America has never been more beholden to the cult of celebrity than it is today, having elected an unstable game show host President who in turn has appointed an array of TV and Internet personalities to run our government. Our attention-based economy requires that we all buy in, curate an audience, build a personal brand, become either Influencer or Influenced. With his feature directorial debut, Opus, Mark Anthony Green casts John Malkovich as a stand-in for dangerous obsession with charisma and nostalgia and pits him against Ayo Edebiri as a Millennial/Gen Z everywoman with ambitions of stardom. It’s fertile ground for a satirical thriller, but Opus doesn’t probe deeply enough to say anything interesting, and what Green does have to say isn’t terribly clear. Opus isn’t as superficial as the world it’s commenting on, but it’s not cleverer, either.
OPUS ★★ (2/4 stars)
Directed by: Mark Anthony Green
Written by: Mark Anthony Green
Starring: Ayo Edebiri, John Malkovich, Juliette Lewis, Murray Bartlett, Amber Midthunder, Stephanie Suganami, Young Mazino, Tatanka Means
Running time: 104 mins.
Ariel Eckton (Edebiri) is a young journalist working at a prominent pop culture magazine who’s always passed over for the big assignments by her editor, Stan Sullivan (Murray Bartlett). But when the reclusive pop idol Moretti (John Malkovich) invites both of them to preview his first album in decades, Ariel gets her first look at the strange and carefully-curated world of this outrageously wealthy cult figure. The only true outsider amongst worshipful fans and jaded media veterans, Ariel seeks to uncover the dark secret of Moretti’s secluded compound. But the more interesting question may be: Why was she invited in the first place?
Like Ariel’s boss, the rest of Moretti’s guests come from the high echelons of their respective media. Juliette Lewis plays “the most hated sex symbol on TV,” Melissa Chambers is an elite paparazza, Stephanie Suganami is a social media influencer and Mark Silversten is a former associate of Moretti’s who’s since become a popular podcaster. The trouble is that beyond these descriptions we never learn much about any of them. So when mysterious fates befall them one by one it has little impact. Even Ariel’s personality and goals don’t do much to color what is otherwise a bland viewpoint character: the only sane person in a land of lunatics. Perhaps absent character specificity the guests are meant to serve as avatars for the media forms they represent, but there’s not much of that, either.
A few smaller roles do pop, such as Amber Midthunder as a silent concierge/enforcer on Moretti’s compound. The Prey star once again proves that nothing is more menacing than someone who is 5-foot-5 and has soft facial features but a Terminator stare. Tamera Tomakili (Winning Time, Fruitvale Station) also makes an impression as one of Moretti’s perfectly pleasant followers, as does young Aspen Martinez as an emotionally manipulative and totally brainwashed child of the Moretti compound.
As for Malkovich, he has entirely the wrong kind of charisma to play a universally beloved, chart-topping icon. He could be convincing as the (far more common) soft-spoken “genius” cult leader, like NXIVM’s Keith Raniere, but as “the Wizard of Wiggle,” a sort of male Madonna or bald Bowie? Not even songs by The-Dream & Nile Rogers can sell that. It’s likely that Mark Anthony Green meant for the public’s obsession with this live-action Jack Skellington to read as absurd, but it still doesn’t quite work.
Opus is an idea salad, a jumble of concepts, but it’s most prominently a condemnation of the cult of personality. Through Moretti’s cult, Levelism, Opus takes aim at exceptionalism and false meritocracy, positing a culture in which ordinary people willingly submit or even torture themselves in a quest to discover and celebrate the exceptional. It’s a sort of logic that those who have found fame and fortune naturally want to support. After all, if other successful people are merely lucky rather than worthy of “greatness,” then they themselves might not be special, and the have-nots may deserve more than they’ve got. Ariel, our everywoman, can see through this bullshit more easily than the other, more influential guests, but she’s not entirely immune, nor are most of us watching.
On the basic level of a thriller, however, Opus never finds its groove. Shocking events simply happen and are then explained later, rather than building up and paying off suspense. Reveals that should theoretically help the narrative click together end up muddying it in hindsight. It’s the sort of film that’s weaker the more you think about it, which is an unfortunate fate for a social satire. It’s occasionally funny, occasionally shocking, but mostly disappointing.
