All year long, one film has sat immovably on top of my most anticipated list for 2022. Nope, Jordan Peele’s third instalment in his loose horror trilogy, boasts a dynamite cast (Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun) and a director on the hottest of hot streaks.
Peele’s last two films – the daring, really-should-have-won-best-picture thriller-satire Get Out and its similarly minded follow up Us (for which Lupita Nyong’o really, really should have won the best actress Oscar) – marked him out as the most exciting film-maker of the moment, someone who could deliver clever, state-of-the-nation stories in a moreish mainstream coating.
So yes, I’ve been eagerly looking forward to Nope, a feeling that only intensified with the release of the film’s first trailer – not least because that trailer tells you next to nothing about what the film is about. There isn’t the slightest whiff of a plot outline. Instead, you’re presented with a series of baffling, ravishing, terrifying images – a horse in a glass box, a field full of those wavy-armed figures you get outside car showrooms, lots and lots of people screaming – and are left to pick the bones out of them.
This felt to me like a fresh – and welcome – promotional approach in an age where even the tiniest plot detail is leaked, or just lazily revealed, in advance. Might Nope be the rarest of things: a film where you enter the cinema and haven’t the slightest clue what you’re about to witness?
Sadly, the answer to that is, well … nope. The film’s third and final trailer was released earlier this week and – if not quite giving the entire game away like some trailers tend to – does give you a pretty thorough sum-up of the film: its premise, its stakes, the threat at its centre. Perhaps this was inevitable: even someone as reliably bankable as Peele isn’t enough to entice audiences into the cinema on his name alone.
Frankly the only thing that is at the moment is the promise of the familiar – be it another Marvel movie or a nostalgic sequel to Top Gun. In that environment, getting people to part with their hard-earned for something that’s not based on something else they already know and love is difficult enough as it is, so I guess it’s only prudent to give them an inkling of what they’re about to see first.
Still, I can’t help but feel just a tiny bit disappointed. We’re so used to the regimented promotional cycle of Hollywood cinema – the teaser trailer, the official trailer, the red band trailer (basically the official trailer with a bit more claret spilled), the follow-up trailer, the TV spot after release – that by the time you see the film itself you’re intimately familiar with approximately two-thirds of it. The idea of going into a film without a feeling of what you’re about to watch is completely unheard of, preposterous even.
But it can be done. Perhaps my favourite ever movie-going experience was at the Cannes film festival three years ago when I sat down in the auditorium to watch Parasite, not knowing anything about it beyond the cryptic one-line synopsis provided by Cannes, and being greeted with one of the most suspenseful and surprising films you’re ever likely to see. Would I have enjoyed Parasite as much had I known more about it? I’m not so sure.
So, contrary to the entire function of this newsletter, this week I’m recommending that you not watch something. Don’t watch the new trailer for Nope! I’m not even going to link to it. Hold off for a bit longer and head into the multiplex on 12 August (or 22 July in the US), blissfully unaware of what you’re about to witness. You’ll thank me later.
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