This is a terrific, weird, funny, creepy, frightening movie; I highly recommend it. It was one of the most exciting and thought-provoking movies ever.

Peele (“Us, Get Out”) has a lot to say, from racism to pop culture to our eternal fascination with invading aliens. This is not a depressing or terrifying movie. It’s a pretty great movie. Peele seems to do everything well.

I’m not going to bore and confuse you with detailed accounts of every other famous sci-fi, horror, or suspense movie Jordan Peel references in his much-awaited third movie. Insider baseball.

But that’s a nit. You can sail right over it or ignore it; it doesn’t get in the way.

The movie’s main target is Hollywood; I can’t quite remember a recent award-winning film that didn’t.

Hating Hollywood seems to be required,  the hot thing for the hottest directors to do; it sometimes seems a little ungrateful to me. But narcissism aside (if they hate Hollywood so much, why do they make movies there?), this is a beautiful movie, a genre-breaker, and wildly different.

Regular moviegoers will get most of the messages.

This movie has three scenes that will have you biting your lips or closing your eyes, but it is much more like a Spielberg movie than a Wes Craven movie.

That’s good because Peele plays tribute to more directors than I can name, from Spielberg to Hitchcock to Shyamalan.

He seems to revel in the pure job of movie-making, I think the audience will have as much fun as he has.

There are towering effects throughout the movie and jaw-dropping cinematic effects. He not only evokes Speilberg, but the western director John Ford pops up in the film as well. There is no genre Peele doesn’t poke at or import.

There is one scary scene involving a murderous chimpanzee with blood splatter, one or two creepy scenes, but nothing anybody from 14 years and up can’t easily handle. If you are squeamish, go, it’s not a problem.

Nobody is going to lose sleep over this movie. I am too much of a sissy to get through a horror movie unscathed; I didn’t have a lousy minute during or after this one.

And you will be talking about it for days.

“Nope” is a genre buster; it touches on race, work, and popular culture and relishes poking at film-making, perhaps the biggest target. In several subtle and some not-so-subtle ways, it also asks us to think about how black actors are portrayed in made-for-white movies and their role in our history forgotten.

The main actors are African-Americans – Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer – and the movie begins by reminding us of a cautionary bible text that puts us on edge. Peele is a master of suspense, not horror.

The open line that introduces the movie is drawn from the Old Testament Book of Nahum, which warns of God’s threatened punishment to the wicked city of Nineveh: “I will make a spectacle of you.”

O.J, the main character, is a horse wrangler, a quiet, sad-eyed cowboy much more at ease with horses than people. He says very little in the movie; one of his best lines is, appropriately, “nope.” he and his sister have a tense but ultimately loving connection.

He struggles with patronizing, clueless commercial makers and bristles at the forgotten memory of the black wranglers who helped build Hollywood.

This is a deliciously weird movie from the get-go. Everyone will have a different idea about what the film is really about. There are lots of ideas to choose from. Peele pulled out of the stops.

“Nope” never stops moving. Nobody in this film sits around drinking beer or yakking for a minute without something menacing surrounding the farmhouse or dropping out of the sky.

Extraordinary things are happening on the ranch – power goes on and off, a mysterious cloud hangs over the horizon, and bizarre and freakish noises and storms drop all sorts of  debris out of the sky. One horse or another is constantly panicking and racing for the hills.

A fall house key pierces a horse’s flank, and Otis Sr., the O.J.s father, dies after a coin drops out of the sky and into his eye (we don’t see it happen.) That’s just the beginning.

The movie reminds us again and again that black wranglers were essential to the growth of the film-making industry and have long been forgotten. O.J. says in the film he wants to be “seen.” He means it.

Early on, the strange happenings are the work of aliens, and the battle between O.J. and his sister and one or two friends is the narrative that powers the movie.

It is riveting, moves quickly, and eerily without terrifying or grisly. Movie lovers will recognize a lot of scenes that evoke “Encounters of the Third Kind.”

O.J. engages the forces from beyond in a battle of wits that seems unlikely to succeed. But you sci-fi fans can imagine how this all turns out, but not nearly in the way you expected.

I don’t want to go into more detail; this movie should be experienced in a theater; I don’t give plots away. It’s a weird movie for sure, I don’t recall seeing anything like it. It was great fun and satisfying; I left the theater with my head spinning.

Dwelling on more of the details of this movie could spoil it for others, so I’ve said enough. For those who are interested, Maria loved it just as much as I did. We are both squishy about horror and gore.

I loved it. For my money, Peele has elevated himself into the gallery of the great suspense movie masters. I’m eager for the next one.