R
Movie
103 minutes
Mark Anthony Green
Nile Rodgers Charles D. King Joshua Bachove The-Dream Brad Weston Poppy Hanks
Makeready Macro Film Studios
A24
R
103 minutes
Alfred Moretti
Claire
Kent
Opus isn't perfect, but Mark Anthony Green's directorial debut is a sleek and sinister look at the cult of celebrity with a game Ayo Edebiri starring.
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Send confirmation emailOpus is a reflective, quietly intense film that rewards patience. It centers on a character-driven story where personal ambition and artistic compromise collide, and the movie’s strength lies in its careful focus on the protagonist’s interior life. The lead performance is measured and emotionally true — small gestures and facial beats carry a lot of the film’s weight.
Visually, Opus favors restrained compositions and muted palettes, which suit the melancholic, thoughtful tone. The director resists obvious dramatics and instead builds meaning through accumulated detail: rehearsals, late-night conversations, and the small betrayals that shift relationships. The screenplay takes its time to reveal motivations, so viewers who like films that grow on them will appreciate the payoff.
The film isn’t for those who want constant plot motion; it asks you to lean in and consider the costs of creative life. For anyone who enjoys slow-burn drama with real human nuance, Opus is quietly rewarding.
Opus (2025), directed by Mark Anthony Green, is a provocative thriller that mixes celebrity satire, cult horror, and eerie musical spectacle. Ayo Edebiri plays Ariel Ecton, a tentative young journalist who’s invited to a remote desert compound by the reclusive pop legend Alfred Moretti, played by John Malkovich. Moretti hasn’t released music in decades, and his secluded compound houses a strange, devoted “Levellist” following. As Ariel meets other influential guests and watches Moretti’s bizarre rituals, she suspects something sinister beneath the glamor.
Malkovich delivers a magnetic, unhinged performance, giving Moretti theatrical power and menace. Edebiri balances him with a grounded vulnerability, making Ariel someone you root for even when the cult’s secrets deepen. The visuals are lush, and the original music crafted by Nile Rodgers and The-Dream—is hypnotic and unsettling.
Though critics argue the concept is muddled and the tone unsteady, Opus remains compulsively watchable for its fearless ambition and eerie charisma. If you’re drawn to twisted tales of fame, fanaticism, and power, Opus offers a stylish, unsettling ride well worth taking.
Opus (2025) is a chilling descent into the cult of celebrity, exploring how fame, ego, and unchecked adoration can become deadly. The story follows Ariel, an investigative journalist, who is invited, alongside other media figures, to a mysterious desert compound by Alfred Moretti, a washed-up pop star staging a disturbing comeback. What begins as a high-concept listening party quickly unravels into psychological manipulation, ritualistic control, and murder, as Moretti transforms from artist to self-styled prophet. Through scenes of forced conformity, performative purification, and symbolic executions, Opus dissects how belief becomes branding, how art becomes doctrine, and how critics can become pawns in the very stories they’re trying to expose. In the end, the most terrifying revelation isn’t the cult itself. But how its ideology survives through the very medium meant to destroy it. Opus is a haunting metaphor for our modern obsession with fame, and a warning: when we stop critiquing artists and start worshiping them, the truth becomes just another tool for manipulation.
