'Nope' review: Jordan Peele's latest is contrived, tedious

Fans of the writer-director Jordan Peele may spot a familiar-looking location in his latest, “Nope.” It’s a fictional fast-food joint called Copperpots Cove, which first appeared in Peele’s 2019 horror film, “Us.” It suggests, perhaps, that Peele’s movies are becoming all of a piece, the same way Pennsylvania connects the films of another horror mastermind, M. Night Shyamalan.

Considering how Shyamalan’s output steadily declined in quality after his breakout smash, “The Sixth Sense,” the comparison may be unflattering. Based on “Nope,” however, it’s starting to feel apt.

“Nope” marks a steep drop-off for a director who almost single-handedly changed the horror genre with his directorial debut, 2017’s “Get Out.” That and his follow-up, “Us,” may have set expectations for his third film impossibly high. Still, this muddled attempt at science fiction, which lacks clear themes and feels like a grab-bag of unrelated ideas, would be a disappointment from any filmmaker.

“Nope” begins intriguingly enough, with an imagined version of Black cinematic history. The true part: In 1878, a Black jockey rode for “Horse in Motion,” Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering effort at a motion picture. The fiction: Peele gives that unknown rider a name, Haywood, and invents two descendants who run a California ranch called Haywood’s Hollywood Horses. The Haywood siblings are the charismatic but flaky Emerald (Keke Palmer) and the taciturn OJ (Daniel Kaluuya). Their closest neighbor is Jupe (Steven Yeun), who runs Jupiter’s Claim, a kitschy Wild West theme park, and has one heck of a back story: He’s a former child actor whose television co-star, a chimpanzee, went on a bloody rampage.

From these tentative threads — something about race, animals and the media — Peele tries to fashion a story by introducing a UFO. It doesn’t gel. For starters, the Haywoods seem weirdly focused not on survival or escape but on documenting the thing. That leads them first to a mopey tech-surveillance guy (Brandon Perea as Angel Torres) and then to an ultra-macho cinematographer named Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), who growls and grumbles like Robert Shaw’s Quint, from “Jaws.” Whether that character is intentionally comedic or not is hard to say.

Jordan still shows a keen eye for an arresting image — that blood-splattered chimp is particularly memorable — and his UFO has its mesmerizing moments even if the effects leave much to be desired. Because the characters aren’t terribly compelling, however, and because they behave so implausibly (that goes for the alien, too), “Nope” feels contrived and tedious. In his previous films, Peele always seemed to be reaching for something. Here, he seems to be just groping.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman