*Spoilers for A24’s OPUS will appear in this article.*
If you know me, you know that I’ve become a big horror and A24 fan. This was certainly true when it came to A24’s latest release, OPUS. Starring Ayo Edebri as Ariel, the film centers around a group of journalists invited to witness the comeback of a legendary pop star, Alfred Moretti (played by John Malkovich). As this is an A24 film, things are never quite as simple as they seem, and the private listening session for Moretti’s new album quickly turns deadly.
As the movie revolves around the release of Moretti’s new album, music is a central point of the movie, and I absolutely loved Moretti’s songs. With three songs written specifically for John Malkovich to sing in the film, the music encompassed the swagger and bravado of Moretti. I even found myself tapping my toes along to the beat of the songs in the theater! While the album is short, it sticks in your head and makes you think about the movie constantly. When combined with other elements of the music and marketing, these tracks extend the chilling tone of the film long after the lights come up in the theater.
A month prior to the release of OPUS, I was put on the movie’s Instagram Close Friends story as a “reward” of sorts for being among the first people to follow the Instagram account. The story said, “You’re the first to hear Moretti’s new single. Congratulations.”, and had a YouTube link to the song “Dina, Simone”. The initial secrecy and almost prestige of getting to listen to the first Moretti song was thrilling, and I loved the song. Getting to hear “Dina, Simone” was fun, and it contributed to my excitement about the movie. I, like the journalists in the film, got to listen to a Moretti song before the rest of the world got to, and it became one of my favorites on the (short) album. “Dina, Simone” was featured in a bit of the trailer and has a fun disco vibe to it. When accompanied with Malkovich’s vocals, it becomes a fun dance track that sets up the idea of Moretti’s character perfectly. The fun disco vibe makes sense as well when you look at the artist credits on the EP, as Nile Rodgers of Chic (a famous disco group) helped write the album and contributed largely to its overall sound.
Jumping ahead a bit, the third and final song on OPUS: The Moretti EP is titled “35mm” and is just as fun as “Dina, Simone.” “35mm” is the song that Moretti performs for the journalists he has invited to his compound to hear his newest album Caesar’s Request, and the sequence for this song was one of my favorites. It’s hazy, disorienting, and constantly moving, making for a thrilling sequence. At this point in the film, we can see more of the characters who have survived thus far and how they act with Moretti. Experienced journalists such as Clara, Stan, and Bianca are much more relaxed and comfortable interacting with Moretti during his performance, while rookie journalists Emily and Ariel are far more reserved in their interactions. The song was just as fun as “Dina, Simone,” and is another track that I have blasted in my car repeatedly since I saw the film.
I do know that I went out of order with the track list for OPUS: The Moretti EP, and that wasn’t without a purpose. Track two, “Tomorrow”, is entirely out of place in the album overall, and with purposeful narrative reasons. “Tomorrow” is the second song played in the movie, and it is a complete tonal shift from the bass-heavy disco sounds featured in “Dina, Simone” and “35mm”. Coming in at five minutes and five seconds, “Tomorrow” is a love song about a first love and the heartbreak that comes with that, and it is odd. While artists can contain multitudes, Moretti had been presented as a flashy pop mega-star, and this was a sharp departure from the glitz and glamour viewers had been associating with Moretti. Ariel remarks on this shift to Moretti himself, saying that “Tomorrow” was not what she expected his heart to look like. Instead, she thought his heart would be one of glitter and audience adoration.
While it is a beautiful song, and honestly one that I like outside of the context of the film, the context of the scene that this song underscores makes it feel way more eerie. “Tomorrow” underscores a scene in which the audience is clued into the fact that every room in the compound has a camera, something the invited journalists are entirely unaware of. An even eerier detail, one that is not the focus of the scene at all, is that one of Moretti’s cult members (the Levelists, as they call themselves) had painted over the phone screens of Moretti’s “guests”. This detail comes to light later, when Ariel finds her phone and tries to turn it on only to be deterred. “Tomorrow” is a beautiful song outside of the film’s context, but I do have a hard time detaching it from the eeriness of the scene it underscores.
Something that I found to be unsettling at the end of the movie is that, when Moretti confesses to the murders of the journalists he invited (minus Ariel) and the supposed murders of the Levelists, a reporter remarks that his album Caesar’s Request still sold phenomenally. I found it almost icky that despite him being convicted of hundreds of murders, people were still buying his album, and some were even defending Moretti. That’s where I believe the release of OPUS: The Moretti EP comes into play. It emphasized the “cult of celebrity” message that the movie had been trying to convey. Wasn’t I doing the same thing that I thought was unsettling in the movie? I knew about the crimes that Moretti had committed, on a much deeper level than the general public in the film’s world, and yet I was still listening to Moretti’s album. One step further, I’m writing an article about it. The “cult of celebrity” is very prominent in this film, even beyond the literal cult that Moretti runs, and it is perpetuated outside of the theater through this three-song EP.
While OPUS hasn’t received the best of reviews, I think the overall experience of OPUS — through the EP, the film, and the Close Friends stories, creates a strong theme of how deep the “cult of celebrity” can run, how strong it can be even in the face of deadly circumstances. OPUS: The Moretti EP is a phenomenal album that brings this experience full circle, and overall deserves more credit than critics are affording it.