Nope review, Culture Whisper
In 1997, the Austrian auteur Michael Haneke made the metatextual horror film Funny Games. It was a brilliant, damning critique of the consumer spectacle of on-screen violence and the (chiefly American) audience’s lust for blood. 25 years later – after 9/11, YouTube, the iPhone, and social media – the influential comedian-turned-director Jordan Peele tries to achieve a similar feat with Nope, his follow-up to Us and Get Out.
It’s a frivolous comparison: one’s Hollywood-built, the other is European arthouse. But Haneke says more about spectacle within a holiday home than Peele attempts across a vast Californian valley, and the stupendously superior budget succeeds only in blunting Nope's sharp potential. Perhaps the contradiction of scrutinising spectacle while making an IMAX spectacular was too much of a paradox to overcome.
