‘Opus’ Review: Ayo Edebiri Fights the Evils of Access Journalism in Frustrating Satirical Thriller That’s More Parvum Than Magnum [C+] – Sundance Film Festival

Anyone who’s paid attention to the last two decades can understand how celebrity worship has warped the cultural zeitgeist. One such way is journalism, where reporters prioritize access to notable figures at the expense of speaking truth to power. As the criticism goes, what is the power of the pen in the face of a glittering, charismatic personality? (Or the polar opposite, in the case of Olivia Nuzzi and her alleged inappropriate relationship with Robert Kennedy Jr.)

Mark Anthony Green’s Opus focuses not on the curiosities of the Beltway but rather on the roaring stadiums of pop music deification. The musician god-king in question is Alfred Moletti (John Malkovich), who vanished from the public eye thirty years ago only to re-emerge with the announcement of a long-awaited new album. Moletti, dressed in costumed rejects from Michael Jackson’s mid-90s HIStory World Tour, invites a small group of journalists and an influencer to his compound to preview the album and his way of life. Amongst the attendees is Ariel (Ayo Edebiri), an ambitious but overlooked junior reporter at J Magazine, run by the egotistic Stan (Murray Bartlett), who orders to take notes, and nothing else. In her note-taking, she realizes that Moletti’s lifestyle not-so-vaguely resembles an obsessive cult. She wants to pursue the story but is hamstrung by Moletti’s bizarre antics and her fellow media’s uncritical fawning and excusing of his behavior. It doesn’t take long for hell to break loose. 

Well, not exactly. It takes quite a few beats for Opus to devolve into pure bloodletting chaos. For the first 50 or so minutes, the film is a compelling satire of access journalism and how certain unscrupulous media types will abandon journalistic ethics (and common sense, in some extreme cases) to be in the rooms where it happens. Green doesn’t obscure the oddities on display through the Moletti compound and on Moletti himself. From the matching uniforms to the invasive grooming techniques, something unseemly is clearly happening with the “Levelist” following. Ariel picks up on it immediately and raises red flags, but her colleagues are oblivious. 

At first, it seems purposeful. Stan and television personality Clara Armstrong (Juliette Lewis) appear to tolerate the disturbing shenanigans as a way to retain their relevance in an evolving media ecosystem, casually tossing off criticisms of influencer culture. Ariel’s marginalization also appears to function as Stan keeping her in her place lest she overtake him. Green gets great absurdist mileage from the dissonance of presumably intelligent people excusing the antics of an emperor with no clothes. (Not literally: Moletti wears a bulbous gold robot suit and pelvic thrusts in the air as he plays his album.) As the reality of Moletti’s nefarious intentions begins to calcify, the film hints that it will pay off its observations about our fractured, craven landscape and how easily it is to exploit.

Tragically, the payoff never comes. Instead, Opus devolves into a bafflingly haphazard barrage of popcorn slashers and frantic chases through a cottage funhouse. The journalists who appeared to be willfully blind to Moletti’s disturbing behavior end up being plain old stupid, which sands off the film’s fierce satirical edge. There are some thrills to be had in the final stretch, especially seeing how capable Ariel is against her captors’ murderous intentions, but it can’t help feeling empty and inept. Even worse is the film’s attempt to explain Moletti’s intentions with his cult and Ariel’s role. It strives for an intelligent wrap-up but comes across as a retroactive course correction that makes the final act even more frustrating than it would’ve been without it.

It’s a shame because the cast’s performances were perfectly attuned to the sharp satire Green began with. Ayo Edebiri is well within her rhythms as the “sharper than everyone else” final girl, and she has great moments of terror crossing her face in the final act. Great as she is, you wish the script gave her more than “that just happened” beats to play throughout the film. John Malkovich is shameless in how much fun he’s having playing the pop music guru-turned-murderous despot, adding a knowing air of acknowledgment of Moletti’s ridiculousness that makes him utterly watchable. (Tony Hale, who briefly plays Moletti’s publicist, is on a similar wavelength.)

For little more than half its runtime, Opus is an entertaining send-up of celebrity worship and the cult of personality we desperately need. It’s easy to see the parallels between Moletti’s sycophants and those following virtually every pop star on the planet. Just as it’s about to land the gut punch, it retreads to the safer territory of cheap kills and thrills. I wish the film had kept its nerve and followed its guiding insight. Then again, a loss of nerve defines our current media landscape. It may not satisfy from a storytelling standpoint, but it succeeds as a meta-commentary, depressing as that is.

Grade: C+

This review is from the 2025 Sundance Film Festival where Opus had its world premiere. A24 will release the film in the U.S. on MArch 14, 2025.