Ayo Edebiri is on typically "charismatic form" in this horror-inflected celebrity satire, said Kevin Maher in The Times, but alas, she cannot rescue this "empty non-story". Edebiri, best known for "The Bear", plays Ariel, a young journalist working at "a glamorous and wildly successful music magazine" of a sort that hasn't existed in decades.
For reasons that are unclear, she is invited with her boss (Murray Bartlett from "The White Lotus") and various VIPs to a "desert-based listening party" where they will be the first people to hear a new album by Moretti (John Malkovich), a pop megastar who has not been heard of since the 1990s. However, at the compound, she senses something is off; he lives among followers who call themselves "Levellists", and she realises that his real plans do not involve music.
This plot – "unwitting protagonist visits a cult-like retreat, only to discover satirically sinister intentions" – is "well-trodden", said John Nugent in Empire. Still, the film is quite fun. In particular, it is a treat to see Malkovich deliver the pretentious, bejewelled Moretti's lines in his "uniquely theatrical diction" and perform songs by Nile Rodgers.
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