Movies - TV
How Nope's Most Disturbing Sequence Came Together In The Editing Room
By BILL BRIA
Spoiler Warning!
This story contains spoilers for
"Nope."
Jordan Peele’s work continues to receive praise for its likable and interesting characters, social commentary-laden stories, and the unique balance it strikes between horror and comedy — all while creating a terrifying movie. Peele's latest film, "Nope," is no exception, and one of the film's most memorable scenes was created during editing.
A traditional rule when making horror films is to keep the monster off-screen as much as possible and let the audience's minds create the terror themselves. Ridley Scott says, "So, it's learning to tap into the human brain to show just so much. Let the brain do a lot of the work. That's where you start to tap into people's anxieties."
Peele brilliantly subverts this rule in “Nope” by taking us inside the bowels of the alien creature dubbed “Jean Jacket,” as it slowly devours the attendees of the “Star Lasso Experience.” The interior glimpses, spliced into the unnerving rainstorm sequence, only raise more questions about how the creature operates, delivering a surreal moment in a movie mostly grounded in reality.
Editor Nicolas Monsour revealed the moment was "a late discovery," saying, "The shots inside of the entity were something that were not planned. Jordan discovered and investigated with his VFX team after photography." The alien's interior joins a list of other unexplained phenomena during the film that genuinely lets the mind create the terror itself.