I give Nope a ton of credit for taking a big swing, but sadly I think it crumbles under the weight of its own ambition. Audiences attuned to Peele’s films aren’t coming into Nope expecting a standard horror film. We all know that the threat in the film is going to be a metaphor for something. The problem is that Nope gets so lost in this metaphor that the rest of the film suffers as a result. The characters felt more like hollow vessels experiencing the metaphor than actual people. But Nope still manages to shine occasionally. A scene with a chimpanzee and a possible homage to The Shining were highlights for me. It’s also great to see Peele’s growth as a visual director because each of his films looks better than the last. It’s just that the inverse is true for his scripts. Get Out was a pretty tight script, but each subsequent film has gotten messier and audiences are going to feel that with Nope. As we were leaving the theater, there was a lot of confusion and people “thinking” they liked it rather than anyone definitively loving it. I imagine this one’s gonna get very mixed reviews from audiences.