Opus: Film Review
Opus was not reviewed well out of Sundance in January, but as a fan of Ayo Edebiri, I was keen to check it out anyway. Opus isn’t a complete disaster like the Rotten Tomatoes score would make you believe, but it’s not great either.
In Mark Anthony Green‘s directorial debut, Edebiri plays Ariel Ecton, an inexperienced junior writer at a magazine who is inexplicably invited to meet reclusive pop star Alfred Moretti (John Malkovich) to celebrate his return to music after 30 years out of the public eye. Ariel joins her editor Stan (Murray Bartlett), TV personality Clara (Juliette Lewis), podcaster Bill (Mark Sivertsen) and influencer Emily (Stephanie Suganami) at the ’90s sensation’s cult-like commune in the middle of nowhere to listen to his new album Caesar’s Request. Needless to say, things are not what they seem.
Opus had a lot of the right ingredients – Malkovich as an ageing pop star, a journalist lead character and a creepy, unsettling community – but it didn’t really know what to do with them. I was hoping for perhaps an exploration of the cult of celebrity and the relationship between stars and the press, but it barely scratches the surface of these topics. At the very least, it could have been a simple ‘people disappear one by one’ horror, but it’s trying to be more arty and intellectual instead of actually scary.
The biggest problem of all is the why. The reveals barely make any sense, so the horror moments are bewildering (although occasionally gruesome). I just didn’t get why it was happening. We do get a semblance of an explanation in the epilogue scenes, but it was too little too late and needed to be written more effectively to fully satisfy my need for answers.
There are some positives, though. The casting of Malkovich as an ageing pop star is inspired, and his clothing and performance scenes are amusing. I couldn’t take him seriously when he was lip-synching to his songs in a futuristic outfit to original bops written by Nile Rodgers and The-Dream. But once that pop star façade slowly drops, Malkovich is a weird and unsettling cult leader.
I love Edebiri and was delighted to see her exploring her new genre after becoming known for comedy. I believed her as a frustrated journalist who was the only one suspicious of the whole experience. She opted for the paranoid vibe when scared s**less should have been the way forward, particularly with certain WTF scenes. It’s also a shame that Bartlett and Lewis don’t get more to do, especially in the final act.
After a promising start, Opus gradually becomes more haphazard and nonsensical as it progresses. It’s a shame that the writing lets it down because it had so much potential and an entertaining first half.
In cinemas from Friday 14th March
Rating: 2.5 out of 5.
