Opus Review

“Experience gives people perspective,” says one of the characters to our protagonist when she talks about her hopes and dreams for her writing career. This may initially seem like a throwaway line, and yet as Opus goes on, we soon find out that it ends up being the core of the film. How much does your own personal experience – and bias – affect you as a journalist? How do you write about your own experience in the first place? And how do you make a difference as a writer without necessarily playing into the system you seek to denounce? Mark Anthony Green’s directorial debut does not have an answer to any of these questions, but it does dare to ask them and invites the audience to such a reflection through the main character who becomes our way into this world and this story.

When Alfred Moretti (John Malkovich), a 90s icon in the music industry, makes his comeback after years of hiatus, aspiring journalist Ariel Ecton (Ayo Edebiri) is invited to an exclusive listening party for his new album with just five other guests: her boss Stan Sullivan (Murray Bartlett), a talk show host named Clara Armstrong (Juliette Lewis), influencer Emily Katz (Stephanie Suganami), a notorious paparazzi called Bianca Tyson (Melissa Chambers), and Bill Lotto (Mark Sivertsen), a radio shock jock who used to have a rivalry with the music legend. When the group arrives at the compound where the listening party will take place, they also get introduced to Moretti and his group, called the “Levelists” who behave oddly and all dress in identical uniforms. As stranger and stranger events happen around them, Ariel starts getting suspicious but nobody else seems to pick up on what she is noticing.

Ayo Edebiri is fantastic, with a perfect balance of humour and a thrilling search for the truth. As the film goes on, however, it is John Malkovich who we cannot take our eyes off of. It would have been easy to fall into caricature or borrow too much from real-life politicians who the character might arguably be inspired by, but Malkovich truly makes Moretti his own thanks to his charismatic and enigmatic portrayal of a scarily beloved leader. This quickly becomes key to the entire film: while Ariel represents the audience – thus symbolically representing our vessel in the story – Moretti is the driving force, the very inciting incident that propels every single element in the narrative, and ultimately – as the audience will find out in the final scene – the mastermind that orchestrated the chain of events we end up seeing in the film.

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The premise of Opus is very strong and especially interesting. However, it also feels like Opus did not entirely deliver on the system it wishes to explore, and possibly critique. Given the subject matter, the film could have done a lot more in terms of exploring the realities and issues of both the music and journalism industries. This feels especially like a missed opportunity in our modern era when both industries are facing remarkable struggles and going through significant changes to transform and hopefully and potentially prosper once again in the future. The film could also benefit from a tighter pace as the second act of the film feels a lot slower compared to the rest, especially for a film that is not even two hours long. But it remains a very fascinating story that will keep the audience entertained from beginning to end, especially in the final scene when it delivers perhaps the most interesting commentary of the whole film.

The narrative does a really good job at making us care for the main character who ends up being extremely relatable, especially for those of us in the audience who can see ourselves in Ayo’s passion for journalism and writing, but also in her desire to do something that matters. It becomes relatively easy, then, to care about her well-being and survival as the film goes on, even if the other characters are not nearly as much explored as she is. I also really liked how the movie delivers the stakes and stays true to the elements of the horror genre, managing to create some very tense sequences that keep the viewers at the edge of their seats, even though we most likely know how this is going to end.

There is a significant element of predictability in Opus as it becomes increasingly clear how Green is using the tropes and themes of the horror genre. This would not necessarily be a bad thing, but the movie quickly starts feeling derivative of previous films that have adopted a similar structure and touched on similar themes – namely being a horror film on a cult with the final girl trope – such as Midsommar or The Menu while lacking the humour and poignant social critique of the latter.

Overall, Opus is an enjoyable film. While it may not be the most memorable of this genre or even of this year, the acting performances from the main cast make it a very fascinating film to watch. Despite its predictability and sometimes slow pacing, it still maintains some interesting elements in the question it raises and forces us to consider. Green’s movie is definitely one of those cases when the narrative works best with the audience knowing as little as possible about it. One of the reasons why I particularly enjoyed it is because I knew so little about it beforehand and ended up walking in blind, which allowed the film to do what it does best: surprise and entertain the audience members during its hour and 45-minute runtime.