Take a VR peek at ‘Nope’ & more dark corners from Jordan Peele’s horror-verse

Jordan Peele’s next horror storm is brewing on the horizon, with stars Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer set to descend on a windswept desert outpost when Nope blows into theaters later this month. But if you’re already plugged into Meta’s VR gaming ecosystem, you don’t have to wait ’til then to set off on your own across some of the movie’s desolately eerie locations.

Strap on a Meta Quest 2 headset (the same hardware as the Oculus Quest 2 prior to last year’s “Meta” rebrand) and get set for an intrepid virtual journey through your own Peele-themed sci-fi quest. A VR experience based on Nope and other films from Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions start users out in Meta's Horizon Worlds hub base…before venturing out into immersively unsettling territory.

Check it out:

How do you go from hanging out in Horizon Worlds to stumbling upon Nope locations like the movie’s desolate, sky-cursed Haywood Ranch? We’ll let the Oculus Blog set the scene:

“The multi-world VR experience begins with Monkeypaw Productions: All Aboard, in which you’ll find yourself as a passenger on the Monkeypaw train before traveling to the other worlds. Inside, you can walk around the cabins and find Easter eggs from the movies NOPE, Get Out, and Us...You’ll then have a chance to visit NOPE World: by Monkeypaw Productions. Here you’ll find a recreation of Haywood Ranch from the film’s trailers, as well as several mini-games and other interactive elements.”

The Easter egg angle is especially eye-catching, because in a Peele production, there’s more to well-concealed treasures than superficial fan service. “I'm obsessed with Easter eggs,” the director confessed to Empire Magazine earlier this month. “I'm obsessed with connection. I love to reward the person who wants to come and just watch a movie and forget about it. I love to reward the person that wants to watch 100 times.”

The mini-games look less like steep challenges than gateways that let you dive deeper into Nope’s sci-fi rabbit hole. But that might turn out to be a good thing, since your eyes likely need to stay alert to the movie’s (and the VR experience’s) overall spooky ambiance. On the surface, Nope follows a pair of visitors as they uncover the secrets behind sinister phenomena at a lapsed, old-west California tourist trap — but documenting what they discover becomes “the adventure within the film,” as Peele confided to Empire.

Nope may be the movie of the moment, but it’s not the only Peele blockbuster that’ll soon be explorable in Meta’s VR realm. Experiences featuring locations and landmarks from Get Out and Us are also in the works, with two new VR adventures — Get Out World and Us World — set to land from Monkeypaw Productions later this summer.

In the meantime, plug into the VR Peele-verse with All Aboard and NOPE World, each available now in Horizon Worlds (which can be downloaded for free on the Quest 2.) Think of it as getting a firsthand feel for the creepy ranch’s shadowy side before Nope arrives in theaters on July 22.