Well, guess Universal didn’t think that the name “Jordan Peele” and a quirky hint-heavy advertising campaign was getting the job done when it came to Nope‘s social impressions or whatever, because this trailer goes hard on letting you know exactly what this movie is about. Everybody with eyes and ears and a brain guessed this was about UFOs and aliens and whatnot, but we didn’t think they’d straight-up cop to it, especially after all the buzz that the first teaser generated. But, hey, this might pull some people off of the fence: admittedly, it is a pretty fun idea for a flick: A pair of folks decide to Paranormal Activity some extraterrestrial activity, and find out that it turns out that E.T. is kind of camera-shy. We’re thinking it’s just a feature-length sci-fi take on that time Björk beat the shit out of a photographer, which kind of rocks when we put it like that. Should we be rooting for the aliens? Who knows. You decide.
Peep it:
Here’s a synopsis, though honestly you probably don’t need it if you sat through all that:
“Oscar winner Jordan Peele disrupted and redefined modern horror with ‘Get Out‘ and then ‘Us.’ Now, he reimagines the summer movie with a new pop nightmare: the expansive horror epic, ‘Nope.’ The film reunites Peele with Oscar winner Daniel Kaluuya (‘Get Out,’ ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’), who is joined by Keke Palmer (‘Hustlers,’ ‘Alice’) and Oscar nominee Steven Yeun (‘Minari,’ ‘Okja’) as residents in a lonely gulch of inland California who bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery.”
But you know what? We think it’s better for Peele himself to tell you what he really wants you to experience when you watch Nope later this summer, straight from Vulture‘s report from last month’s CinemaCon:
“’I like titles in tune with how audiences are feeling and thinking inside the theater,’ he explained. “You say, ‘This is going to be a scary movie.’ They say, ‘Nope, not for me.’ Especially Black audiences. We love horror but there’s a skepticism. You ain’t gonna scare me — nope! I’m going to personally thrive on the number of times we hear the word ‘nope’ in the theater. That person who doesn’t like horror movies, it’s about bringing that person in.'”
Nope hits theaters on July 22.