FLIMS

NOPE With 2017’s Get Out, Jordan Peele made an almighty mark as a genre innovator, mixing horror with contemporary race satire, while his follow-up US pushed further into wayward visionary realms. His third film, Nope, still manages to be idiosyncratic, as well as pretty watchable in a traditional menace-from-above sci-fi vein – yet it’s nowhere near as provocative nor as fully conceived as his first two.

The setting is a stretch of remote California farmland where Otis Haywood Jr (aka OJ, geddit?), played by Daniel Kaluuya, is trying to maintain his family business, training horses for Hollywood. While OJ reunites with his irrepressibly no-bullshit sister (Keke Palmer, charismatically pushing the boat out), neighbour Jupe (Steven Yeun), a former child TV star turned theme park owner, is having his own close encounters with whatever’s hovering in those clouddotted skies.

What turns out to be