‘Opus’ Review: A New Album They’re Dying to Hear

As targets for satire, flamboyant pop stars and celebrity journalists are low-hanging fruit — maybe even slightly mushy, rotten fruit. But in “Opus,” Mark Anthony Green, a former style columnist for GQ making his first feature as writer and director, bids to say something trenchant about fame while cementing his reputation as a sleek new horror auteur. He comes up short on both counts.

The protagonist is a 27-year-old magazine journalist named Ariel Ecton (Ayo Edebiri), who laments that she hasn’t written anything she considers worthwhile in three years at her job. But there’s big news: The mysterious, reclusive singer Moretti (John Malkovich) — “arguably the biggest pop star of the ’90s,” per Wolf Blitzer, in his obligatory newscast cameo — is coming out of retirement to release his first studio album in roughly the time that Ariel has been alive.

And for unknown reasons, Ariel receives an invitation to Moretti’s desert compound, where she and Stan Sullivan (Murray Bartlett), her highhanded, idea-poaching boss, will join several other V.I.P.s to be the first in the world to hear it.

The other golden-ticket recipients include a TV personality (Juliette Lewis), an influencer (Stephanie Suganami) and a paparazzo (Melissa Chambers). Out of all of them, Ariel is the only one inclined to show any skepticism toward Moretti’s bizarre brand of hospitality, complete with disgusting meal routines (at a banquet, diners pass around and bite from the same, increasingly saliva-saturated roll) and by-your-side “concierge” service, which in effect means that guests are guarded at all times. When Ariel goes for a jog, her minder (Amber Midthunder) even stops and starts at her pace.

Like the upstate home in “Get Out” and the Swedish enclave in “Midsommar,” two movies whose influence looms unflatteringly over the proceedings, Moretti’s compound is a place where something is obviously amiss. Moretti, clearly a leader of some sort of cult, adheres to a religion that preaches a “holistic path” for creative types. There are odd rituals involving pubic grooming, wounds from oyster shucking and a puppet show in which a marionette Billie Holiday is interrogated by anthropomorphic rats.