I loved Nope. I found the first half of the film to be so eerie and beautiful and brilliant and shot through with such disarming humor, I really thought Jordan Peele was on his way to achieving a genre-film masterpiece. Then at the time, it seemed to me the film began to unravel a bit. But now, after thinking about it and talking about it obsessively with fellow film freaks, I’m not so sure it doesn’t work all the way through, with an extraordinary emotional logic that’s hard to translate into analysis.

At the very least, Nope has such great, obsessive qualities about alienation, animals, and cinephilia — all subjects I care a lot about — I knew at once that I was seeing a film made for me. Whether it’s also made for you is between you and your gods.

The film opens with a biblical quote and the mysterious aftermath of a chimpanzee rampage. This was an immediate, dramatic throwing down of a directorial gauntlet. Though Jordan Peele is going around giving interviews claiming that he’s happy if people regard this film as nothing more than a successful summer entertainment, the opening was the kind of announcement of serious ambition that’s rare to see lately.