Do even a cursory search online for reactions to A24’s new thriller Opus, starring Ayo Edebiri and John Malkovich, and you’ll find many comments and reviews — dismissive or otherwise — referencing a slew of intellectualized, social-satire horror: movies like Midsommar, Blink Twice, and The Menu, to name just three of the dozens if not hundreds of films that have followed in the footsteps of Jordan Peele’s genre-realigning masterpiece, Get Out.

And yes, Opus does bear a striking resemblance to those first three movies in particular. It’s about travelers getting drawn into a cultish ritual under blazing sunlight, hangers-on falling into a wealthy celebrity’s nightmarish orbit, and an artist exacting cruel revenge on an audience that, to his mind, is not sufficiently appreciative. In the movie, a young magazine writer (Edebiri) travels with some other journos to the remote Utah ranch of a legendary pop star (Malkovich) to hear the new album with which he is about to end a 27-year silence. Naturally, things get weird.

The trailer, without revealing too much, leaves viewers under no illusion about the kind of........

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