O’Dessa, the latest film to star Sadie Sink in her post-Stranger Things filmography, starts off interestingly enough. A retro sci-fi tv explains that the world has undergone an apocalypse and that a powerful leader named Plutonovich has taken over the rule of the land and only a chosen one can defeat him. It’s a bit cliched but it works. After all, when the plot is set to a rock/country musical it doesn’t have to be the most original idea. However, what follows ends up being much more disappointing than I had expected or hoped.
Sadie Sink stars as the titular O’Dessa, a farm girl who sets out on a journey with her father’s guitar to find her purpose and eventually save the world. While an interesting concept, the film has issues realizing its full plot. Instead, the movie spends most of its runtime in a way-too-complicated-for-its-circumstances fetch quest when O’Dessa’s guitar gets stolen and put up in a pawn shop. I don’t know if writer/director Geremy Jasper, who’s only other feature length directing credit is 2017’s Patti Cake$, just couldn’t find enough material but the plot is rather paper thin. Maybe the film would have worked better as a short rather than feature, but it was clear Jasper was over his head.
Because this is a rock/country musical, there is a heavy reliance on guitar forward music. In that department the film is certainly entertaining. Sink has a surprisingly good voice for the genre and the songs are catchy enough if you don’t think about them too hard. If you do, they start to blend together into a weird amalgamation of “House of the Rising Sun” style ballads. But on the surface the film succeeds musically, no surprise as Jasper is most known for directing music videos and composing soundtracks.
But really the issues with O’Dessa start and end with the performances. Sink is fine as the titular character, but it seems everyone around her is just in a different movie. Either characters are way too serious for the tone of the film or just bone stiff. There’s hardly any chemistry between Sink and co-star Kelvin Harrison Jr. who plays love interest Euri Dervish. And the villains feel not all that scary or threatening either. It’s just not done well.
Least of all though is that after the initial gut punch of cool steampunk aesthetic, the O’Dessa loses it’s luster fairly quickly. It’s clear that they shot 90% of the film on a soundstage, and you really get the feel of the fabricated sets very quickly. It took me out of the immersion of the film quite a bit at times. That paired with frankly lackluster CGI effects and it just became hard to look at as the film wore on.
Final Thoughts
O’Dessa feels properly like a low-grade streaming original. It’s low budget, non-offensive fare can be consumed by folks doing chores and not paying attention. Unfortunately this is indicative of a larger, more concerning trend surrounding streaming movies, but maybe we ought to look at them in the same way the public views “made for tv” films or direct to video sequels of the late 90’s and 2000’s. As it stands though, there’s really nothing here worth mentioning nor is it worth your time.
1.5/5
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I have been watching movies my whole life and fell in love at an early age. I was entranced by the ability for a film to whisk me away to a different universe, and that really started with the Star Wars Franchise. I'm by no means an expert and can roll with opinions that might be controversial, but that's the beauty of a film; we can all see the same thing on screen, but each of us may come away with a different interpretation of what we saw. When I'm not watching movies, I work in Marketing with my degree from Western New England University.
MY FAVORITE MOVIES: Good Will Hunting, Star Wars: A New Hope (or the whole saga), All The President's Men, Before Sunrise, Ocean's 11, In The Mood For Love and so many more...