O'DESSA - Mark Reviews Movies

O'Dessa, Searchlight Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 19, 2025

There's a piecemeal quality to the story and world of O'Dessa, which is set in a post-apocalyptic future. That seems to be the end of most of the world building of writer/director Geremy Jasper's movie, which gives us some basic ideas—a grim and grimy city, an authoritarian ruler, a fight for freedom—and can barely flesh those out to a satisfying or coherent degree.

Instead, Jasper seems set on using this barebones plot, which doesn't have much of a goal until the third act, and this dystopian world as an excuse for a series of rock-influenced country songs. Yes, it's a musical, although there are stretches here when Jasper's screenplay appears to forget even that. Some of the songs also feel so similar in tone and lyrics that they don't really push any big ideas or mood, let alone any kind of plot, forward.

It is sometimes striking to observe, however, especially in the introductory scenes. They establish protagonist O'Dessa (Sadie Sink), a farm girl raised by her mother, named Calliope—in order to keep that Greek myth vibe alive, even if the character's name might never be spoken within the movie—and played by Bree Elrod. Her father Vergil (Pokey LaFarge)—in order to keep that vague notion of mythology and poetry going—was a rambler, a brand of traveling troubadour who used to be more common, apparently, in days of old or in the early era of this post-apocalyptic society.

He died, leaving his daughter his guitar, made from the wood of a tree struck by lightning, but the mother buried what she believed to be a cursed thing. After she sings a bit and dies, O'Dessa digs up the six-string and heads to Satelyte City, in order to fulfill her imprecise destiny of rambling like her daddy and his forebears before him.

Those scenes on the farm—a ruin of purple soil, blighted by an oil-like substance called "plazma," and other bold imagery, such as the father receiving a prophecy from an eye-less seer as a bolt of lightning cuts through that tree—might be the most effective of the entire movie. Beyond the fact that the relaxed air of the place lets us quickly accept the story's musical element, it also creates a world that feels grounded in the myths of olden days and Americana.

After that, everything starts to wander and meander, much like O'Dessa herself. Her guitar is stolen on the way to Satelyte City, leading her to find it in a pawn shop and to enter a talent competition at a local bar, in order to win some money to buy it back. There, she meets Euri Dervish (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a talented performer, and the two fall in love so that the pair can sing a bevy of love songs that take Jasper's thematic intentions as far as they can go. It's not that far, obviously.

The songs themselves, written by the filmmaker with Jason Binnick and performed with gusto by the cast (especially Sink, who puts a lot of passion into the singing and her performance), are consistent enough in terms of sounding like the first drafts of an aspiring singer-songwriter. They do what they need to do here, in other words, which is essentially to tell us that O'Dessa is a bit of a rebel, that she and Euri love each other so very much after less than a day after meeting, and that more thought was put into this music than anything else in the movie.

Little, clearly, was put into this futuristic world, which is run as dictatorship under the rule of a cult of personality around Plutonovich (Murray Bartlett). He's presumably the hypnotic figure who has captured the full attention and loyalty of almost everyone in the city, and if that's the case, why does everyone miserably stare at television screens showing his assorted reality shows? According to his followers and his detractors, Plutonovich is a charming and funny personality, but no one actually seems to act as if that's the case.

He almost doesn't matter to the plot until the finale, a live talent competition to determine everyone's individual and collective fates. Then again, there isn't much of a plot of which to speak until then, anyway. O'Dessa and Euri sing and hang out and go on little adventures, while trying to avoid Neon Dion (an unrecognizable Regina Hall), the dictator's head torturer and Euri's domineering manager. It's as shallow as some of those songs, so at least those aspects of the movie line up in some way.

The fundamental concept and potential of O'Dessa are far more intriguing than the result. That's because Jasper seems unwilling to delve any deeper than the fundamentals of his concept for this movie.

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