Experiencing the Horror of the Animal in Jordan Peele's "Nope"

The director's newest film forces viewers to encounter the utter unknowability of the animal.

When I was growing up, I was possessed of an obsessive fear of and fascination with non-human simians, particularly the great apes and, even more specifically, with chimpanzees. Every time I would see one come on TV, I’d almost invariably become terrified, so much so that my mom would (impatiently) have to change the channel to get me to calm down. When I was in my teens, I started watching the various films in the original Planet of the Apes film series, both deeply unsettled and yet utterly compelled by this modern myth about apes becoming the ruling species on Earth. Needless to say, the films’ thinly-veiled racial metaphor went totally over my head, and I took them quite literally as a story about apes ruling over humans. I retain a fascination with the franchise to this day.

And then came 2009, and the horrific attack of Travis the chimp on Charla Nash, a story which made headlines around the world. Like many others, I’m ashamed to admit I was morbidly fascinated with the whole affair. This was hardly surprising, though, given the sensationalist ways in which the whole unfortunate incident was reported, which focused (disproportionately, in my view) on the damage the enraged ape was able to inflict on this poor woman, as well as the attack’s aftermath. Even now, I’m still haunted by reports of what happened to Nash.

Like many other people, I went into Jordan Peele’s newest film, Nope, expecting to see his own unique take on the UFO genre. What I most certainly did not expect was to see a film which had a vicious chimp attack as one of its key (if, at first glance, extraneous) plot points. Yet that’s exactly what we get. While an alien being does, in fact, play a very large role in Nope’s central story it was the story focusing on the deranged chimp Gordy that I found the most disturbing precisely because his story matches Travis’ in so many ways. 

In fact, in the days since I saw the film, I have spent many hours poring through almost every piece of online writing I could find about this film, but I have to admit that I have found myself dissatisfied by many of the takes I’ve read. To be sure, there is a lot of very good film criticism out there on Nope–much of which has focused on the way it critiques our society’s collective obsession with spectacle, as well as a particularly fine exploration of its use of the sublime–but it seems to me that in their rush to offer an interpretation of Peele’s film, many critics and reviewers have somewhat missed the whole point. Or, to put it slightly differently, I think that they have tended to forget the experience the film offers because they are so busy trying to understand it.

Let me be clear, though. I sympathize with this impulse more than most. As a recovering academic, I’m very well aware of the need to explicate films, to try to get to their inner meanings and themes. After all, Jordan Peele is a director well-known for the complexity of his creations, which are full of all sorts of Easter eggs and other hidden gems for those who have the skill to see them. Nevertheless, in their rush to help viewers like me understand the film, I fear that critics and reviewers have actually done Nope and Peele a disservice. After all critical interpretation is undergirded by a fundamental separation between the viewer and the film, and reviews reinforce this distinction. In doing so, they sometimes rob readers of the very thing that horror as a genre is so effective at providing, i.e. an experience of our deepest desires, fears, and anxieties. For me, at least, this is precisely what makes Jordan Peele’s films so fascinating and so memorable. Like some sort of nefarious insect, they burrow deep into your brain and your soul, sinking their hooks into you and not letting go (to this day, I’m still haunted by Get Out, in my view one of the best horror films ever made). 

That being said, let’s try to unpack the experience of the film, rather than focusing too much on what it means, focusing in particular on the way the film immerses us in an encounter with the unknowability of the animal.  

Nope focuses on two siblings, OJ and Em Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer, respectively), who take over their father’s ranch after his unusual death. Very soon, it becomes clear that something isn’t right, as mysterious things start to happen all over the property, and OJ catches glimpses of what he thinks is a spaceship. However, he very soon realizes that, rather than being a spaceship carrying alien life, the flying saucer is, in fact, a vicious predator, one which attacks everything and everyone that dares to look directly at it, including Jupe (Steven Yeun), the owner of a nearby amusement park. Eventually, OJ and Em and several accomplices manage to trick the creature into eating a balloon which subsequently explodes, seemingly killing it.

