Movie · 2022 · Horror, Science Fiction · 2h 10m · R · English
Curator score: 6.2/10 (2.3M ratings)
What’s a bad miracle?
Overview
Residents in a lonely gulch of inland California bear witness to an uncanny, chilling discovery.
Ratings
Curator score: 6.2/10
IMDb: 6.8/10
Letterboxd: 3.67/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 83%
Metacritic: 77
TMDB: 6.8/10
Director
Jordan Peele
Production
Universal Pictures, Monkeypaw Productions
Cast
Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Brandon Perea, Michael Wincott, Steven Yeun, Wrenn Schmidt, Keith David, Devon Graye, Terry Notary, Barbie Ferreira, Donna Mills, Osgood Perkins, Eddie Jemison, Jacob Kim, Sophia Coto, Jennifer Lafleur, Andrew Patrick Ralston, Lincoln Lambert, Pierce Kang, Roman Gross
Where to watch
Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A smart, big-screen horror-sci-fi hybrid that mixes creature-feature suspense with a sharp critique of spectacle, labor, and the urge to look. It’s uneven by design at times, but the visuals, tension, and ideas make it one of the more distinctive studio genre films of the 2020s.
Best for
Viewers who like horror with subtext and social commentary
Fans of slow-burn sci-fi mysteries and creature features
People who enjoy tense, visually inventive blockbuster filmmaking
Audiences open to genre swings that get weird and ambitious
Skip if
You want a straightforward monster movie with constant action
You dislike ambiguous plotting or tonal shifts
You prefer horror that stays purely grounded and realistic
You’re not interested in films that critique media spectacle and audience voyeurism
Overview
Nope starts as a ranch-set mystery and gradually reveals itself as a movie about looking: at danger, at entertainment, at trauma, at the impossible thing we think we can capture. Jordan Peele builds the tension patiently, then turns the film into a wild, sometimes absurd, but always controlled escalation of dread and awe.
Worth noting
The performances help anchor the movie’s stranger turns, especially the sibling dynamic at the center. It’s also one of those rare studio horrors that feels designed for scale; the sky, the landscape, and the creature logic all become part of the suspense.
Bottom line
It’s not the most emotionally direct of Peele’s films, and some viewers will find its middle stretch more diffuse than its best sequences. But as a piece of genre filmmaking with ideas, images, and a real sense of cinematic play, it lands strongly.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Framesofnick (4.5★) · 28645 likes
Giant gaping butthole in the sky eats Californians
Edit: this review unfunny as hell I’m so sorry to the world and Jordan Peele no one deserved this
Karsten (5★) · 25947 likes
this is my ‘don’t look up’
James (Schaffrillas) (4★) · 22723 likes
Um if it's so hard to get footage of this thing then how did the cameraman of the movie get footage of it so often 🤔🤔🤔
trin (5★) · 19882 likes
the 20second clip of the crowd screaming in agonizing pain as they suffocate will haunt me for the rest of my life
cookie (4.5★) · 19654 likes
on the rewatch i noticed daniel kaluuya’s character communicating to people the way one typically communicates w an animal – clicking his tongue, slapping his leg, that sorta thing. he knows animals better than he knows humans – what a horse needs in order to feel safe on set, but struggling to communicate that effectively to crew + talent. so when this territorial predator shows up in his backyard, he has the smarts to avoid its gaze; the gut instinct… more on the rewatch i noticed daniel kaluuya’s character communicating to people the way one typically communicates w an animal – clicking his tongue, slapping his leg, that sorta thing. he knows animals better than he knows humans – what a horse needs in order to feel safe on set, but struggling to communicate that effectively to crew + talent. so when this territorial predator shows up in his backyard, he has the smarts to avoid its gaze; the gut instinct… more