WARNING: SPOILERS

Is Jordan Peele becoming M. Night Shyamalan? Both men knocked it out of the park with their first horror feature (“The Sixth Sense,” “Get Out”), did well with the second (“Unbreakable,” “Us”), but ran into trouble with the alien-invader third (“Signs,” “Nope”).

I should add that “Nope” is way, way better than “Signs.” I walked out of “Signs” back in 2002 incensed at the stupidity. “Aliens are attacking our planet, and the secret weapon against them is water? How stupid are they? Our planet is mostly water, we are mostly water, why would they come here?”

This isn’t that, but I do have questions.

Balloons taketh, balloons giveth
Does the giant flying alien have no sense of smell? What is it seeing when it sees us and other food sources? It spits out coins and keys, and gags on flags and balloons, but seems to do OK with clothes. And it learns. It learns not to attack flags and balloons that look like flags and balloons. Yet it still swallows the giant cowboy balloon—and blows up as a result. Not quite getting that.

I assume it’s organic? So what’s with the metallic noises we keep hearing? Is it an alien within a metallic spacecraft/suit, or are those not metallic noises? Maybe it’s digesting.

And what the hell was the Wild West show Jupe (Steven Yeun) was putting on? We only saw the one that went really, really wrong. He wasn’t feeding it horses, was he? Or customers? Wait, just checked via Wiki:

“Jupe introduces a live show in Jupiter’s Claim and plans to use Lucky as bait to lure out the UFO, to which he has been feeding the Haywoods’ horses for months, in front of an audience to help reclaim his fame.”

So Jupe is an idiot. As a kid, he was a regular on a 1990s sitcom, “Gordy’s Home,” starring a chimpanzee, Gordy, who went nuts after a balloon burst and killed several cast members. He should know you don’t fuck with wild animals. And this one is a giant, giant alien wild animal. Plus, I mean, c’mon. He has evidence there’s a giant alien on earth and his only thought is, “This could really help my Wild West show”? And no one who saw the show previously took photos or told anyone? How is this not out already? Where’s DHS? FAA? How isn’t some local airport seeing it? Nothing that big and ravenous stays secret.

And what kind of major fucking asshole feeds an alien horses? That might’ve pissed me off more than anything. Glad my mother isn’t alive to see this shit.

I do like the spin on the usual alien-invasion movie. “Wow, a giant spaceship!” “No, actually, it’s an airborne bottom feeder. And we’re the bottom.” And Peele does creepy well. He opens on the Haywood Horse Farm where Otis Sr. (Keith David) is in charge, while Otis Jr. or O.J. (Daniel Kaluuya) seems a reluctant but dutiful hand. Then an electrical disturbance. Cellphones don’t work. And noises from the sky. Is it hail? No, coins. Coins falling from the sky. Dad’s horse begins to move out of the stall with him wobbly in the saddle; then he just falls over. We quickly learn he’s dead. A coin lodged in his head. When O.J. returns to the ranch, the horse is standing in the same spot—a key in its hindquarters. Creepy.

That leaves the horse farm in the hands of O.J. and his younger sister Emerald (Keke Palmer), who are opposite ends of the spectrum. She’s hyper, self-promoting, shallow, while he hardly has a heartbeat—staring out into the world with the eyes of a man who’s lived a thousand lives, 999 of them bad. Which, it turns out, makes him the perfect man to both wrangle horses (he calms them) and take on a giant motherfucking flying alien (he doesn’t panic).

I’m curious: How often does Jordan Peele think about that Eddie Murphy bit on horror films? (Just checked: I guess it’s why he named his first film “Get Out.”) Murphy’s joke is that white people stick around even when there’s a ghost in the house, while Black people, no, they'd be smarter. I kept thinking about that as O.J. and Emerald set up shop, including a security camera mounted on their roof with the help of an odd Fry’s Electronics employee, Angel (Brandon Perea), to get video of the UFO. They figure: fame, money and Oprah, not in that order. Afterwards, O.J. can buy back the horses he sold to Jupe, and, per the Hollywood tradition, save the family farm. But that’s when they think they’re just dealing with a shy UFO.

So when they realize it’s a gigantic alien, feeding on them, and raining blood on their house, why do they stay? That’s one of the places where the movie lost me—in the aftermath of all that. What do they do? Just hole up in Angel’s apartment, where Angel and Emerald experiment with VR goggles and O.J. watches a horror movie on afternoon TV; then they go to a fastfood joint. Sure, PTSD. But shouldn’t they bring their intel to … somebody? Particularly with O.J.’s observation that if you don’t look at it, it won’t eat you. Instead, they return to the house to attempt to monetize the thing before others find out. I guess Eddie needs to update his routine.

They also enlist the help of an oddly named cinematographer, Antlers Holst (Julian Schnabel perennial Michael Wincott), who has a crank camera that won’t tweak out when the alien appears. Love Wincott and his gravely voice, but he’s not really necessary, is he? They don’t need a James Wong Howe to film the thing, and anyway he gets carried away and, well, gets carried away. Gulp. Emerald almost gets sucked up, too, ditto Angel, who then wraps himself in plastic and barb wire. An asshole from TMZ who shows up last-minute gets it, though. Jordan Peele must’ve laughed at that idea. Meanwhile, O.J. hangs out in the open range atop Lucky and nothing happens to him. I get O.J. He's figured it out. But shouldn’t Lucky be spooked? Wasn’t that happening earlier? The horses bolting because they sensed this thing out there?

So a bunch of questions.

Hertz
The title sucks, by the way. Originally I thought it referenced the Eddie Murphy bit—as in “Nope, I’m out of here”—but apparently it’s for the people who weren’t scared by what he'd created? Either way, doesn't work. 

Peele must’ve also had fun naming his hero “O.J.” He even has sis yell “Run, O.J., run!” like we’re watching a Hertz ad in the 1980s. And was the key in the horse’s hindquarters a pun off of Key & Peele?