Opus is receiving mixed reviews out of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
Opus is a new A24 horror movie that is written and directed by Mark Anthony Green, with this being his feature film directorial debut. Releasing in theaters this coming March, the movie stars Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich.
“A young writer (Ayo Edebiri) is invited to the remote compound of a legendary pop star (John Malkovich) who mysteriously disappeared thirty years ago,” the synopsis for the movie reads. “Surrounded by the star’s cult of sycophants and intoxicated journalists, she finds herself in the middle of his twisted plan.”
What are critics saying about A24’s Opus?
IndieWire’s Chase Hutchinson gave the film a C- grade. While Hutchinson praised Edebiri and Malkovich’s performance, they also said that it is a “dull and baffling horror movie that ends up becoming the very thing it’s supposedly so concerned about: A vain and vapid pop spectacle that’s utterly lacking in substance.”
“There isn’t a single frame that manages to instill a lasting degree of fear, and the film is shot and edited with a desperate freneticism that seems determined to mask its underlying lifelessness,” Hutchinson also wrote.
Deadline’s Glenn Garner was more positive about the film, despite saying that it “could have ended 20 minutes earlier than it does.”
Garner wrote, “Without hitting them over the head, the film is sprinkled with what appears to be subtle nods to Midsommar, Silence of the Lambs and other horror classics from over the years. Although there are also some inevitable comparisons to be made to The Menu, that should come as no surprise since the ‘eat the rich’ sub-genre has plenty of overlap with the ‘drink the Kool-Aid’ camp, both of which are increasingly relevant in 2025.”
JoBlo’s Chris Bumbray, meanwhile, said the first hour of Opus “works well as a kind of satire on modern entertainment journalists and their relationships with the entertainers they write about,” while it then goes “off the rails when the horror aspect kicks in.”
Opus will be released in United States theaters on March 14, 2025.
