Bad Miracles: 9 Symmetries in ‘Signs’ and ‘Nope’
The Scoop features personal essays on movie-centric topics.
By Natalie Pohorski
[This contains full spoilers for Signs and Nope, so make sure to watch both movies before reading. You’ve been warned!]
Jordan Peele’s Nope, like his other films, is one of a kind.
But I’m sure I’m not the only one who left the showing of Nope reminiscing about M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, another sci-fi film I absolutely love. A subsequent rewatch confirmed that 2003 thriller shares many similarities with Peele’s 2022 film.
So if you’re “the kind of person that sees signs, that sees miracles” (i.e. there’s an F in your Meyers-Briggs personality type), then pour a glass of water and hop on the horse—it’s time to swing away at the symmetries.
1. A Death in the Family
In the beginning of Nope, OJ watches his father die on the way to the hospital, and it is later implied that the siblings had lost their mother as well. In Signs, Graham’s wife Colleen is killed by a driver named Ray who falls asleep at the wheel. Her death destroys Graham’s faith, causes him to leave his job as a reverend, and compels his brother Merrill to move in and help with the kids.
Both deaths are strange and so unlikely that they feel like dark destiny: Colleen is pinned between the car and a tree, still alive and speaking what sounds like gibberish, while Otis Sr. is killed by a quarter falling from the sky into his brain.
“It had to happen at that right moment,” Ray tells Graham. “That certain 10 to 15 seconds when I passed her walking. It was like it was meant to be.”
2. A Home Base
Even when discovering that their homes—both ranch-style farmhouses in remote locations—are at the center of alien activity, both movie families decide to stay put.
“I don’t want to leave,” says Morgan. “It’s where we lived with mom.” And when a terrified Emerald tries to convince OJ to leave, he says he’s got work to do—tending the horses and all. Plus, it’s home.
At the Haywood Ranch, they install security cameras for safety and surveillance. At the Hess home, they board up all the windows and doors and retreat to the basement to await what’s coming.
3. Sibling Synergy
What we see in both movies are siblings that fill varying roles in the family and have differing worldviews and personalities. These are exactly the things that help them ultimately survive alien invasions.
From the outside, Merrill Hess looks like a failure. He’s staying in his older brother’s barn, it’s unclear if he has a job, and he no longer plays baseball due to his strikeout record. Meanwhile Graham has left his calling as a minister and is focused on taking care of the farm. He hasn’t been doing a great job of parenting, which is where Merrill has been filling in. Both brothers have lost their respective purpose in life.
When they are finally face to face with the alien—the unconscious Morgan in its grasp—Graham chooses faith over fear and unlocks the key to their survival. And it is Merrill’s trust in his brother, paired with his killer swing, that finishes the job.
In Nope, OJ is the one who stayed. He believes his purpose lies in keeping the ranch and his father’s legacy alive. Emerald, on the other hand, lacks direction in her life, which is evident as she hawks her various side gigs while on set at the beginning of the film. (Perhaps she’s still seeking the attention and validation she never got as a kid while her brother and father built the business?)
Their personalities couldn’t be more opposite, but that’s why they make such a great team. Per Jordan Peele: “It’s about their ability to go from not connecting to acknowledging they have always seen each other.”
In the end, OJ figures out the alien’s weakness and Emerald figures out how to exploit it. Then OJ sacrifices himself to save his sister by looking the creature (aka Jean Jacket) in the eye and offering himself as bait, while Emerald is the one to defeat it.
4. The True Believer
Every sci-fi movie needs a conspiracy theorist who first gets laughed at but ends up being right on the money.
In Nope, that’s Angel the electronics store employee: “I’ll tell you why they changed their name, alright? They wanted to keep us in the dark. Remember when they declassified all that UFO footage a couple years ago? Yeah, well, people started paying attention. So they changed the name to UAPs. And no one knows what the f**k a UAP is, so people lost interest.”
In Signs, it’s the military recruiter: “It’s called probing. It’s a military procedure. You send a reconnaissance group, very small, to check out things. Make sure things are all clear… for the rest of them.”
5. Sights Unseen
Sight also plays an interesting role in both films. Whether it’s crop signs or falling debris, before the characters see the aliens they see signs. “Tell Graham to see,” Colleen says before she dies, a charge to open his eyes to what’s coming.
They are also tipped off by the lack of sight. (“Don’t look a predator in the eye.”) Jean Jacket hides in a cloud that never moves, and the spaceships in Signs have cloaking devices that are only discovered when birds are seen flying into “a wall in the sky.”
6. Heart Strings
Nope is the third partnership with Peele and the composer Michael Abels, while Signs was James Newton Howard’s third collaboration with director M. Night Shyamalan.
While Nope’s score plays around a bit with Western themes, the main theme is directly tied to the strings of Signs. Strings have always been present in thrillers—Psycho and Jaws being classic examples—but using them for both suspense and heartfelt moments in a sci-fi film is something special that both films do so well.
7. Bad Miracles
Graham to Merrill: “Sure, there are a lot of people watching this who think this could be a bad thing. But there are a lot of people watching this who think it’s a miracle. See, what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, that sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky?”
OJ to Emerald: “What’s a bad miracle? They got a name for that?” Emerald: “Nope.”
8. The Last Supper
This is the scene that really sealed the deal for me. The Hess family prepares what they believe to be their final meal and sit in silence until emotions run high, they all start crying, and then the eerie, extraterrestrial signal from the baby monitor signifies it’s time to go.
The ragtag bunch in Nope rings the dinner bells and warm up what looks like canned soup. In a brilliant, ridiculous moment, the voice of doom comes from Antlers as he sings of the “one-eyed, one-horned, flyin’ purple people eater.”
9. Aliens!
The key characteristic each movie’s aliens have in common is that they are defined as predators. The sheriff in Signs informs Graham at the beginning that animals around the county have been acting strange: “They’re edgy. On alert. Like they act when they smell a predator around…”
It takes OJ more time to discover this, but having worked with animals long enough he knows how to spot a predator: “You don’t turn your back on a bear. You don’t wear red around a bull. It’s like that. You don’t look at it unless you want its attention.” And on Jupe’s downfall: “He got caught up trying to tame a predator. You can’t do that. You got to enter an agreement with one.”
As in every alien movie, the characters have to figure out what the weakness is and exploit it. Once the Nope crew learn that Jean Jacket has a strong appetite (for horses in particular) and stalks the sky with an anti-electric force, they use that knowledge to track it. In Signs, Ray points out that none of the crop circles are near water and theorizes that the aliens don’t like it for some reason.
Once they’ve established these weaknesses, the humans must play to their strengths to win. OJ wrangles horses. Emerald is good with bikes. And the quirky cinematographer Antlers can build electricity-free cameras.
The Hesses find that their greatest strengths were disguised as weaknesses: Morgan’s asthma blocks the toxic gas from entering his lungs, and Bo’s tic about drinking water provides plenty of ammo for Merrill to use against the alien intruder.
Sci-Fi Family
Despite all these similarities, it’s important to note how unique these movies are as standalone viewing experiences. Nope is much more of a blockbuster when it comes to scale (hope you caught it in IMAX), while Signs remains an intimate and simple story.
They’re siblings in the sci-fi family tree, both worthy of the thrill and wonder that keeps audiences looking up at this cosmic and infinite genre.