Even though Peele's first film remains his greatest, it's amazing that he continues to stretch himself as a filmmaker, that a genuine auteur (and a horror one!) is able to excite a mass audience on the basis of his name alone; Nope is a sci-fi, quasi-Lovecraftian horror blockbuster, one that has a few too disconnected ideas, but is ambitious and equally gorgeous.

The alien is a sky banshee gurgling screams like the Annihilation-bear and like Jaws -this is definitely Peele's most directly Spielbergian movie- the tension is released purposefully and periodically. Obviously, this is the most maximalist movie Peele has made so far and its visual scope is beyond most of his contemporaries: the clouds hide horror and the landscape is open for destruction.

Comparisons to Craven are still potent and like Get Out and Us, this movie is an amalgam of complicated social, historical, and artistic ideas. Sometimes it seems like ideas are merely presented instead of explored (Yeun's story feels like a separate movie even if thematically there's a connection), but this level of narrative/thematic ambition is fantastic. The history of black filmmaking, the sellout of trauma, animal treatment in art and what that existentially means for our species' future—there's so much to unpack.

And I haven't even mentioned the fantastic cast! Everyone is great, everything looks and sounds great, this is just a great movie from one of the best, current major filmmakers.