Nope movie: How scary is Jordan Peele’s latest? Scarier than Us and Get Out?

For horror die-hards, nothing can be too scary. This time up, the Scaredy Scale is taking on Nope, Jordan Peele’s long-awaited, mystery-shrouded follow-up to Get Out and Us. He does throw in a few gratuitous jump scares, like when one character’s co-worker sneaks up behind him at a big box electronics store, but they play almost like inside jokes, or an acknowledgment that you’re probably not watching the movie you thought you were going to get. Peele has also said that after two horror movies starring Black leads, he wanted to make this movie more “about Black joy,” so while Nope has plenty of dark moments, you can expect it to end on a note that’s a little less unsettled and ambiguous than the final frames of Us. The very first thing you see in the movie is a blood-smeared chimpanzee sitting in the middle of a sitcom set, and although it does get around to divulging the nature of what becomes known as “the Gordy’s Home Incident,” Peele keeps the camera positioned so the grisly doings are just out of sight—if not, unfortunately, out of hearing.