What makes Jordan Peele one of the best horror directors (whether he agrees with that or not) is that he knows horror films are all about the spectacle. You may be afraid of what you are about to see, but it does not stop you from wanting to take a closer look. Peele's latest terrifying vision Nope deals with the threat of flying saucers, and here is why one such saucer was scary enough for the horror director to drop an f-bomb describing it.
Classic sci-fi films like The Day the Earth Stood Still or Close Encounters of the Third Kind use flying saucers as an eerie element, as you don’t know where these flying mechanisms came from or what they plan to do. In addition to confirming that Nope will show what's inside its flying saucer in a "fucked up" fashion, Jordan Peele explained to Indiewire specifically what freaks him out about the use of flying saucers in a movie, saying:
There’s something about the flying saucer that’s always scared me because it’s this minimal shape that kind of shouldn’t exist, shouldn’t be able to move. It’s a blank slate of sorts. Part of the idea of a flying saucer, or a UFO, especially one that resembles the traditional one people have been trying to photograph for a long time, [is that] it’s kind of a mask. People want to know what’s inside, and once you have that, you have an engine for a scary movie.
One thing that the Get Out director has said about Nope is that it’s his most ambitious film yet. A central theme in the film is the idea of “rubber-necking,” which is the natural desire to want to view something and capture it on camera. It raises the question where if something out of the ordinary like a UFO sighting was not captured on film, does that make it real? Similarly, audiences will not be able to help but take a look at this new sci-fi horror film that Peele has graced us with.
A spine-tingling element to look forward to in Nope is not just the terrifying shape of the flying saucer casting its shadow on its running victims, but what’s inside of it. While the Oscar-winning director hasn’t revealed what exactly we’re to expect to see, he guarantees the spectacle before us will be “fucked up.” CinemaBlend's review of Nope notes that Peele accomplished his mission in giving audiences a big screen experience that “puts the modern notion of spectacle under a microscope” in the tone of Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Other reviews for Nope have said the film delivers an “intensity and terror that cannot be contained” and is a work of “unquestionable genius.” Flying saucers may end up being a trending nightmare after watching this flick.
It looks like Nope is bound to draw a lot of f-bomb reactions out of its audience by the time the end credits roll. You can see what exactly makes Jordan Peele’s latest UFO film Nope so terrifying now, as it's finally playing in theaters.
