In the 2022 movie Nope, directed by Jordan Peele, a brother and sister (played by Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer) are hunted by what looks like a giant UFO. Little do they know it’s actually a living, breathing animal. And it’s hungry for human flesh.
When the entity (nicknamed Jean Jacket) opens its mouth to devour an unfortunate person, what we see is a gaping, screaming dark hole. And it sucks in everything it has its sights on.
“Don’t look directly at it!”, yells OJ (Kaluuya) at his sister. Having spent his whole life training and working with the family horses, the ranch owner knows a thing or two about animal behaviour. Staring at a beast’s eyes is a threatening move that can provoke a predator to rip you apart.
NOPE is a lesson in knowing not everything needs to be looked at. Not everything needs to be made into a spectacle, least of all for mass consumption and capital gains. The theme has been acknowledged by critics and journalists, as well as confirmed by NOPE’s director.
But could there be another message buried in this sci-fi horror? As I gawked at the frightening mouth of the entity, and heard the screams of the people coming from inside the animal (they were being eaten), and watched as the alien hovered above the main characters, I couldn’t help thinking this monster is a symbol of despair. It’s the personification of grief, trauma and your worst fears. If you stare into this void for too long, it will suck you in and unravel your mind.
This is why for much of the movie, OJ, Emerald and Angel do everything in their power to not look at it. It’s how most people behave when it comes to the inherent meaninglessness of the universe. In order to function properly in your day-to-day life, you must put your darkest fears at the back burner and go on about your life, as if the darkness doesn’t exist.
When seeing the raging alien, OJ goes back into his car and shuts the door. “Nope”, he says. Not today. He isn’t dealing with this mess. Of course it’s a smart move if you don’t want to be taken by it. But all of a sudden, the alien pukes a big neon sign onto the windshield of OJ’s car. Smash. OJ is terrified. He wasn’t expecting this. It almost hit him. When you neglect your traumas and fears, they will chase you harder, and cause a crack on your psyche. It will keep trying to penetrate your daily life until it catches you off guard. And such is the paradox. Look into the void and it will suck you into hopelessness and darkness. Avoid it for too long and it will catch up to you in other ways.
This void could also harm other people. In the beginning of the film, OJ’s father gets killed when a coin (from the alien in the sky) falls down and strikes his face. A key also pierces the father’s horse. Because someone avoided therapy and it caused a mental fallout in them, those near them get hurt too.
After his father’s death, OJ is more withdrawn than ever. Not only does he feel emptiness, he’s deeply affected because he watched his dad die. He’s wracked with guilt since he couldn’t save him. In the end of the movie, after the big showdown, Emerald fears her brother OJ has died. She stares at the gate of the theme park. She shuts her eyes and opens them and smiles. It cuts to OJ on his horse in the dust cloud. But the shot is blurry and OJ’s face isn’t clear. There are no close-ups of him. Fade to black and roll credits. While most believe OJ survived, I feel like the ending is more ambiguous. It’s very possible that he died. His grief at his father’s death got the better of him and he chose to stare back at the void and take it head on. But it took him instead. What took OJ’s father and his beloved horses, as well as threatened to destroy his whole ranch, took him too.
Emerald is the mirror opposite of her brother. She’s a sunny ball of energy who can make everyone like her. She isn’t dealing with grief as deeply as OJ since she didn’t see their father die. And she was already living on her own, away from brother and father. Emotionally, she was a bit detached. She and Angel (Brandon Perea) are the clear survivors of this alien ordeal.
Angel survives the attack because he ties himself to a barb wire that holds him to the ground. And although he gets uprooted by the alien and almost sucked in, the wire tears open the alien. Painfully, “Jean Jacket” drops Angel and ends up shedding its “exoskeleton”. There are people who have come face to face with severe depression (or “the Dark Night of the Soul”) and still managed to survive it. These inspiring survivors share this one belief: if you have something that keeps you anchored to your reality and identity, the way the wire tethered Angel to the ground, you too can survive an existential crisis without descending into madness. This can be done if you have medication, strong faith or a supportive community to have your back.
And finally, let’s look at the sort-of villain of the movie. Steven Yeun plays Ricky Park, the owner of the Western-styled theme park, Jupiter’s Claim. What we don’t know until much later to our horror is that Ricky has made a deal with the alien. Each Friday, he offers a horse to be gobbled by the alien in front of his audience. There’s no remorse as he sacrifices the helpless animals. What matters to Ricky is that he makes a bank out of this horrific show. Popular culture is much like him. Our media is oversaturated with content where mental illness and depression are sensationalised to get more views. Look at Logan Paul, for example, who once saw the corpse of a man who committed suicide in a forest, and the first thing Paul did was film the body excitedly and post it on YouTube for millions of subscribers to watch. Subcultures are created to make an aesthetic out of sadness too. The Sad Girl aesthetic, the depressed emo teen, the Doomer, are all manifestations of a nihilistic, lost society. But it’s what gets people’s attention and makes money. So creators continue to churn out more of these images and stories surrounding depression, emptiness and nihilism. While this culture doesn’t directly cause teen suicide, it definitely makes suicide look more appealing and attractive, thereby luring teenagers into taking the tragic step.
In the film, Antlers Holst (played by Michael Wincott) is a revered cinematographer who joins Otis and Emerald Haywood to film the alien. Antlers has an obsession to film Jean Jacket even when it means his life would be in danger. But he doesn’t care. As he screams with his might to call forth the enraged alien, he films the alien’s opening mouth, and gets eaten. In his last seconds, his face is lit with euphoria. For that one moment, he has meaning because he was able to do something others couldn’t: making a video of an extraterrestrial creature from up close. Antlers is a jaded artist who’s been struggling to find inspiration for the longest time but hasn’t found any. Always gloomy, he never smiles and treats everything with cold disinterest. But in that moment, he has found something worth filming and that fuels him like a drug, as well as destroys him. In a way, Antlers is like the tortured, crazy artist who doesn’t see meaning in life, unless he is looking at his worst fears and making art out of it. Depression is the only constant truth, and making art of it is the only moment when he feels alive. And he is happy to die making it. The crazy artist would rather submit themselves to the darkness than live an ordinary life devoid of daring art.
The various characters in Nope have their own unique way of dealing with Jean Jacket (and depression). Not everyone makes it out alive. Interestingly, if you keep avoiding the monster (and psychological problems), it will never go away. It will keep haunting you or those around you. The idea is to do what nobody wants: to confront it, to look it in the face but not for too long. But most importantly, to get your friends’ help and to document the ‘darkness’ so that the world sees what you see.
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