Midway through the film Opus (2025), directed by Mark Anthony Green, Ariel Acton (Ayo Edebiri) asks the 90s pop legendy Alfred Moretti (John Malkovich) something to the effect of, “What’s the point of all of this?” In the scene before, Ariel and Alfred had watched a man in indigo-blue clothing shuck oysters in a flame-colored yurt, seeking a pearl among the cracked shells and flesh. 

Certainly what sparks Ariel’s question is the need to understand why the man erratically squelches through oyster meat, seeking rare morsels of beauty, and in the process stabs the entire blade of the shucking knife into his hand. As a journalist tasked with notetaking on the retreat to Morietti’s home with her egotistic and dismissive editor, Stan Sullivan (Murray Bartlett), she’s also a naturally curious and skeptical character. But truthfully the question cuts directly to the heart of the matter: What’s is the point of all this fanfare and nonsense?

Yes, Opus provides an answer to this menial question, one with the potential to—and the attitude that it—reorients our warped perspective to the sought-after “truth.” We might call this answer a “shocking” revelation that inevitably accompanies every horror-adjacent, something-is-happening-behind-the-scenes film that seems to populate our theaters more often these days. Instead, the film’s concluding answers feel like a symptom of the overly serious, tonally inconsistent, and rapidly forgettable plot at play—one that can’t quite decide how hard to crack open its oyster shell, as it were, and behold the kernels of oddity that initially make its characters so compelling.

Take the eccentric Moretti and his cult insipidly called the “levelists.” They live in a sweeping commune in the desert, wearing dyed dark blue clothes, and their eyes go glassy and shimmer whenever he performs. As Moretti, Malkovich wears bright, bejeweled suits, tells off-putting and seemingly pointless stories, and prances around a circular stage to a surprisingly banging new single after decades on hiatus. Each moment appears to be an invitation into this bizarre world. (It’s a tempting invite, too. Moretti’s songs, written by Nile Rodgers and The-Dream, are delightfully nostalgic, thrumming with vivacious synths.) 

Yet the side-along quest that Ariel takes to uncover the cult’s deep, dark secret is exhaustingly predictable, unscary, and serious in the atmosphere. How can we reconcile the need to take Ariel seriously when Moretti and his followers are so ridiculous? Let us please spare Edebiri from any films like this one in the future; her talent, as with Malkovich’s, wastes away on screen.

That isn’t a spoiler, by the way, to call the levelists a cult; any half-attentive watcher picks up immediately on the cultish commitment that Moretti’s followers embody—information we receive through the most ham-fisted, if beguilingly realistic, expository video about Moretti’s legendary star power that I have ever seen. 

This poor writing emerges in the film’s broad strokes of storytelling and on the dialogue level. The film chokes its characters with tired characterization as much as it bogs down the scenes with bland dialogue. As a result, except for Ariel and Moretti, every character feels like filler, a half-baked identity whose purpose is only to make Ariel doubt her suspicions. 

If anything, the film reminds us we are a long way from the Midsommar days, another entry into cult and folk horror that A24 produced in 2019. We can just hope this film isn’t the “opus” of Green—a debut director and screenwriter with room for improvement.

Review Courtesy of Arleigh Rodgers

Feature Image Credit to A24 via IMDb