Opus

Mark Anthony Green

Shraddha Potti

“Opus” is a horror film, but not in the typical sense. In standard A24 fashion, “Opus” leaves viewers considering larger and much scarier social implications of the story outside of the theater. The main character, a rookie journalist named Ariel (Ayo Edebiri), learns that one of the greatest musical stars of the time period is actually the leader of a sinister and disturbing cult. The movie follows her journey of survival, escape, and rise to journalistic fame via an exposé novel she constructs about her experience. Later, viewers find out that the cult leader chose Ariel and allowed her to escape in a ploy to use her journalism to spread the word about the cult’s teachings and expand its membership. 

I watched it with one hand over my eyes and the other clutching the armrest. Clearly, this was a scary movie. But, I left the theater feeling more terrified than usual (a low bar)—not of the story, but of myself. Am I a part of a cult? I asked myself calmly. Have I somehow started a cult? I inquired curiously. What implicit campaigns might I be a member of, merely by virtue of my existence? Today’s bulging and bright and fast media hardly prompts this question enough; it took a freak of a movie to elicit that curiosity in me. The virtue of “Opus” does not lie in its strange script, eccentric acting, or vivid camerawork. It is in the way that the film twists itself into a pair of glasses through which viewers consume media going forward. Consider the implications of the companies you purchase from, the policies you vote for, even the star-studded musicians you support. What do they contribute to our society? And what does that say about you?