It’s a scenario we’ve seen numerous times in recent years, in films such as “Midsommar” and “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” and “The Menu” and “Blink Twice”: an adventure-seeking group travels to a remote locale for a once-in-a-lifetime experience that turns sideways and results in a violent outcome.
The turgid thriller “Opus” follows that same basic blueprint, but there’s a key difference here in that while the aforementioned titles were all wickedly entertaining blends of social satire and bloody suspense, this is a clunky, heavy-handed, unfunny, toothless pile-up of genres on the cinematic freeway. The running time is 104 minutes, but it felt longer than “The Brutalist.”
Writer-director Mark Anthony Green is a former writer for GQ who profiled the likes of Lenny Kravitz, Kid Cudi and DMX, and he draws on those experiences in his feature debut, which shines a harsh spotlight on the cult of celebrity worship, and the symbiotic but often superficial relationship between the famous and those who write and broadcast and podcast about them.
Green is clearly talented and delivers consistently arresting visuals, but the messages are delivered with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and the performances from the skilled cast are often way, way over the top.
Ayo Edebiri (“The Bear”) plays Ariel, a callow writer who yearns to deliver something great and memorable but has yet to experience much of life, and is thus thrilled to receive an invitation to visit the retreat run by the famously reclusive Moretti (John Malkovich), who we’re told was arguably the biggest pop star in the world in the 1990s before he disappeared from the public eye and stopped making music. (Moretti’s music is composed by the hitmakers Nile Rodgers and The-Dream. They’re catchy tunes, and Malkovich does a fantastic job on the vocals, but nothing we hear makes us believe this guy was a bigger star than Michael Jackson or Prince or Madonna.)
Moretti has resurfaced with the greatest album ever made, according to his weirdo publicist (Tony Hale), and he has invited an eclectic group to his compound to interact with his devoted followers and hear his music. In addition to Ariel, there’s her boss, a magazine editor (Murray Bartlett); a musician turned podcaster (Mark Siversten); a veteran paparazzo (Melissa Chambers); an influencer (Stephanie Suganami), and an entertainment TV host (Juliette Lewis). Alas, none of these characters is drawn particularly well. They’re universally unmemorable.
Oh, and get this: Moretti’s followers often wear blue uniforms and are obsessed with cracking oysters in search of pearls, which means they’re literally a Blue Oyster Cult, and don’t believe anyone who tells you not to Fear the Reaper, and you can probably guess the identity of the Reaper by now. With Amber Midthunder doing standout work as Ariel’s “concierge,” who follows Ariel everywhere, “Opus” has its moments of dark humor, but it eventually devolves into a grotesque and violent update on “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” and I’m not convinced anyone needed that.