Seeing Is Believing in Nope

The film's cinematographer breaks down three visual choices that make you question exactly what you're witnessing.

- Roxana Hadadi

JORDAN PEELE'S new horror comedy, Nope, stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer as Otis Jr. and Emerald, the sibling proprietors of Haywood's Hollywood Horses. As they attempt to capture video evidence of a mysterious being attacking their ranch from the clouds, Nope stretches out like a camera's bellows to the wide-open landscapes and cyclone-filled sky in a way that recalls The Wizard of Oz. OJ and Em team up with a cinematographer named Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott) to nab footage of the alien using a hand-cranked Imax camera the Nope crew referred to as "Dorothy." During filming, Wincott shadowed the film's own cinematographer, Hoyte van Hoytema, to study up on his role. "Photography-or how we photograph things, and the chemistry of photography-is a very big theme in the film," says van Hoytema, who broke down a few key scenes that play with the idea that we can't always see what's happening around us.

1. Pitch-Black Nights

Much of Nope takes place at night, when the Haywood siblings realize their horses are being hunted and their house targeted. An early scene follows Kaluuya's OJ as he investigates lights left on in the ranch's barn, while another horrifying sequence mid-film involves the house being drenched in blood as a thunderstorm rages.