From the moment that Nope begins, we’re faced with a feeling of dread, as the camera focuses on a desolate television set, where a chimp–arms bloody, dressed incongruously in a child’s outfit–sits down next to a pair of legs, which it gently nudges before, with a gesture of frustration, tearing off its birthday hat. Between my rabid consumption of the recent spate of Planet of the Apes films and my obsession with the Charla Nash/Travis case (to say nothing of my young fear and fascination with chimps and other Great Apes) I knew that this image of a bloodied chimp and a body whose face remained stubbornly out of frame was going to come back to bite us later in the film. And that is, in fact, exactly what happens, for it turns out that Jupe was witness to a truly harrowing event on the set of a fictional TV series called Gordy’s Home. After a mishap with one of the balloons, one of the chimps who played the fictional character well…went ape, with truly horrifying results. Enraged and frightened, the creature mauled at least two of his castmates, one of whom, we learn, was the body lying prone on the floor at the beginning. 

All of this is revealed in a flashback from Jupe’s perspective and so, as a result, the only access we have is mediated through his eyes. By the time the events unfold, Gordy’s dismemberment of the unfortunate Mary has already taken place, so we are (fortunately) spared what would no doubt be a scene of visceral gruesomeness. There is, though, one particularly horrifying incident, in which the poor girl, clearly still alive despite her injuries, makes a movement and a slight sound. It’s almost too soft for those of us in the audience to hear, but not for the enraged chimp who, seeing her once again as a threat (perhaps she looked him in the eyes) renews his attack. Here again, though, we can’t see what’s going on, though we can certainly hear the wet, smacking sounds of his renewed assault. Once again, Peele knows exactly what it takes to keep us on the edge of our seats.  

Not content with this, the film ratchets up the terrifying animal encounter by showing “Gordy’s” attack on yet another cast member who stumbles onto the set, incurring a mauling of his own. The poor man pleads with the enraged primate–notably referring to him by his fictional name (itself yet another indication of how futile it is for humans to try to make sense of the animal)--only to face his simian co-stars' wrath. As with the mauling of Mary, it takes place off-screen, our only access to it once again mediated through the cowering Jupe, who seems as powerless as we are to stop the horror unfolding in front of him. All he can do is to hope that Gordy doesn’t notice him and, for a while, that’s exactly what happens. Unfortunately, Gordy is no fool but, for some reason, perhaps because Jupe doesn’t look him directly in the eyes, he reaches out his bloodied paw for their signature fist-bump, only to be shot by police as their hands are about to meet. Gordy, though he might be innocent of any crime except that of animal self-defense, is seen in human eyes as nothing more than a threat which must be immediately destroyed.

Throughout this entire disturbing sequence, it is precisely Peele’s refusal to give us what we so desperately wish to see that is its most intriguing feature. True, we are left in no doubt as to just how frightening this whole encounter is, and we are, I think, meant to be grateful that we can’t see everything that has so far transpired between Gordy and his unfortunate human counterparts. At the same time, there is something dreadfully, unsettlingly, disgustingly alluring about this cinematic coquettishness; in denying us what we want to see (perhaps despite ourselves and our better natures), Peele also keeps us wanting more, yearning to know just what it is that has happened, even as his camera never gives it to us.

However, the closest we get to seeing the consequences of the chimp is in the diegetic present, when it is revealed that Mary, severely disfigured by her encounter with Gordy years prior, has in fact come to bear witness to his show at Jupiter’s Claim. Jupe, having discovered that the spaceship is a ravenous beast, decides to try to exploit it for his own gain, luring it in with a horse as bait. When the alien descends, the wind of its presence blows up her veil, revealing her scarred face as she, along with the rest of the audience, stares at it before becoming one of its victims. To be quite honest, I’m still a little unsettled about this particular revelation, not just because of the poor girl’s mangled appearance but also because it feels, frankly, more than a little exploitative of Nash’s own traumatic experience But, then, I also wonder if that isn’t at least in part the point. If one of the film’s purposes is to immerse us in the dangerous experience of animal alterity–what, after all, can we truly know about the animal, even as we spend so much time studying it?--then we must also bear witness to and experience the consequences of human hubris. 

