Opus Review

In the broadest strokes, it’s pretty hilarious how much of Opus feels like a case of movie déjà vu. If you’ve been exposed to the kind of arty horror popularized by today’s biggest independent movie studio and distributor, A24, you’ve seen this kind of movie many times over: An eccentric figure lures unsuspecting guests (like in Heretic or Ex Machina) to a remote location where things aren’t as they seem (X, Men) revealing something about the shallow nature of those present (Bodies Bodies Bodies, Midsommar). It would be fair to dismiss it for that degree of recycling alone. More is not always better, and Opus doesn’t offer enough variation on its A24 predecessors to make things feel fresh. What it does have is a unique perspective – a perspective that’s fun to think about, but extremely narrow.

Opus pretends to be about pop stars and celebrity, setting up a story in which the extremely reclusive, wildly popular musician Alfred Moretti (John Malkovich) is about to release his first album in 30 years. To mark the occasion, he invites a select few to his private compound for a lavish weekend listening party. No one knows why junior reporter Ariel Ecton (Ayo Edebiri) is among them, and through her eyes the viewer gets to be an outsider among insiders as Opus goes about not just being a horror movie but a satirical look of people accustomed to VIP treatment.

Because this is what Opus is actually about: Not celebrity, but the people who cover it. First time writer-director Mark Anthony Green comes from the magazine world, having worked at GQ for over a decade. (Full disclosure: I freelanced for GQ for several years, but never had any interaction with Green during that time or after.) He employs that experience to put the viewer in the mindset of a magazine writer, specifically, a marginalized one: Ariel has been on staff for three years but still gets overlooked, and her ideas often result in assignments for other writers. Her boss, Stan (Murray Bartlett), tells her to stick to taking notes while he accompanies her to Moretti’s compound, and shuts down any chance of her writing her own article.

There’s a good amount to chew on here if you are someone predisposed to thinking about magazine journalism and the ways it interacts with celebrity. Early on, Ariel outlines a career plan that starts with interviewing interesting people so that others will find her interesting enough to interview, effectively giving away the game: A big part of doing Ariel’s kind of magazine writing is keeping your ego in check enough to at least appear as if your goal is never to become a story yourself. Over the course of 104 minutes, she learns this lesson, which can make Opus feel more like shoptalk than a movie. I find what it has to say interesting because I’m a journalist who’s written for magazines and thinks about them a lot. The job, particularly when it involves following celebrities around, can lead to blurry lines between observing and participating; as well as coming to grips with how elusive the truth can be when your subject is always performing, even when they are trying to convince you they’re not. There’s good drama in this, but it’s also the kind of inside baseball that can be profoundly alienating to anyone who isn’t already in this business or interested in it.

Unfortunately for those people, all Opus has on the horror side of the equation is a pile of cliché. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing that it sticks to the kind of well-worn formula embraced by many of its labelmates, but it does mean that how it executes on that formula really matters. But instead of being spectacular, Opus is dutiful, dropping clues and bodies at a steady pace like the twisted Willy Wonka experience it is – just without much weird stuff to look at, because Moretti’s compound is in the middle of the desert and mostly consists of tents and luxe bungalows. The kills, with one notable exception, are mundane or obscured. (Perhaps the most A24-style trick of all is a scene where a door shuts on a violent struggle, with only the sounds of the scuffle to clue us in on who gets the upper hand.) A bizarre puppet show in the final act hints at the kind of memorable weirdness that would’ve gone a long way if there were more of it in Opus.

For what it’s worth, the movie’s gestures toward a thriller built around the mania over a musical idol (think Smile 2 or Trap) are a ton of fun: John Malkovich is not the kind of person you’d expect to play a pop icon with a cult following, and his portrayal of Alfred Moretti (also not a very pop star name) is a great mix of goofy and sinister. His music, when we’re given a taste, is a strange mix of David Bowie-style anthems and dance-pop struts, and there are moments when it seems like Opus is designed to make the viewer feel alienated. Like you’re not supposed to be into Moretti’s music, and you’re supposed to be a little uncomfortable that every character here is. Are they sucking up? Or does fame always eventually produce a cult?

The moments that bring up questions like this are Opus’ strongest, but they are brief and few, and they don’t contrast strongly enough with the easily parodied A24 brand of horror. In the end, Opus does do a little more than merely play the hits, but it’s not quite daring enough to keep the record spinning.