Writer/director Bernardo Britto gets credit for originality. Sure, we've seen the "Groundhog Day" narrative device plenty of times, a day repeated on end until the protagonist stuck in a loop figures out how to be a better person or who the murderer is or whatever it is that's needed to break them off the hamster wheel. But in Omni Loop, starring Mary-Louise Parker and Ayo Edibiri, that device is put to use in the sci-fi, time travel genre as Zoya (Parker) decides to get to the bottom of whatever it is that's keeping her on repeat as she faces a terminal illness.
That illness, as it were, is a literal black hole growing in her chest, a void slowly opening up and threatening to suck her up into it. How this black hole isn't affecting anything else around it is not exactly addressed in the film, but that may just be because Britto is not a actually a quantum physicist like his main character is. We learn that at a young age, Zoya discovered a bottle of pills with her name on them and, out of curiosity (or stupidity?) she started taking them, zipping her back in time five days at a time. Now, facing death and trying to get the better of her ability to travel through space and time, she sets out to understand what's happening when she takes the pills and how to make them work for her.
As the weeks repeat themselves, Zoya falls into the expected lulls, unsurprised by everything that happens, from the bird shitting on the park bench where she's sitting to her family celebrating a birthday again...and again...and again. During one of her broken-record weeks, she encounters Paula (Edibiri), a young scientist who might be her best shot at solving the puzzle of her time travel...if only she can get Paula to believe her about what's happening.
Parker and Edibiri are charming as unlikely partners in this far-fetched mystery, but neither of them is really playing anything other than themselves as these simply written characters. Which is not a complaint, per se, but a recognition that character depth is not what Omni Loop will be remembered for. More than once throughout the film, I found myself thinking of Everything Everywhere All At Once, a film that parallels this one in a few ways, namely in that they are both dealing with some big, universal questions about the span of our lives, how we spend our time and what, if anything, we are actually in control of. They also both infuse an otherwise wonky sci-fi premise with a great deal of heart, as the main scientific problem at hand is not really the problem that needs solving.
It's not my intention to review one film by focusing on another, but I think it puts into focus the scale and accomplishment of Omni Loop, one that does a lot with ultimately very little (especially when considered alongside the bombastic EEAAO). It also allows for a bit of grace around the film's shortcomings, which aren't many but also aren't entirely absent. Like other films of this ilk, its three acts are progressively more interesting, as Zoya begins to understand more about her circumstances and Paula invests, time and time again, in helping this stranger solve her potentially unsolvable problem.
By the film's final act, and despite the predictability of what's come before, Parker has earned enough of our goodwill to bring us along for Zoya's realization about her fate. It's a warm and bittersweet moment that Britto (and now we) know couldn't have gone any other way, and it's handled with the care such a moment deserves. Ultimately warm-hearted and clever, Omni Loop is worth a watch if you're looking for something independent and original for your next movie night.
Omni Loop is now in theaters.
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