Nope

Following the sudden loss of his father (Keith David) in an ominous accident, OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) is saddled with the family ranch and its business of training horses for Hollywood. Fighting against the collapse of the ranch, OJ’s last shot at financial survival is rocked by his flamboyant and irresponsible sister Em (Keke Palmer). Returning to the ranch, the siblings are poised to part, and into the gulch left by their departure their father’s ranch will certainly fall. Everything changes when something not from this world appears above the ranch itself.

‘ Is there a word for a bad miracle?’

A question, casually uttered by the taciturn OJ, encapsulates Nope. The sibling duo stumble upon the signs of alien life, sparking a compulsion to capture proof to enrich themselves rather than human understanding. Nope is split across chapters which in turn rift between the present and the past. Denoted by the names of the ranch’s horses, each chapter documents the sibling’s fixation on capturing footage of the visitor, regardless of its real toll, which cuts against the immediate past of a 1990s sit-com and its abrupt and bloody end. The present predicament of the siblings is echoed by the tragic sit-com and the sickly cult of voyeuristic fans who now worship its cursed final episode. Across times, chapters and characters, Nope shows that when confronted by terror and tragedy, humanity relishes the event as strongly we are repulsed by it. From mass media to Horror films, we take the terrible and edit it down into a story until it is trivialised, until we are back in control and what was once unspeakable is a vicarious thrill ride. Echoing the 8mm rolls of animals killing prey which unfold behind director Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott) during a scene in Nope, humanity turns the terrible into a spectacle because it makes us seem powerful, even if we are never in control.

The underlying theme of Nope only adds to the terror of the unknown and immediate threat lingering above the ranch as the film unfolds. Nope is Peele’s scariest film so far and does much to revive the terror in the concept of alien visitation, harking back to films from the 2000’s such as Signs and The War of the Worlds. Peele uses framing, camera position and suggestion to make certain scenes discomforting, echoing Alien’s formula of showing enough without telling. The potential UFO at the heart of Nope is horrifying for the first part of the film thanks to Peele’s use of suggestion and sound design which hints back at the death of OJ’s father. There is a central twist to Nope which explains what has come to prowl around the ranch. The twist fits with Nope’s exploration of the human need to feel powerful over the uncontrollable and infuses the film with a pall of Cosmic Horror. The problem is that the revelation eats away at the unknowable, making the outside force controllable. Deprived of any further twists to reinvigorate the menace and mystery of Nope’s story, which Peele did achieve in Get Out after its grand reveal, Nope becomes a flat thriller. Nope’s ending comes across as forced, its central commentary fades away and the sub-plot aimed at reconciling Em and OJ as siblings is discarded. Em remains a distinctly unlikeable person barely excused by her role as occasional and flat comic relief. The only character to benefit from Nope’s narrative curveball is OJ, as events draw parallels to his past. OJ is the best written character and is brilliantly played by Daniel Kaluuya. OJ remains endearing, acting with strength without callousness and making decisions which can be both practical and comedic, adding a sense of a normal person handling an abnormal situation.

Jordan Peele clearly has vision and a willingness to follow his creativity into new avenues for Horror. Get Out was a roaring success, and directors should not constantly have their films measured against one another. However, Nope is a premise which fails to meet its potential for a story that is engaging, terrifying and memorable, a criticism shared by recent Horror film Men. Enough goodwill is born through the first half of Nope to make its second half bearable, but Nope has rightly not earned the universal praise of Peele’s other works.

By Saul Shimmin

Candyman (2021)

Rising black artist Anthony McCoy turns to the local Chicago neighbourhood of Cabrini-Green for inspiration. In the derelict bones of the Cabrini-Green project Anthony uncovers “The Candyman”, a mythic terror summoned by calling his name before a mirror. Spinning the African American bogeyman for a white audience, McCoy finds the fame he craves. In so doing, McCoy finds a price must be paid as people begin to “say his name”.

Slavery may be over, but African Americans are still controlled. Their culture and their very blackness are still perceived as a threat to the white suburban mainstream. In Jordan Peele’s Get Out the audience witness a horrific manifestation of black culture being de-fanged for white consumption. Black individuals are lured to a safe pocket of white suburbia until their very identity is subsumed, while their physical self is fetishized into an exotic object for display. In Candyman, black trauma is commodified for white audiences. Anthony’s search for a new creative muse begins when his depictions of African Americans being lynched are dismissed as “old”. Stumbling across “The Candyman” Anthony finds out that the legend is the personification of trauma in Cabrini-Green, appearing after the killing of a resident by police in the 1970’s. Anthony’s new piece, incorporating the act of “summoning” of the legend, is scoffed at by the white audiences and critics. Only when the legend takes a toll on white viewers does anyone take notice of Anthony’s work.

