Opus follows Ariel Ecton (Ayo Edebiri), a young journalist who works for legacy music magazine. Despite her three years of stint in the publication, Ariel’s ambitions are underestimated, with her Smarmy editor Stan (Murray Bartlett) passing the pitch to a more experienced writer. However, with Moretti’s VIP being invited to his listening party, Ariel gets an opportunity that is unlikely to prove her worth. Moretti’s guest list embraces the story while leaving Stan-Ariel to his duty to take notes. As the horror genre requires, we feel something is not right when the group arrives in the desert. This compound is located in a community of members of the Blue Cult, known as Rebelists. As the guests begin to disappear one by one, Ariel tries to reveal Moretti’s ominous plans.
Green wrote Opus during his tenure in the media as GQ editor. There, we featured artists such as Donald Glover, The Weeknd, Diplo, and Janelle Monáe. Yet despite the years within the elite industry, Opus portrays it without much peculiarity or nuance. The media guy we met in the film is less defined than the most cartoonish gum show detectives in B-grade noir. It is a flat depiction of a young writer who has no concrete interests (to interview celebrities and write books), but stares at an endangered medium. Meanwhile, fellow critic and combined invitee Bill Loto is Moretti’s rival for a printed joke about the singer’s dog. (We learn this through the expo. Lotto doesn’t say a word to the entire film.)
There was an opportunity for Green to reveal something about the state of criticism in pop culture through the lens of old and new security guards. Or to mining the troublesome relationships that can arise between the press and celebrity subjects. But neither has been explored. There are plenty of films lacking in definition in the niche and elite industry, but I was hoping that Green’s first-hand knowledge of access journalism would enter into the details of Nittigrit and throw some punchlines at all of us who are still stuck in the grind.
Green presents many symbols of anxiety that exist without purpose throughout the film. They may have pretended to be foreshadowing, but they never get rewarded as a result and don’t even act as a red herring. Dotted around Moretti’s homesteads and monitoring every movement of their guests, Rebelists exist only as vessels for cliched, eerie actions. When they are not taking away archery, painting, or oysters, they hone more ominous activities: measure the body of their guests conservatively. Make voodoo dolls with their portraits. Bloody fur fur and bottles of antiseptic creatures are kept in a shed. When we first meet horizontally, Green cuts out Ariel’s notebook, where she emphasizes by writing the words “creepy greeter” in black ink. The entire character development of Opus can be summarised with scribbled phrases like this.
