Opus, A24’s new horror movie from writer-director Mark Anthony Green, is a high-concept thriller that wrestles with a lot of ideas – revenge, religion, the cult of celebrity – but falls just short of bringing them all together by the end. Still, the thrills are effective and, along the way, Opus is a solid if familiar blend of horror and comedy supported by a spectacular turn from Ayo Edebiri that proves she should be in every movie ever made.

Edebiri is Final Girl Ariel Ecton, a fledgling music journalist desperate to be recognized by her editor and the world as someone with interesting ideas worthy of sharing. At her magazine job, though, she is praised for pitching an engaging profile of an artist only for it to be pᴀssed on to another, more senior writer.

It’s hard not to notice that almost everyone around her is white and/or slightly older, especially when they are shocked to find out Malkovich’s Alfred Moretti, the world’s biggest pop star, announced his return and invited Ariel to attend a weekend retreat to hear his new album. She joins her editor Stan Sullivan (Murray Bartlett), renowned paparazzo Bianca Tyson (Melissa Chambers), television icon Clara Armstrong (Juliette Lewis), and influencer Emily Katz (Stephanie Suganami) at his desert compound.

John Malkovich & Ayo Edebiri Are The Saving Grace Of Opus

The Movie Is Still A Good Time Even If It Falls Short Of Its Promise

To introduce Alfred Moretti, Opus shows us a montage set to one of three original songs Malkovich actually recorded in a studio with the help of producers Nile Rodgers and The Dream. The first song, “Dina Simone,” is a hit from early in Moretti’s career and it’s catchy as hell. We also hear the other songs throughout the film and each one is an absolute banger.

In one standout scene, Moretti plays the new album for his guests in an elaborately staged venue. Malkovich is clearly reveling in the chance to play this outsized personality, all swinging hips and flirtatious looks (Moretti’s nickname is the Wizard of Wiggle and hearing Bartlett and Nicholson say this so earnestly may be worth the price of admission alone).

It’s easy to see why the world is captivated by this popstar, especially the cult he leads out in the middle of the desert. Ariel immediately clocks the creepy acolytes, dubbed Levelists, but her fellow retreaters chalk it up to Moretti’s charisma, themselves intoxicated by the star’s sheer magnetism.

Their blindness will be their undoing, but Opus doesn’t go much further than that in examining the relationship between self-destructive obsession and the cult of personality. ​​​​​​​Besides the fact that Stan, Clara, and the others are obsessed with fame and their proximity to it, there’s little explanation for why they are this way, which makes their characters seem a bit unintelligent. Ultimately, it all relies on the magnetism of Malkovich as Moretti, of which there is plenty.

Malkovich teeters between humor and malevolence with ease, finding a sweet spot that allows Edebiri to flex her comedic muscles while still leaning into the horror of the premise. Their scenes together are some of the best of the film, as the two spar about the inner-workings of Moretti’s cult, which he is more than happy to explain – to a point.

For much of its first two-thirds, Opus operates more as a comedy with dashes of surreal sinistry. In one recurring gag, Ariel’s Levelist concierge Belle (Amber Midthunder, both deeply unsettling and expressively hilarious) is charged with keeping tabs on Ariel 24/7, even going on a jog with her at one point as she avoids eye contact.

Below this thread of humor is a constant thrum of anxiety, communicated through the film’s score by Saunder Juriaans and Danny Bensi, as well Edebiri’s shifting, observant eyes. When things finally escalate into an uncomfortably claustrophobic explosion of violence, it feels shocking and inevitable – it was easy to see coming, but there was no way to prevent it.

The impact of physical violence is not what Opus is concerned with, though. An extended epilogue tries to bring the film’s themes full circle and while some of them land, not all the ideas Green introduces early on are threaded together in a satisfying way. Revenge is used as a last-minute, albeit darkly funny punchline, and we return to Ariel’s desire for her writing to reach a wide audience, only for her ideas not to click in quite the way she expects.

One can imagine a movie where it’s just Ariel and Moretti going toe-to-toe, leaving behind some forgettable supporting characters, even if the actors themselves are effective in their roles. Opus is a story about an artist at the beginning of her career and another at the end of his, a dynamic rife with tension as Moretti ponders how to broaden his influence beyond his own reach.

There is something to be said about how fun this film is, though, and, along with Green’s confident direction, Opus is a glossy horror film that rises above its shortcomings. It’s more of a B-movie than some might have come to expect from A24, but for my money, that’s rarely a bad thing, especially when it’s done as well as it is here.