O’Dessa’ Review: A Messy But Enjoyable Sci-Fi Musical
‘O’Dessa’, a trippy sci-fi rock opera, has just dropped on Hulu/Disney+, and gone largely unnoticed as a result.
The movie follows O’Dessa (Sadie Sink), a young girl who’s a “rambler”, travelling along through a post-apocalyptic land, singing and playing the guitar her father gave her. The instrument is said to have magic powers, being carved from the wood of a burning willow, and O’Dessa’s song will save the people of this world.
On her journey, she travels to Satylite city, a place of vice and debauchery, run by Plutonovich, a Wizard of Oz style character, who keeps the citizens under his control by hypnotizing them while they watch his brutal game show, where people perform or die on his whim.
If this sounds a bit out there, that’s because it is. This is an odd movie, it swims around in a fairy tale way, becoming messy at times, and there’s so much going on it’s hard to know where to start. The unconventional elements are intentional, but still there are things that come out of nowhere and lead nowhere. At one point, O’Dessa has one of her fingers cut off, which you might think would be devastating for a guitar player, but it’s never brought up and never affects her playing in the slightest, and is forgotten after about a minute, save for the bandage on her hand.
The director, Geremy Jasper, started out with music videos, and it shows. There’s a kind of non-linear style to it, with plenty of random bits and pieces thrown into the mix, and a ton of stylization, particularly in the wardrobe, and some of the scenery of the dystopian city. I don’t know what the budget is, but it certainly doesn’t look too high.
It’s a mixed film in the truest sense. There’s bad and good in it, good in the bad; bad in the good. The majority of the film is from O’Dessa’s point of view, bar a handful of scenes, following her closely, and we never see much of the characters outside her interactions, which makes it feel small and close.
I think this works in the movie’s favor, as it doesn’t need any great worldbuilding or characterization, and probably wouldn’t be able to pull it off if it tried. Instead we follow the title character, and there’s something compelling about her scrappiness, as she suffers one setback after another, even making a new instrument from a frying pan when her guitar is stolen and pawned.
It also helps that Sadie Sink can actually sing, and gets to show off her full range with a dozen or so songs, all composed by the director, though none of them are particularly memorable or stand out.
‘O’Dessa’ also has some things to say, in a fashion, about technology and the zombie state we enter when glued to our devices, as the population is kept sedate by a celebrity demigod who feeds them with “content”, hypnotising them with his gameshow, preventing them from thinking for themselves or protesting his cruel practices. How ironic that this was released on a streaming service then!
It’s far from a perfect film, and there are a lot of flaws that could have been easily fixed with just a little more thought, but at the same time, too much polishing would take away from the rough and ready look and feel of it, and that’s really part of its appeal.
Is it a great movie? No. But at the same time, I think there’s more good in the bad, than bad in the good. There’s something intriguing about it that keeps you watching, as these two doomed young lovers travel towards their fate. It’s something different, something unique and original, and right now, that’s something that needs to be applauded.