In fact, sight undergirds the entire film, both as a thematic and, more importantly for my purposes here, as an experience. Peele is smart enough to realize that horror as a genre relies on our senses and that that which we cannot see is almost always more horrifying than that which we can bear witness to. Yet, as the encounter with Gordy demonstrates, sight is fundamentally limited in what it can truly tell us about our animal relatives. The chimp ultimately remains unknowable, resistant to the efforts to make him make sense–either for the characters or, I would argue, for the viewer–and is thus the epitome of the abjectly terrifying.

But, of course, Gordy isn’t the only monstrous creature lurking in this film, and so we must turn our attention to the alien being. Though, like us, many of the characters assume that this is some sort of spaceship at first, it’s Jupe who seems to first come to terms with the fact that it is in fact some form of animal. Unfortunately, he takes exactly the wrong lesson from this recognition. He seems to labor under the belief that he can bend the creature to his own will, first by feeding it the horses he has bought off of his neighbors and then by luring it to his amusement park with yet another of the unfortunate beasts as bait. This time, however, things go awry very quickly. Rather than taking the proffered bait, the creature, like some unholy vacuum cleaner from on high, proceeds to suck up not only Jupe but also everyone who has gathered to watch his show. 

After everyone is sucked up, the camera cuts to a very bewildering scene, in which we are literally immersed in the belly of the beast. At first, though, it’s rather confusing to figure out what, exactly, is going on here, as the camera is, unsurprisingly, not particularly forthcoming with the visual detail. All we can see is that Jupe’s unfortunate wife Amber, covered in fluid, is screaming and trying to escape from the monster. As Matt Donato at SlashFilm puts it, “We don't even see Amber die on screen, yet Peele mortifies through implications alone. The experience of sliding into a massive stomach while still conscious is like diving head-first into an anaconda. Cinematography makes it impossible to breathe, playing against multiple popular paranoias.” Indeed, the entire scene almost seems like a birth in reverse; rather than being born, we’re forced to experience the inevitability of being devoured. It’s surely no accident that the alien’s mouth looks more than a little like either a sphincter or a vagina (depending on your point of view). Here, the fear of the body and the fear of the animal dovetail, enveloping us, and the unfortunate characters, in a fate from which they (and we?) cannot escape. 

As Nope reaches its climax, the alien (if it is, indeed, an alien, and not some relic from some past period of Earth’s vast history) reveals its true form, something sublime and awe-inspiring. Commentators have pointed out its resemblance to any number of other things, from an angel to a jellyfish, but it is precisely its inexplicable appearance that gives it such a compelling aspect. While it is still the same terrifying, rapacious being it has been all along, we also can’t help but marvel at just how gorgeous it is. In a brilliant bit of cognitive dissonance, we find ourselves wondering how it’s possible for something so inexplicably beautiful to have committed the atrocities we’ve already borne witness to. But then, isn’t that the contradiction at the heart of the human/animal encounter? Just as humans mistook Gordy’s cute ape antics for delight–ignoring the very real capacity for brutal violence lurking beneath–so they also forget that sometimes in nature, the most beautiful creatures are also the deadliest.  

Like all of the best films from Peele, Nope sticks with you long after it’s over. It’s for this reason that I want to close by reiterating the point I made earlier. While there is certainly a lot to be gained from explicating films like this, I do also want to insist on the importance of appreciating the type of experience and affect that horror cinema like Peele’s can provide. Rather than trying to distract ourselves from what the film provides–namely, an encounter with the utter unknowability of animality–we should instead give into it. Only then, I think, can we truly appreciate the film’s radical representational politics.