The commodification of black trauma in the art scene, and the tale of “The Candyman”, is a statement about the real-world reaction to African American trauma. Anthony discovers that the Candyman legend is far older than the 1970s. The figure goes back to the 1890’s and is reborn each time a black man suffers injustice and death at white hands. The Chicago art scene stands in for the white community, their interest in black trauma only peaked by a fresh incident. The white audience only really cares when black suffering transmutes into white terror, as unfolds in Candyman. Yet under the suffering presiding in Anthony’s art, the Candyman reveals a deeper story. Shocking incidents of black injustice are not rarities, but a longer thread of prejudice towards a people whose inability to be heard and helped forms into a physical monster. Director Nia DaCosta casts this cycle squarely at police brutality towards African Americans, as the actions of the Chicago police loop Candyman into a cycle of repetition and rebirth. The Candyman monster in DaCosta’s film is a multi-faceted being. He is an avenging angel, meting out bloody retribution against white indifference and policy brutality. However, the Candyman is equally a plague on the black community, with flashbacks showing his atrocities against Cabrini-Green residents. It is subtly hinted at that Candyman also arranges the acts of black injustice which revive his legend. His rebirth in the 1970’s was sparked after a white girl ate candy containing a razor blade, while the real perpetrator remains unknown. Haunting Anthony, the Candyman drops a sweet containing a razor blade. Candyman’s self-interest, his desire to live-on no matter the human cost, is symbolic of unprocessed trauma and anger. Contained within the African American community, who are given no voice, this anger and trauma eventually harms the vessel which holds it.

Alongside producer Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, Nia DaCosta has written a fantastic retelling of the Candyman story which fits into today’s world and the monster’s animus of self-perpetuation. Mirroring Peele’s Get Out, DaCosta’s revival of Candyman creates a horror-film of depth that engages with important issues. DaCosta takes the folklore aspect of the monster and creates an eerie and ethereal rendition of Chicago, as mirrors, distance and reflection mimic the Candyman’s perspective and the African American community looking in on the mainstream. The minimal use of gore, and DaCosta’s use of suggestion and out-of-frame references makes Candyman exude the tight fear of a chilling ghost story, preying on the audience’s mind to fill the gaps. Candyman surprisingly twists and threads into the original film as another chapter of the folklore, creating a subtle link to existing fans while still engaging audiences new the franchise. The cast deliver great performances throughout Candyman. Yahya Abul-Matten II and Teyonah Parris are excellent as Anthony McCoy and his partner Brianna Cartwright. Parris works really well with her character, especially the hinted past trauma around her artist father and his haunting by a Candyman-like figure. Colman Domingo gives the strongest performance among the supporting characters. Playing William Burke, a former Cabrini-Green resident, who acts as McCoy’s mysterious guide to the Candyman mythos.

Cinema’s true power is to make you live through someone else’s perspective. Candyman, much like Get Out, can effortlessly place you in the thoughts, hopes, and fears of a community which viewers may not belong to. Candyman is an ode to the original which is unafraid of creating its own commentary on the monster and world today. Please go see this film.

By Saul Shimmin

Uncut Gems

Diamond dealer Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is in over his head, a shyster running out of luck and marks. Addicted to sports betting at the cost of both business and family, Howard places one last gamble as angry creditors, loan sharks and his bad decisions close in.

Uncut Gems is a caustic rip curl that drags the audience along highs and lows as Howard, a pitiful and doomed figure, is cast into the New York underbelly. Under the Safdie Brothers’ direction Howard becomes a plucky hero, pitted against the odds in his scheming to win big, while the city itself looms everywhere exuding the manic paranoia of a man with little sleep and lots of drugs in his system. The Safdie Brothers, just like their decision to star Robert Pattinson in Good Time, have a nose for selecting the right actor to shoulder their stories. Sandler carries Uncut Gems through its glamour, grime and madness. Firing quick one liners and schmoozing everyone from his wife to basketball players, Sandler’s comedic talents imbue Howard with an oversized bravado masking his yawning despair.

For a man riddled by his own self-destructiveness, it is hard not to love Howard. The Safdie Brothers ensure that the audience suffers alongside Howard, his constant state of panic underscored by the continuous noise, incomplete framing and interspersed cuts of the pursuing loan sharks. This shared fear makes it that much more poignant every time Howard fails to make a break. Howard’s own frustration with his life is symbolised by his repeated exclusion from the cordoned parts of his world, from basketball courts to nightclubs, which separate him from the big time. Uncut Gems follows the same urban craziness as Good Time, but in a more restrained fashion. The inclusion of Howard’s family reinforces the dissolution of his life as both his wife and daughter openly loathe him, while the film’s twists and Howard’s desperate actions make his situation ever more tragic.

