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 movie they are about to see. You could likely call the major plot points without........

© Polygon