Omni Loop, 2024.
Written and Directed by Bernardo Britto.
Starring Mary-Louise Parker, Ayo Edebiri, Carlos Jacott, Hannah Pearl Utt, Chris Witaske, Fern Katz, Steven Maier, Jennifer Bassey, Maddison Bullock, Riley Fincher-Foster, Jacob Bond, Harris Yulin, Eddie Cahill, Michael Laurino, and Efrén Hernandez.
SYNOPSIS:
A woman from Miami, Florida decides to solve time travel in order to go back and be the person she always intended to.
To quote a different movie (and one from the great Christopher Nolan), “Don’t try to understand it, feel it.” That is more or less because there are more questions than answers about the special pills at the center of writer/director Bernardo Britto’s time loop drama Omni Loop. Wondering how one bottle has lasted a lifetime, how no one else knows about them, and other curiosities don’t matter here.
55-year-old Zoya (a tremendous Mary Louise Parker entirely in touch with the emotional core of this narrative) has a black hole inside her chest, a terminal illness that will be taking her life in exactly five days, and has carried around time travel pills since childhood granting her the ability to jump back five days. Reliving this week is her only method of staying alive, and as such, she has relived it so much that everything has begun to feel like a record on repeat.
Zoya has become so accustomed to everything that happens in that week, from getting discharged from the hospital, finalizing her will, celebrating her 55th birthday, and the banter with her supportive goofball husband Donald (Carlos Jacott), daughter Jayne (Hannah Pearl Utt) and partner Morris (Chris Witaske) that all of it is now one ball of annoyance. Rather than say some proper goodbyes and accept what’s coming, Zoya also feels like she didn’t live up to expectations as a physicist and desperately wants to crack the scientific code of these mysterious pills so she can time travel wherever she chooses, and maybe this time, live a different kind of fulfilling life.
The path to doing so starts to feel attainable when Zoya changes part of her five-day routine and meets young physicist Paula (a wise, sensitive, and quietly charming Ayo Edebiri), who not only happens to be reading one of Zoya’s metaphysics textbooks but wants to solve the secrets of time travel. After amusingly repeating this sequence several times to prove to Paula that she is from the future, the two team up and try to break down the pill structure, which is practically impossible since it is constantly rewriting itself. While there are some quirky techniques, such as using a microscopic (to the point of invisibility) shrunken human to communicate some details about the pills, this film is more about regrets and past lives not lived or mistakes made, and how they still eat away at both characters and drive much of their scientific ambition.
Zoya and Paula develop a tender friendship, each becoming a pillar of positivity for the other. One gets the impression that ever since Zoya gave up this life to raise a family, she hasn’t been this passionate about breaking down the pills. A former professor (Harris Yulin) also pops up, who doesn’t exactly have a flattering opinion of Zoya left over. However, that’s okay because his insults also become part of this reignited fire inside her. This is all also one way of saying that the proceedings here are less about the science itself and more about what is revealed about these women and their characterizations, not to mention their inevitable arcs.
Slow might not be the fairest phrasing to describe some of Omni Loop since, at the very least, it uses that sluggish pacing advantageously, leaving viewers unsure of where this is going. It’s a sci-fi story not particularly concerned with science, and it’s also the rare Groundhog Day-style movie that’s not using that dynamic to elicit laughter. What can be said is that Zoya does reevaluate and come around on the life she did lead while backing Paula with support and positive reinforcement to be greater than she ever was.
Of the several emotional threads and heartrending one-on-one conversations that emerge throughout the final third of Omni Loop, Mary Louise Parker gracefully carries it all; even when she is letting everything out, the performance never crosses the line into unconvincing melodrama. This is one of the more unique and subdued time loop stories of recent memory, touching and tender; hopefully, people check it out, and it doesn’t get sucked into a black hole.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
