Review: 'Nope' is an emphatic yes, as Jordan Peele experiments with the elements that make up a thriller

This is an attempt at a spoiler-free review of “Nope,” writer-director Jordan Peele’s latest experiment in twisting genres into new shapes — though I could probably describe the first 45 minutes of the movie in great detail and still not spoil anything, because of the way Peele expertly sets his traps and patiently waits to spring them.

The story starts with a family of horse trainers in a remote valley in California. The Haywoods — Otis Sr. (Keith David), son Otis Jr, aka OJ (Daniel Kaluuya), and daughter Emerald (Keke Palmer) — have spent years training horses for work in the movies. The business has been struggling, ever since Otis Sr. died in a freak accident (shown in the movie’s early moments).

To keep afloat, OJ has been selling or loaning horses to the neighbors, a Wild West amusement park operated by Ricky Park (Steven Yuen), known to all as “Jupe” because of a role he performed in the 1980s as a child actor. Jupe — who harbors memories of a bloody tragedy on a sitcom set — hosts the park’s biggest attraction: An arena show with a very surprising finish.

Something’s happening in the skies above the ranch and the amusement park, and OJ and Emerald are determined to find out what it is — with some audiovisual help from Angel Torres (Brandon Perea), a camera tech from the nearby Fry’s Electronics, and Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), a cinematographer obsessed with getting the perfect shot.

Love of the movies permeates “Nope,” as Peele revels in movie history. He gives Emerald a great monologue at the beginning, where she describes how her great-great-great-grandfather rode the horse that Eadweard Muybridge photographed in motion, creating the first series of moving images. The common thread of the disparate characters is a shared obsession for movies, and for getting the shot at all costs.

Peele also seems to channel early Steven Spielberg, specifically “Jaws” and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” in a rousing adventure of people chasing and being chased. Peele eases back on the bloody horror of “Get Out” and “Us,” but there are moments that are truly — with elements of bloody horror — that are authentically upsetting.

“Nope” may not be Peele’s most perfectly calibrated movie, but it’s one that gives the audience things it never knew to expect. Peele is experimenting with the audience’s very notions of what makes a good thriller, as he delivers one that thrills in gloriously unexpected ways.

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‘Nope’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, July 22, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language throughout and some violence/bloody images. Running time: 131 minutes.