or darkness. We need it. We need to contend with these things, whether it’s coming to see my movies or your procedural television that just goes to the darkest place of all time every night, but somehow you go to sleep OK. We need this. Horror [films] and the people who try to capture their nightmares and show it, I have to think and hope that it provides some catharsis for some people.”
Thus, “NOPE” is a movie fascinated by its genre’s inherent inability to look away from the world’s dark, nightmarish realities. Peele uses an image that’s terrified him since he was a kid to get his point across: the classic UFO “flying saucer” shape. “There’s something about the flying saucer that’s always scared me because it’s this minimal shape that kind of shouldn’t exist, shouldn’t be able to move,” he said. “It’s a blank slate of sorts. Part of the idea of a flying saucer, or a UFO, especially one that resembles the traditional one people have been trying to photograph for a long time, it’s kind of a mask. People want to know what’s inside, and once you have that, you have an engine for a scary movie.”
Perhaps a better analogy for what UFOs represent for humans might be a mirror rather than a mask. A flying saucer’s blank shape reflects the frightened yet determined gaze that refuses to look away from life’s horror back at the looker. Is that act of perceiving when one shouldn’t, of getting sucked into watching something one knows better than watching the bad miracle Kaluuya’s character references in “NOPE?” Moviegoers will have to see Peele’s new movie to find out.
“NOPE” hits theaters everywhere tomorrow, on July 22. Watch the trailer for the film below. And read our review of the movie here.