Tantalizing first trailer for Jordan Peele’s Nope leaves us eager for more

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, when Hollywood traditionally drops trailers for upcoming high-profile films and TV series. This year, the marketing frenzy kicks off with the first trailer for Jordan Peele’s forthcoming horror feature, Nope, which dropped unexpectedly at 3 am EST today. We at Ars Technica are totally on board for this film.

Our confidence is well-placed. Peele has cemented his status as the current master of thought-provoking horror, starting with Get Out, his surprise box office hit that earned more than $250 million and snagged Peele an Oscar for best original screenplay—the first time the award has gone to a Black recipient. Get Out is a subtle exploration of racial tensions that quietly reveal its horrifying premise and builds to an inevitably bloody conclusion. In Peele’s 2019 follow-up, Us, the theme wasn’t so much racial tension—it was exploring, in Peele’s words, the myriad ways in which “we are our own worst enemies.”

Peele also co-wrote, with director Nia DaCosta, last year’s electrifying sequel (of sorts), Candyman, which transformed the singular 1990s slasher known as Candyman into an ageless malevolence whose curse reverberates through time. Then there’s Peele’s reboot of The Twilight Zone, the various films showcased in the anthology series Welcome to the Blumhouse, and the myriad other projects he’s had a hand in with Blumhouse Productions.

So any new project from the man’s brilliantly twisted mind is welcome, and Nope looks to be just as strangely evocative as Get Out and Us. Trailers for Peele’s films never reveal too much, since much of the pleasure of his movies come from their frequently bizarre twists. We wouldn’t have it any other way. All we know thus far about Nope is that Daniel Kaluuya (who was nominated for an Oscar for Get Out), Keke Palmer (Hustlers, Black Panther), and Steven Yeun (Minari, Okja) play “residents in a lonely gulch of inland California who bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery.” We don’t even know the characters’ names yet.

The trailer offers scant details. First off, we are treated to historic footage by 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge. He was the first person to capture a horse in different stages of its gallop on film—a technological breakthrough that helped pioneer the film industry. (Legend has it that Muybridge was asked to settle a bet for the governor of California, who insisted that, when a horse gallops, there is a moment when all four feet are off the ground simultaneously. Another fun fact: Muybridge was tried and acquitted for killing his wife’s lover, in the O.J. Simpson trial of the 19th century.)

Palmer’s character appears to be the great-great-great granddaughter of the rider featured in Muybridge’s famous footage. That’s what she claims as she and a distinctly glum Kaluuya are filming a commercial for the Haywood Ranch, the first Black-owned horse-training ranch serving Hollywood. “We like to say, ‘Since the moment pictures could move, we had skin the game,'” she enthuses. The ranch occasionally stages performances for anyone willing to trek out to the middle of nowhere.

It’s business as usual when we get back to Haywood Ranch, with Palmer dancing inside the ranch house while the still-glum Kaluuya hangs out in the dark with a horse. But then the sky darkens, the power goes out, and the horse bolts in panic. A bunch of inflatable waving tube men mysteriously deflate—they’re already creepy, and even more so in this context. In the trailer’s final scene, Palmer looks up at the heavens in horror, turns, and runs—only to be swept up into the sky. “What’s a bad miracle? We got a word for that?” Kaluuya wonders.

Could it be… aliens? I mean, it sure seems like it could be aliens. Not only is the ranch house evocative of the house in 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but there are alien trinkets on sale at the ranch’s souvenir kiosk. And is that a shriveled alien hand reaching out to touch a human child’s hand? Alternatively, this might just be more of Peele’s penchant for clever misdirection, and we’re in for something even weirder. Expect a few mind-blogging twists either way before the credits roll.

Nope opens in theaters on July 22, 2022.

Listing image by YouTube/Universal Pictures