Opus desperately wants to be a part of the moment. It has the look: the hard lines and clinical wide shots – Stanley Kubrick as a viral aesthetic – that have dominated high-concept horror of late, especially any fellow productions acquired by distributor A24. It’s how last month’s Companion was styled, and Zoë Kravitz’s Blink Twice before it. It has the star: Ayo Edebiri, whose relatable nonchalance on the comedy-drama series The Bear and goofy, yet sardonic humour off camera have made her one of the hottest rising stars of late. And it has the “salient themes”: celebrity worship, the media, the rise in cult-like behaviours. But this is all superficial stuff. There’s not much about Opus, really, that fully convinces.
Edebiri, with that same relatable nonchalance, plays Ariel, an overlooked Gen Z writer at a music magazine, whose ideas are appropriated by her editor Stan (The Last of Us and The White Lotus’s Murray Bartlett), and passed off to white, male writers. Opportunity knocks when she unexpectedly receives an invite, alongside Stan, to the remote compound of pop star Alfred Moretti (John Malkovich), the “Wizard of Wiggle” who delivered a string of No 1 singles in the previous century and then practically evaporated off the face of the planet.
