The Best And Worst Moments In Nope, Ranked

Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Jordan Peele's "Nope."

It's hard to imagine anyone who had "Chris Kattan playing a monkey is a key component of Jordan Peele's new horror movie" on their bingo card. Yet there it is, more than halfway into act two of the sketch performer turned horror auteur's latest. Ricky "Jupe" Park, a former child actor played with verve and pent-up loss by Steven Yeun who details the "genius" efforts Kattan took to play Gordy, a chimpanzee and former sitcom star who brutally murdered his cast mid-taping. The moment likely alludes to this real, seminal "Saturday Night Live" sketch; Gordy's show was possibly inspired by shows such as the 1970s "Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp." 

That's the secret weapon of Jordan Peele films. Every phantasmagorial element they contain is less frightening than real-life horrors, and every joke that seems a bit too absurd is rooted in real-life foolishness. Peele sees the horror in common living. He expands it to fit the silver screen. In "Nope," that means deconstructing why we must tell stories on camera and how the entertainment complex makes what should be sickening digestible. (That includes Chris Kattan's sketches.) In fairness to the underrated comedian, "Nope" throws a lot against the wall and most of it sticks with remarkable ease. The moments or elements that don't — from a mid-movie reveal to some truly deliberate pacing — are still as surprising as a "Mr. Peepers" allusion. All of it is worth discussing, so here are the best and worst moments from Jordan Peele's "Nope," ranked.

"Nope" feels deliberately paced. Its first act is all ominous allusion, buoyed by characters half in mourning and half in the horror of encroaching terrors. The second act roars to life with the arrival of a livewire tech store employee named Angel (Brandon Perea) and the goings-on at Jupiter's Claim, a tourist trap run by a former Hollywood hotshot (the previously mentioned Steven Yeun), plus a stomach-churning plot twist for the ages. The third act is a self-conscious spectacle that models its unfurling after a Steven Spielberg classic and Hollywood westerns of old. Jordan Peele knows what he's doing and he sees his vision through, but I'm not sure all of it works.

Take the first act, specifically. Peele successfully goes to painstaking efforts to establish the personalities and accumulated chips-on-shoulders of duel heroes OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (a career-best Keke Palmer), the children of Keith David's fallen Otis Hayword Sr. He also sets up the film's bad miracle and a contentious but necessary relationship between OJ and Yeun's Jupe. All of that is good and essential. The issue is the opening: Peele drops the audience into two viscerally different yet equally shocking bursts of horror and violence. The film is suddenly roaring on all cylinders. In the words of "The Hateful Eight" and its lead Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), "Nope" suddenly slows it down. It slows it way down. The result is less a gear shift than a movie driving under the speed limit, and it arguably doesn't play.

Jordan Peele is not M. Night Shyamalan, even if the horror director's third movies bear remarkable similarities (aliens, an examination of miracles, the emotional fallout from a family death occurring six months before the film's main action). That said, both are adept with twists. Shyamalan made surprise reveals his bread and butter with the one-two punch of "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable," and both "Get Out" and "Us" hinge on massive surprises that reframe the story preceding them. That's also so very true of "Nope." 

Let's not beat around the bush: the UFO in "Nope" isn't actually a ship, but an alien creature that is eating things. It's eating horses. It's eating people. Its anger is insatiable and is, understandably, inflamed by an undigestable string of colorful pennants. If you Google "how to instill radical empathy," the first entry won't be "imagine a person or creature trying to swallow a string of those flags that you see so often at carnivals," but maybe it should be. If the previous few sentences haven't made it clear, Peele establishes the true nature of his flying object with gut-churning specificity and no shortage of gallows humor. That's what makes it excellent. The concept's uniqueness and shock value never supersede the story "Nope" is trying to tell, nor do they knock the film off-balance. If anything, they render all that has come before (and all that will come after it) absolutely inevitable. That's the best of Peele (and Shyamalan) in a nutshell.

Take Ricky "Jupe" Park and Jupiter's Claim. The Western-themed carnival that Park has taken over recently is analogous to Amity's beaches in "Jaws." Both turn profits by promising singular entertainments and relaxations. Both are under fairly new leadership. And it is the trickle-down effect of this leadership — be it that of Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) or Park — that is responsible for the carnage that follows at both locations. The mayor refuses to close the beaches despite Brody's warnings, and people get eaten. Park's commodified the feeding process of a predatory creature he cannot understand, and people get eaten. This is impeccable parallel construction.

However, in "Jaws," the mayor's designs and aims are clear and unfold in a linker fashion. In "Nope," Park's traumatic history and capitalist aims crystallize in a packed second act. They contain, I think, almost all the info a viewer needs. The details, though, are more rushed through and hard to parse than necessary. A movie shouldn't spoon-feed its audience, but Jordan Peele's admirable refusal to do so inadvertently leaves viewers either feeling stuffed with exposition or confused from a perceived lack of it. That's on top of a UFO that eats people. It's a lot. This is the blockbuster cinema equivalent of a champagne problem. That said, "Get Out" proved just how economical Peele can be as a writer. At the moment "Nope" needs to be its smoothest, it asks the audience to sift through its edges and buff things out themselves. It's a gamble, much like Jupiter's Claim, that doesn't pay off.

In Blake Snyder's seminal screenwriting book "Save The Cat," the "break into three" section occurs before the finale and involves "the main character choosing to try again." They've received new information. That knowledge will help them finish their journey successfully. In Jordan Peele's "Nope," the "break into three" is two pieces of technology — a vintage camera that captures images without electricity and Wacky Waving Inflatable Tube Guys. The dissonance in tone between a goofball advertising aid and equipment from the birth of movies embodies "Nope" and its contradictions. The final hunting sequence in "Nope," one that finds Emerald (Keke Palmer), OJ (Daniel Kaluuya), Angel (Brendan Perea), and Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott) pulling out all the stops to get their money shot of a hungry UFO, brings every element of "Nope" together flawlessly. 

It's all there. The callbacks to tiny details. ("The Scorpion King!") Moments of filmmaking and character ingenuity, like Angel using barbed wire and a tarp to keep from being eaten, and most importantly, stretches of thrilling cinema. If you don't get chills of any degree when OJ evades the alien creature on horseback and Michael Abels' score immediately echos Hollywood western scores of old, you might need to check your pulse. Jordan Peele may be examining the dangers of how and why we make and consume spectacles, but he's also crafted one on his own terms. The final hunt makes that abundantly clear ... with one exception.