Talented but lowly young journalist Ariel Ecton (Ayo Edebiri) is invited to join her slimy boss Stan (Murray Bartlett) and four other media figures (Juliette Lewis, Stephanie Suganami, Melissa Chambers, Mark Sivertson) for a special visit to the Utah compound of one-time musical superstar Alfred Moretti (John Malkovich), where over a weekend of fine food and pampering, they will also attend an exclusive ‘listening party’ for Alfred’s first new album in thirty years. Yet while her fellow guests are beguiled by all the luxury and their unparalleled proximity to an elusive icon, Ariel is quick to recognise that there is something sinister going on, that this cult svengali seems to be running an actual cult, and that he may have more than just his latest music to promulgate.
Structured as a paranoid thriller, writer/director Mark Anthony Green’s feature debut is a satire of media manipulation, fanaticism and fraud, where the seductive fantasy of exclusive access to an entertainment god is exposed as a deceitful, dangerous dance where mere communion is only the apparent goal. Here every public figure needs their myth maker, and the story that Ariel is uncovering and will ultimately tell to secure her own fame may prove as illusory as any propaganda, or indeed as celebrity itself. Here initial bling gives way to subsequent bonkersness, and no one playing this game of mediated manipulation comes out looking pretty.
strap: In Mark Anthony Green’s cult thriller, a reemergent musical superstar initiates a young journalist in how to play the media game
© Anton Bitel
