¡Nop!

Tras la demasiado pretenciosa película Nosotros, en la que la crítica social y la metáfora aplastaban el funcionamiento de la película en su conjunto, con ¡Nop!, Jordan Peele vuelve a una idea sencilla enmarcada en un funcional espectáculo de género, como ya lo hizo en Déjame salir. Y tiene exactamente ese encanto spielbergiano de asombro ante el elemento sobrenatural, elementos de comedia bien medida, momentos de terror escalofriante y, lo más importante, aventura. Hacía tiempo que no había una película tan épicamente aventurera, con la sensación de estar viviendo esta aventura exclusiva junto a los personajes. Por mí, pulgar hacia arriba. ¿Es Jordan Peele el genio cinematográfico y mago del terror que los medios de comunicación estadounidenses y la crítica en particular nos quieren hacer creer? En absoluto. Pero, ¿es un cineasta interesante y capaz cuyo trabajo merece la pena ver? Desde luego que sí. (10.09.2022)

Para un espectador que conoce el talento cinematográfico de Peele y sus limitaciones como guionista, ¡Nop! es exactamente el tipo de chorrada que anunciaban los avances. Este director sabe rodar casi cualquier escena de manera tal que resulte atractiva. Pero cuando esas escenas sólo insinúan algo durante cien minutos, y algunas de ellas no tienen ninguna relevancia significativa para la ya de por sí escasa historia (la asiática y el chimpancé), no es más que un engaño. La mezcla inusual de motivos de género de Peele (en este caso, terror de ciencia ficción y westerns) puede parecer audaz y original, pero en una película que se supone que debe dar miedo mientras se balancea al borde de la parodia, la visión creativa se pierde. En cuanto la ejecución, ¡Nop!, está en algún lugar entre Déjame salir que se basó en una idea brillante, y Nosotros que fue una tontería ridícula. (28.08.2022)

Best UFO movie in decade? Nope. Actually god damn YES! Jordan Peele is back and will once again divide audiences into two camps, though this time he'll get a bigger ovation than he did with the overrated Us thanks to the awesome material. Peele is a bit unconventional here, the social undertones aren’t as intense as in his previous films, there is a fair amount of humour and there are considerably fewer symbols and metaphors, yet he's made a unique and impressive genre film that again isn't as horror as it could have been, but I'm very pleased. Nope is definitely a horror film that manages to win the audience over with its strong cinematic aspects, and it looks really beautiful, especially in IMAX. The cinematography by Hoytema is a masterpiece in itself, some of the shots are breathtaking (and that's not something you see often in the horror genre), and the casting is great. Kaluuya is good, but next to Keke Palmer he seemed slightly like a shadow, because here she gives perhaps the strongest female performance in 15 years (emotions, screaming, speech, voice), an absolute acting tour-de-force from an unknown actress, whom I immediately want to see somewhere else. The music is well chosen and especially the atmosphere works fantastically, it's very uncomfortable, creepy, weird and unnerving in places. There are quite a few exciting and spectacular horror scenes that I will remember in the future (The chimp, a house covered in blood, a horse's head in a car, the digestive process of the villain and the screaming of the dead still ring in my ears). I'm perhaps only the final act away from a full score, which ironically is weaker than the previous ones (most people complain about the action-packed finale, but I wouldn't call it so, you can immediately imagine a spectacular Secret War style alien massacre and it doesn't really happen). I just wasn't sure if I liked the final scene or not, but you can't deny the creativity. Peele will definitely be making horror films in the future and I'd quite like to see a slasher or pure ghost story from him. Better than Arrival for me. Story 4/5 Humour 2/5 Violence 3/5 Fun 4/5 Music 4/5 Visuals 5/5 Atmosphere 4/5 Suspense 4/5 Emotion 4/5 Actors 5/5 Total: 8/10. (22.08.2022)

Siblings OJ and Emerald are struggling with a failing farm, their own relationship, and now with something hiding in the clouds, and as it soon turns out, it's pretty damn dangerous. Only how do you expose this thing, which is good at hiding and doesn't like to let witnesses in, to the world? And how to survive it? Jordan Peele delivers a science fiction film that doesn't quite work in the first half, and he as a director doesn't quite manage to build the tension as well as he might have liked. But he makes up for it all with the final act, when the humans and the mysterious something from the clouds have a fair fight. The closer we get to the end, the smarter and more entertaining Nope gets. And it looks really beautiful. But Peele still can't do real fear and terror. (17.08.2022)

For two thirds the film is a compelling, engrossing and carefully constructed horror-thriller mystery that kept me engaged as the characters struggled to get to the bottom of the mystery. This part of Nope, which I was very pleased with, culminated in a magnificent night scene with "blood rain" that made me glow with bliss and consider awarding five star to a horror flick for the first time in a long time. But, as you can see, I didn’t go further than three. Because the film then turns into an action charade, where you don't care about the characters and just try to catch the design of the weird contraption and figure out if you like it or not. And what shocked me above all is that it doesn't actually come to anything. After his previous two films, you'd expect Jordan Peele to be ... smarter than that? Us may have been logically leaky, but I found its social references were very stimulating (and that goes twofold  for Get Out). There's nothing like that in Nope, or I don't see it there at first. Many people, often dismissively, refer to Peele as the king of "elevated horror", but this is, in the end, more or less an ordinary genre film. In the space of half an hour, the film shoots two or three banal ideas (what people are willing to risk for fame and success / the fascination with tragedy / the stupid notion that man can tame everything), which it then repeats to the point of foolishness, but doesn't take them anywhere. I don't want to sound overly critical, Nope is definitely nice to look at, it has a number of impressive scenes and it's certainly a good film to see in the cinema, but after the excellent first two acts I can't help feeling disappointed at the end. (17.08.2022)