Sundance 2025 Review: OPUS, Even Demented Malkovich Can't Save Cult Horror Entry
![Sundance 2025 Review: OPUS, Even Demented Malkovich Can't Save Cult Horror Entry](https://screenanarchy.com/assets_c/2025/01/sa_sundance25_Opus_860-thumb-860xauto-96852.jpg)
Q: “What’s the difference between a religion and cult?”
A: “Time.”
There’s cult horror — as in horror that develops an offscreen cult following — and cult horror – as in a horror film about a cult. First-time writer-director Mark Anthony Green’s film, Opus, falls into the latter category, though in time, it might just have an offscreen cult following parsing out every word and phrase, every visual cue and prop, every twist and theme.
Or maybe not. Time, as always, will tell whether turns into a cult hit (about cults) or get memory-holed like the vast majority of films released in any given year..
Opus centers on Ariel Ecton (Ayo Edebiri), an ambitious second-tier journalist for one of the last print magazines in existence. Like any writer, Ariel dreams of a career filled with top-tier assignments, including high-profile cover stories, and above all else, recognition for her starry talents.
She gets neither at her current gig, suffering in silence and frustration while her editor, Stan Sullivan (Murray Bartlett), assigns her best pitch to another writer. Ariel leaves a lunchtime conversation with both a slightly wounded pride and a renewed desire to prove herself.
The return of one of the world’s biggest pop stars, a cross between Madonna, Prince, and Elton, among others, Alfred Moretti (John Malkovick), after a decades-long absence gives Ariel the opportunity she desperately wants to kickstart her career to the next level: an exclusive weekend getaway, first-time access to Moretti’s first album in 30 years, and if the odds fall in her favor, a print article, possibly a lead, probably a back-up, about her experiences with Moretti and his super-isolated compound in the middle of the Utah desert.
Despite her lowly professional status, Ariel receives a separate invite from her editor, Sullivan. Through some glitch, accident, or on purpose, the invite places Ariel on the same hallowed level as Sullivan, Clara Armstrong (Juliette Lewis), Bianca Tyson (Melissa Chambers), a radio personality turned podcast host, Emily Katz (Stephanie Suganami), a social media influencer, and Bill Lotto (Mark Sivertsen), a long estranged professional colleague of Moretti’s brought back into the pop star’s fold.
Only Ariel, however, takes notice of the various goings on at the compound, from the dozens, if not hundreds, of Moretti’s acolytes dressed in blue, to the 24-hour concierge service Moretti provides his guests. Ariel’s bodyguard, Belle (Amber Midthunder), follows her everywhere she goes, even on Ariel’s morning run.
Moretti’s acolytes engage in typical communal activity, growing food, handling menial chores around the compound, and otherwise keeping themselves perpetually available to do Moretti’s bidding, whatever it might be and whatever consequences might follow. They also identify themselves as “Levelists,” adherents of Moretti’s Scientology-inspired religion. Moretti doesn’t just want the world to dance; he wants the world to be recreated in his own image.
In short, it’s a cult of personality and celebrity rolled into one, acolytes willing to subsume their personal identities, needs, and wants in service of Moretti and the cult he founded 30 years ago. Thanks to legendary producer Nile Rodgers and The-Dream, Moretti can still produce danceable, hummable, ear worm-worthy bangers, though, and that almost excuses his seemingly loopy, nonsensical monologues to his rapt, captive audience or the sudden, barely explained disappearance of one special guest after another. Almost being the operative word here.
Mixing horror and humor in unequal measure, Green fashions a relevant, if ultimately superficial, satire of said cults of personalities and cults of celebrities, uncritical media consumption, and toxic parasocial relationships. Moretti charms his easily mesmerized guests through ostentatious displays of wealth, power, and privilege. That and constant costume changes suggest everything Moretti does and says has been planned well ahead of his guests’s arrival at his compound, a performance with an intended audience of six, pampered, coddled, and massaged into compliance, his endgame a mystery.
Opus stumbles, however, not in its premise or underlying themes, both worthy of critical exploration and examination, but in occasionally wobbly execution and periodic reminders of its influences to earlier, better films (they won’t be named here to avoid spoilers). The set pieces end before they properly begin, the scenes filled with the threat of implied violence slip into neutral gear rather than escalating beat-by-beat, and the faux-finale, such as it is, fails to deliver anything approaching sustained tension or suspense.
Opus premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Visit the film's page on the festival's official site for more information.
Opus
Director(s)
- Mark Anthony Green
Writer(s)
- Mark Anthony Green
Cast
- Ayo Edebiri
- John Malkovich
- Murray Bartlett
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