#nyg movie review number three:
Opus
dir. Mark Anthony Green (2025)
watched 01/12/26
this review contains spoilers AND it contains my opinion thank you very much
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This movie really really wants to be Midsummer if it was set in New Mexico and not Sweden. The movie genuinely wants to be Midsummer so bad, and that’s part of what makes this movie so flawed. Ayo mostly did great. The script didn’t give her the most ever to work with, but she did her very best. This movie really was just shallow. There were a few moments of the movie that did captivate me, but not many. There’s a scene in a desert themed orange room where the cult leader is revealing one of his songs and he dances around a circle of his seated guests. This scene did compel me, to a degree. There were moments that I thought would lead to greater depth for the characters, but which were not explored. This movie really just falls short in almost every aspect. It disturbs you by having strangers cut the characters’ pubic hair, but it stops there. It really really really just reheated Midsummer’s nachos so much. We have pubic hair, cult activities, people disappearing, mutilated bodies, but it executed each concept worse than Midsummer did. I think the choice to give the movie a cult leader, someone who is supposed to be personable and charming was a wrong choice. I wasn’t convinced that this man was the most incredible musician in the world, or that he was charismatic enough to be a cult leader. I also think there were interesting racial components, similar to Midsummer, that could have been explored with Ayo’s styling and how the white man styled her versus how she styled herself, but it really again was just a whisper of complexity or depth.
rating out of 5 stars: 2 ½⭐️
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