OMNI LOOP - Mark Reviews Movies

Omni Loop, Magnolia Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 19, 2024

Here's a setup you don't hear everyday or, maybe, ever. Zoya Lowe (Mary-Louise Parker) is in the hospital, and a doctor tells her family that scans have uncovered a peculiar growth—or, better, anomaly. There's a black hole in Zoya's body, between the lungs and about the size of a peanut, and the introduction of Omni Loop further informs us that Zoya has about a week. That's presumably for her to live, but when it comes to a mass of concentrated gravity inside a human body, can we really talk about the consequences in terms of simple life and death at that point?

Writer/director Bernardo Britto's film is a weird one, obviously, or it is in its basic premise and the way characters treat such scientific oddities in such a matter-of-fact way, at least. There are some other details in the background or as relatively minor plot points in Britto's screenplay that are approached with a similar tone.

The last Indian rhinoceros, for example, is on a kind of farewell tour of the world, so that people can see the species before it goes extinct—like so many others must have in this world of an unspecified future, presumably. Elsewhere, technology has incredibly shrunk a man, but after the process couldn't be stopped, he's still shrinking and currently existing on a subatomic plane. Nobody knew what to do with this experimental whoopsie, so the sealed box containing him was just thrown in a drawer somewhere, where the whole mistake could hopefully be forgotten.

In a world that's losing its natural wonders and can treat its scientific ones so flippantly, it's little wonder, then, that nobody seems to bat an eye at Zoya's predicament. With a week-long prognosis before an unknowable whatever, Zoya is advised to spend time with her family, but she has a secret—a way to keep re-living the same week over and over again. With seemingly unlimited time, she surely can figure out how to fix, not only the black hole inside her chest cavity, but also what she sees as a lot of mistakes, missed opportunities, and lost potential in the rest of her life.

The story, then, revolves around what is, at this point, a pretty familiar gimmick. Yes, Zoya lives out the same week repeatedly, taking a mysterious pill at the end of it, when her nose starts bleeding and just before the black hole will do whatever it is it will do to her body. Britto takes the mystery of these puzzling events and details further by gradually revealing them in the first act. The pills arrive early, in a prologue of Zoya finding them as a child (played by Riley Fincher-Foster), but it's not until the character has gone through the same week a few times that we're actually informed of their significance.

It's a clever bit of plotting, because the structure and distribution of information here keep us on our toes. That feels right for a film about so many strange things and big ideas about theoretical science, as well as life in general, but Britto's little game extends beyond those matters of storytelling, too. This becomes quite the effective sleight-of-hand trick in terms of purpose and tone by the end, when everything that seems to matter about this elaborate plot turns out to mean very little at all.

The basics of the narrative do see Zoya repeating these days, after awakening in the hospital and until her family celebrates her birthday at home. She spends time at the beach with her husband Donald (Carlos Jacott) and adult daughter Jayne (Hannah Pearl Utt), as well as her fiancé Morris (Chris Witaske). Zoya visits her ailing mother (played by Fern Katz) in a care facility, where she talks with a kind older woman about the repetitive way of life in the place. At the same time every time at her birthday party, Zoya's nose starts to bleed, so she excuses herself and takes one of the mystery pills to start the week over yet again.

On one trip to the nursing home, Zoya meets Paula (Ayo Edebiri) by chance. She's a post-grad student, coincidentally studying time, so Zoya believes teaming up with her might help her figure out what the pills are and how to go back further in time.

The fundamental plotting is likely what one would expect from this premise, with a lot of trial and error (Getting Paula to believe Zoya when she says she's a time-traveler takes a bit of effort, for example), figuring out new ways to look at the pills and Zoya's dilemma, and looking for Zoya's old research, which might have some key that she missed over the years. There are some amusing details, such as how the ever-shrinking man plays into the research, and plenty of convoluting ones, but once Britto begins to reveal what he's actually doing, it becomes more serious, while those complexities matter much less.

What really matters here first starts between the lines, as both Zoya and, to a lesser extent, Paula reveal more about their pasts and their pains. Paula asks a simple question: What happens to Zoya's family after she takes a pill? She has never considered it, and suddenly, Britto opens up an entirely new perspective on this story—one focused on loss, contemplating mortality, and being so caught up in oneself as to lose track of the rest of life and other people.

Omni Loop becomes a surprisingly potent examination of those ideas. Much of that comes from Britto's ability, not only to concoct such a weird story, but also to adjust the tone of it with such subtle skill that it does, well, throw us for a loop.

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