Dorchester native Ayo Edebiri stars as a journalist whose work leads her somewhere unexpected.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
In the style of last year’s equally derivative “Blink Twice” and Jordan Peele’s trend-setting “Get Out” (2017), writer-director Mark Anthony Green’s “Opus” is about a young, ambitious, Black, female journalist named Ariel Ecton (Dorchester native Ayo Edebiri of TV’s “The Bear”) who is oppressed by her white, middle-age editor-boss (Murray Bartlett) and is about to uncover a horrifying plot.
Ariel and her boss travel into the dry hinterlands of Utah and arrive at the remote desert village, where reclusive legendary music star Alfred Moretti (John Malkovich) lives with his band of devoted followers. Welcome to Weirdsville. Upon arrival, the visitors to Moretti’s compound are made to surrender their phones (Ruh-ro). Their other devices are also taken from them (Can you say, “Get Out?”). All is not what it appears. At an initial get-together featuring, among others, an influencer, a podcaster, and a washed-up celebrity named Clara Armstrong (Juliette Lewis), one of the visitors, a young female of Asian descent, is stricken by a sudden ailment. Is it the desert dust?
Moretti himself, whose professional nickname was “the Wizard of Wiggle” and who is about to release a new album, is a coalescence of Elvis, Lurch, and Liberace. In one scene, he wears a Kanye-like chrome hoodie, making him resemble a kitchen appliance. Malkovich, the star and subject of Spike Jonze’s seminal 1999 showbiz fever dream “Being John Malkovich,” brings his trademark aura of menace. Moretti looks like he feeds on baby rabbits, not to mention the blue lobster he is served at the dinner, during which his followers each take a single bite from a loaf of bread before passing it to their neighbor. It’s a noteworthy and notably gross parody of the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist.
The compound itself resembles a summer camp hosted by Ari Aster. People throw pots, ride horses, and sew voodoo dolls. In a big orange yurt, a young man feverishly pries open oysters, searching for a pearl and trying not to stab himself too many times. A wayward arrow finds a target.
Making his feature debut, writer-director Green has a good sense of the absurd. Ariel is befriended by a child who persuades her to stay at the compound to watch a puppet show against her better judgment. The show is called “The Tragedy of Billie” and boasts reporters with the faces of rats and a cigarette-smoking wooden caricature of Billie Holiday. I suppose Green is making a reference to similarly oppressed Black women. But the gesture typically lacks focus. Moretti is too obsessed with how Julius Caesar got revenge on his pirate kidnappers by crucifying them. An interview at a State Hospital at the end makes the Moretti/Hannibal Lecter connection clear. Moretti goes on about a “new evolution,” which sounds more like Elvis Costello than David Cronenberg.
One has to feel sorry for Edebiri, whose face is fascinatingly alive and who has not found her breakthrough film role despite her unique appeal (that voice). While her “The Bear” costars Jeremy Allen White and Ebon Moss-Bachrach get to play Bruce Springsteen and Ben Grimm, aka Thing, respectively, she’s stuck in this non-launching “Midsommar” knockoff. However, she makes Ariel a compelling character despite the screenplay’s lack of originality. Music legend Nile Rogers and hip-hop producer The-Dream are listed as executive producers and credited for the film’s music. They wrote and produced the surprisingly forgettable songs Malkovich sings, sporting stacked heels under a sarong in one sequence. “The World’s Most Outlandishly-Dressed Showman,” anyone?
‘Opus’
Rating: R, profanity, violence, sexual references, brief graphic nudity.
Cast: Ayo Edebiri, John Malkovich, Juliette Lewis
Director: Mark Anthony Green
Writer: Green
Running Time: 1 hour, 43 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common, AMC Causeway, Alamo Drafthouse Seaport, and suburban theaters.
Grade: B-
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