Besides Adam Sandler’s performance, credit is due to newcomer Julia Fox as Howard’s love interest Julia. Despite no prior experience or training Fox excels as the glitzy mistress who matches Howard’s mercurial temperament and penchant for chaos. LaKeith Stanfield, best known for his supporting role in Get Out, is equally impressive as Demany, a hustler who is both an ally and enemy to Howard, much like everyone else in Uncut Gems’ murky environment.

Uncut Gems is an utterly transfixing tale which keeps the audience’s heart in their mouth across its two hours. The film may not have the raw power or the emotive force of Good Time, but it is just as entertaining. The Safdie Brothers can do no wrong and I cannot wait for their next creation.

By Saul Shimmin

For the trailer, see below;

 

Get Out: Beneath the skin

Readily admitted by the film’s director Jordan Peele, Get Out is a subversive amalgam of horror films and other movies. Through what it does and does not do, Get Out implants you into the life of African Americans today. From Peele’s point of view, the threat to African Americans of Klansmen and burning crosses is dwarfed by a white suburban culture that fetishizes and fears black identity.

Get Out’s opening scene inverts John Carpenter’s Halloween. Halloween begins with protagonist Laurie unaware of villain Michael Myers stalking her in broad daylight. Upon release Halloween was perceived as a damning commentary on declining teenage morality with the slasher Michael Myers acting as judge and executioner. On another level Halloween reflects social anxiety among the middle class in 1970’s America towards the decaying and predominantly black inner-city. Myers’ entrance into the Illinois suburbs and the bloodshed he causes is the dreaded violence, crime and drugs of urban areas flooding into the prosperous environs. In stark contrast Get Out begins with a black man warily walking through the suburbs at night.  In Get Out, the shooting of Trayvon Martin and others render the suburbs an alien territory for black people instead of what most audiences originally saw in Michael Myer’s hunting ground, a sanctuary away from the stormy city.

The contrasting narrative of perception and location persists throughout Get Out’s first five minutes. A tracking shot of woodland alongside the score evokes the southern backwaters of Deliverance and Southern Comfort. Yet once protagonist Chris travels to meet his white girlfriend’s family we find ourselves not in the archaic deep south but the pristine woods of upstate New York.

By inverting what we expect from film, Jordan Peele rips the viewer out from the white male vision of most directors and firmly plants the narrative into a black perspective. Take Get Out’s first interaction with a white character besides Rose. Chris is stopped while driving and questioned by a police officer, opening the sadly familiar mix of inferiority and fear which can be projected onto African Americans.

Chris’s reception at Rose’s home is unexpected. He doesn’t receive the anticipated mix of hostility and condescension of which the police officer’s reaction to him was a forewarning. More alarmingly, Chris is lavished with adoration from Rose’s family and friends, praising him with an unfettered frankness for the traits they stereo-typically expect him and African Americans to have.

The appreciation of the older white suburbanites populating Rose’s community for Chris and black identity is skin deep. Their infatuation with the attributes black people supposedly possess is a fetishization of black identity, reducing black identity from an equal to a body of trophies covering sex appeal to just plain coolness. In turn the white man’s obsession with Chris’ uniqueness reverts the black man into a physical object, a band-aid for their own flaws, something to be auctioned off and used. Instead of progressing from the prejudice of segregation and slavery, the racism of white America towards African America has simply inverted; from sub-human to superhuman but not yet a fellow man.

The big reveal of Get Out is that Rose and her family have been luring black people to their home to be auctioned off to their white clientele. Their victims are first brainwashed by Rose’s mother into compliance then Rose’s father transplants the client’s brain into the younger black victim.

The sanitised racism lurking beneath the surface of Get Out is personified in the film’s four black victims including Chris. Each victim of Rose’s family, having been brainwashed into becoming hosts for the minds of the older white clientele, represent a stereotype of African American identity. Georgina the maid is motherliness and domestic servility, Walter the gardener embodies athleticism and Andre King is sex appeal. Chris, the fourth victim, represents artistry. In an ironic foreshadowing Chris talks to Jim Hudson before Jim buys Chris in the auction. Jim, an older blind art collector who never had ‘the vision’ for photography comments that Chris, a professional photographer, truly has ‘the eyes’. Jim’s words, and his later attempt to have his brain transplanted into Chris’ head, have an irony to them. Jim never sees Chris beyond being a pair of eyes, forgetting that it is Chris’ mind, along with his heritage, that adds the colour to his vibrant photos of New York City which make up his work.

Ultimately, I could be wrong about Get Out’s deeper meaning. Yet the film still exemplifies the power of film to take someone like myself, a white middle-class kid from England, and put me in someone else’s shoes.

By Saul Shimmin