Warning: This Article Contains SPOILERS For Opus.

The thriller Opus helps bring a whole new meaning to the extremes of celebrity fandom through its use of a fictional cult. The A24 horror movie stars Ayo Edebiri as Ariel, a young writer who is invited to a mysterious listening party for a musician who disappeared from the public eye 30 years earlier. That musician is John Malkovich’s Alfred Moretti, who, following his disappearance, has garnered his own cult following (quite literally). Opus goes beyond just portraying an eccentric star as the film’s ending sees Ariel fighting for her life and then questioning everything she thought she knew.

While Opus has received mixed reviews, its exploration of fame and the cult of celebrity makes an interesting argument. The movie balances the ridiculousness of Moretti’s persona and followers with the real danger of Ariel’s circumstances, making Opus an entertaining new addition to the modern horror comedy genre. Opus further examines the mindset behind modern cult thinking and, crucially, how those ideas a propagated. Fittingly, then, understanding Level is important to understanding Opus as a whole, but their ideas can be somewhat confusing.

Level Is The Cult That Moretti Leads In Opus

They Live Very Isolated Lives And Essentially Worship Moretti

From the outset, Opus sets Moretti up as a legendary, yet mysterious, artist. He has not made an album in 30 years and no one has seen him during that time. However, that all changes when a select few individuals receive invitations to his compound to listen to his new album, Caesar’s Request. Upon arriving at the compound, Ariel Ecton immediately has suspicions about the event and Moretti’s followers, the Levelists. It quickly becomes clear that Level is a cult and Moretti is their de facto leader.

The commune itself is interesting, as they seem to be fairly wealthy and have no lack of resources, but all the members dress in plain blue clothes aside from Moretti himself. As Ariel watches them, she comes to learn that the commune is indeed a fully functioning society and even has its own school, but there are several unsettling additions. When she attempts to question any of its members about how they ended up there, there is never a clear explanation beyond them doing it because Moretti asked them to.

What’s more, Moretti himself initially seems unwilling to share precisely what the group’s core tenets are when Ariel attempts to ask him how Level compares to other religions. Ariel also tries to specify when he started the cult, but Moretti claims that he did not create Level. Instead, the group has been around for a long time, and he simply found it and lifted up their principles. Since the Levelists seem to largely revolve around Moretti and follow his every order, it is difficult to say whether Moretti’s statements are true or whether it’s all part of his cultlike rhetoric.

What The Levelists Actually Believe In Opus

They Think That Moments Of Perfect Creativity Make People Gods

Level is both a religion and a lifestyle, and Moretti is its figurehead. His persona as the most famous pop star in the world is essential to Level’s existence. Likewise, Moretti’s belief in his own artistic superiority is also a necessary component to the cult because Level’s primary beliefs concern creativity and the possibility of creating something perfect through art. This can be seen throughout Opus as many of the Levelists in the background of scenes are drawing, painting, or doing some other activity that they feel strengthens them creatively.

The idea of the centrality of creativity to Level is further enforced by Moretti’s theory that perfect pieces of art can make regular people into Gods. Moretti explains that singular brush strokes in paintings or singular lines in songs can raise people to a heightened place above those around them. Furthermore, many of the key facets of Level relate to a standard of perfection that is set solely by Moretti’s metrics. The clearest example of this is when Moretti’s designer reveals to Ariel that Moretti requires everyone around him to keep their pubic hair shaved in a specific way.

These disturbing beliefs highlight the reality that Level is largely about Moretti’s ability to exercise control over those around him by convincing them to adhere to nonsensical rules. His effectiveness as a cult leader relates to what he finally admits to Ariel at the end of Opus: that the goal was always to gain control. Not only does he hope to maintain control over the other Levelists, but he also wants the Levelists to go on to control the world.

Why The Levelists Obsess Over Pearls

Pearls Are Perfect And Symbolize Value

One of the strangest details in Opus is a red circular tent on the outskirts of the commune that Moretti takes Ariel to when she asks to understand Level. When they enter the tent, Moretti explains that the one thing in Level that unites all the members is that each of them is required to shuck oysters. The only thing in the tent is a large table filled with oysters and one man endlessly shucking them. Even when his fervor results in him stabbing his hand, he continues looking for a pearl.

While Moretti and Ariel leave the tent, he continues to explain the significance of the activity, telling her that the pearls are one of the most valuable things that a Levelist can possess. Shucking oysters is a difficult and tiring activity, but the satisfaction of finding even one pearl negates all the empty pearls. Moretti also connects the pearl to perfection and the idea that some people are destined to stand out above others. As a manifestation of this concept, the Levelists each wear a necklace with pearls tied into it that signify them as members of the group.

The Levelists’ Real Plan In Opus Was Even More Sinister

It Was All About Gaining More Followers And More Control

Everything about Ariel’s time at Moretti’s compound helps to build fear in the audience, and Opus’ climax sees her flee for her life while those who arrived for the listening party with her are all killed and the Levelists have seemingly committed mᴀss suicide. While the murders are bad enough on their own, that brutal violence was not even their true plan. Instead, the murders were only part of Moretti’s plan to help spread Level, which he finally reveals to Ariel after he has been arrested.

The ending of Opus shows that the Levelists are alive and well, and they have simply gone back to everyday jobs and lives with the goal of spreading Level. Moretti explains that the world was previously governed by the strongest leaders. Then, when that failed, the world came to be governed by the smartest leaders. Now, Moretti feels that intelligence is a failed metric for gauging leadership, so instead, he trained the Levelists to think creatively.

Additionally, Ariel brought attention to the events of the listening party in her famous book, achieving the attention she wanted at the beginning of the film. However, she did so quite naively since she failed to consider how her words would spawn interest in Level, exactly as Moretti planned. This highlights how the Levelists’ true goal throughout Opus was to cultivate their creativity in a way that they felt was superior to others, in order to spread the cult and eventually take positions of power.