Spoiler warning: This article contains spoilers for “Opus.”
When you first watch the trailer for “Opus,” you will likely linger on two things: A24 and Ayo Edebiri. Maybe John Malkovich, too. It seems like a match made in Gen Z heaven, promising a balance of understated humor and wild plot escalation which make for an ideal horror comedy. While this promise is not necessarily broken, the film fails to venture further from its combination of star power, visuals and genre-typical gore.
“Opus” follows Ariel Ecton (Edebiri), an ambitious journalist who, by some miracle, gets invited to the hottest event of the year: a weekend retreat with rich people to experience ’90s pop star Alfred Moretti’s (Malkovich) upcoming album. Joining her are influencer Emily Katz (Stephanie Suganami), talk show host Clara Armstrong (Juliette Lewis), paparazzo Bianca Tyson (Melissa Chambers), music critic and Moretti’s de facto rival Bill Lotto (Mark Sivertsen) and Ariel’s boss Stan Sullivan (Murray Bartlett). Her boss grates on Ariel; though she has passion, she is delegated to notetaker throughout the weekend — and her own friend calls her “middle” for her lack of perspective.
Here we have our classic protagonistic motivation, which drives Ariel’s investigation of the strange, ascetic and sycophantic community surrounding Moretti. Known as the “Levelists,” this group instantly strikes Ariel as bizarre and cult-ish, but the others seem none the wiser, even after Ariel’s boss gets shot with an arrow. Though “Opus” may be commenting on a generational divide, it was completely unbelievable that nobody would have suspected that the inescapable chauffeurs, pubic hair shavers and mutilated oyster shuckers were up to no good. On top of that, Moretti’s nemesis disappears after the first night — audiences know he was decapitated — and only Ariel questions this. Generational gap or not, this was a clear case of deliberately making characters stupid to delay the final reveal.
Speaking of the reveal, the third act escalates nonsensically. Like Moretti, the movie promises something never seen before. Though many of the guests were blindsided by the twist that he intended to kill his guests, viewers certainly were not. But “Opus” still acts like this is supposed to be shocking, drastically switching gears to tense chase sequences and the deaths of all remaining invitees. Up until this point, the movie relied on subtler shock value, which was largely successful due to the engaging cinematography and music, which shaped the atmosphere rather perfectly. It’s a shame that this buildup did not land.
Ariel, the obligatory final girl, escapes the cult successfully, becoming a renowned writer with her autobiographical account of the retreat’s events. Moretti is jailed, and the only thing left is a statement from him to provide closure to the mourning families and complete Ariel’s narrative. But instead, he delivers one of his signature long-winded monologues, which, admittedly, does make the final act more bearable. He reveals that Ariel was meant to escape and was specifically chosen by Moretti to carry on the Levelists’ message through her writing. Moretti wanted a legacy, and he got one.
This would have been a fantastic twist and commentary on both the wealthy’s obsession with notoriety and fandom’s sensationalization of the grotesque. However, this meaning gets diluted with the film’s unnecessary emphasis on the actual cult, rather than celebrity culture itself. Why give the Levelists a name and a vague set of philosophies, when the movie’s very tagline is “there’s no cult like celebrity”?
In this way, “Opus” attempts to emulate Ari Aster’s “Midsommar” with a cautionary tale of inadvertently getting lured by the glamor of a cult, where Ariel’s ambition dooms her ethics. But unlike “Midsommar,” which stays closer to the definition of a cult and alludes to real-life rituals, “Opus” is trying to be both on-the-nose and abstract. Both subtle and over-the-top. It cannot strike the balance.
The movie also takes from “The Menu,” where Ralph Fiennes’ Chef Slowik avenged his lost passions by torturing and eventually killing similarly passion-less rich people he’d invited to a meal. “Opus” tries to link Ariel and Moretti by their shared ambition to be known, but the ridiculous cult just muddles Moretti’s goals and distances him from the very real phenomenon of celebrity scandal. That, combined with his underwhelming music and drawn-out dance sequences, makes him too much of a caricature to be feared.
If “Midsommar” and “The Menu” had a baby, and that baby went on to get great grades and look perfect on paper by using ChatGPT to write its essays, the baby would be “Opus.” In an era of poignant, incisive critique of and general disillusionment with rich people behavior, the movie’s failure to keep up will render it forgotten amidst the deluge of soon-to-be-cult classics. Really, the best way to describe this movie, apart from its sound and cinematography, would be exactly what Ariel’s dumbass friend said: “middle.”
Contact Oshmi Ghosh at [email protected].