Credit: Netflix

A lot of people are still unaware that Jordan Peele was the man behind one of the most critically acclaimed modern horror films of our time: Get Out. However, cinephiles never miss a chance to mention it because, can you believe it, he’s the same Peele from Key & Peele, who never misses a chance to crack us up. In his defence, the film did win multiple Oscars.

You know what… He totally deserves the recognition because, in a way, he shifted the horror genre for a while there. It’s mad when you think about it! And just when you think that he did one superhit experimental film and faded away, Nope comes in and proves you wrong.

Because the idea behind it was never to explain itself every ten minutes. Nah, not a chance. The whole thing keeps you quite uneasy from the start, and the annoying part is… it works. It’s all weird territory from the start.

The story follows OJ and Emerald Haywood, played by Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer, whose family runs this horse-training business for Hollywood productions out in California. Except things aren’t exactly going great for them: everybody’s stressed out, money is tight, and then weird stuff starts happening around the ranch… Obviously!

Power cuts down. Random objects are dropping from the sky. Horses are acting all twitchy. OJ clocks something massive moving through the clouds, and from there, everybody gets obsessed with trying to prove what they have seen before things go completely pear-shaped. Which they obviously do because this is a Jordan Peele film, and nobody’s ever allowed peace throughout the course.

If you remember, people argued about this film for months after it came out. Half the audience walked out, calling it genius, while the other half looked like they had just survived emotional warfare. Funny, isn’t it? The Gordy subplot alone had people literally rattled out of their skin. You can find subReddits for that thing, even today.

Peele knew exactly what he was doing there as well because the whole film keeps getting dangerous, but at the same time, humour is produced out of it, which is dead funny.

And can we talk about how unreal this film looks for a second? Hoyte van Hoytema shot it. In case you didn’t know, he is the same cinematographer Christopher Nolan works with, so while every sky shot looks gorgeous, it also feels slightly cursed at the same time, which was basically the idea behind Nope. But fair warning about the sound design, because it is horrible if you hate creepy noises.

Also, Keke Palmer fully steals scenes left and right because while Daniel Kaluuya spends most of the film looking like a man who might give up on life any second, she comes flying in with energy that stops the whole thing from becoming too miserable.

So yeah… if you skipped Nope because people kept calling it confusing or weird, now is probably the time to watch it with a fresh perspective, as it just got added to Netflix.