Futuristic worlds or post-apocalyptic versions of our world are not unfamiliar for filmmakers to make movies about in Hollywood. Going all the way back to Barbarella, Beastmaster and the Original Road Warrior writers/directors have had a fascination with telling stories that weren’t quite right regarding the world they took place in. The latest of that ilk is O’Dessa from Geremy Jasper. It’s a fever dream of a love story if I ever saw one.

O’’Dessa (Sadie Sink) is a farm girl in a post- apocalyptic world. Once she has gotten old enough to go out on her own, she receives a priceless guitar from her deceased father so she can share music and songs along the rambling road that she travels. While on the journey of discovery, she loses her guitar and must get it back at all costs. In the process, she meets a boy she falls in love with Euri Dervish (Kelvin Harrison Jr), who also loves to sing.  While in the city, she finds out things aren’t what she thought they were. They’re worse. She runs afoul of a dangerous woman named NEON Dion (Regina Hall) who wants Euri Detvish for herself. In a quest to same him and herself, O’Dessa must sing the best love song for the omnipotent Plutonovich (Murray Bartlett), who is a big brother crossed with Max Headrum like television personality.

The look of this film is straight out of Mad Max mixed with Blade Runner. The writer/director Jasper has been working on it for seven years before its SXSW premiere last week. The color palette and cinematography are out of this world gorgeous. I was instantly drawn into the rainbow of kaleidoscopic colors that the filmmaker and director of photography used to set the world in. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. It’s  the best cinematography I’ve seen this year. 

The music in the movie was a bit of rock music mixed with folk music. It took me a little while to get into the songs of both Sink and Harrison Jr. Sing in the film. They have good voices and bring a natural ability to the song performances. I’m a big fan of rock music, and I’ve started becoming a folk music fan. The songs had an adlib flavor to them. Like the actors were coming up with them on the spot. Who knows? Maybe they were specifically written for the movie. If so, they weren’t great. They weren’t terrible either. They were just okay, I guess. If I had more chances to listen to them, maybe I’d like them more over time.

I’ve always been a fan of literature and films that use a particular all powerful being which is basically a man overseeing a world or city and films like 1984,Blade Runner, The Running Man and The Truman Show come to mind. Even MOJO from the X-Men comics comes to mind. These types of characters make great villains. They want the show to go on and whoever must perform for the audience.  The one world and the eye in the sky are examples of these archetypes as well as the sinister Plutonovitch played beautifully by Murray Barlett. This role was made for him. He went over the top with his performance, and I loved every minute of it.

Sadie Sink is a young actress I and many others came to know from her breakout role in Stranger Things on Netflix. Since then, she’s branched out into other roles like Nancy Drew and so forth. The role of O’Dessa is the most out there performance of her career thus far. She has to sing and do a lot of the heavy lifting regarding the plot and character development.  Even though most of that is only skin deep, I still care about her and her journey to get her guitar back and become a big hit with her music and singing ability. I felt she was an interesting character to follow along with, and that’s because of Sink’s instead ability to draw me in and make me care about her plight. This is the sign of a good actress when the audience generally cares about the characters they play on screen.

O’Dessa is a cross between Mad Max and a mix of many other movies I’ve seen over the years. It also has a literary flavor of 18984 and other works. The cinematography and production design sucked me into this world instantly.  It was gorgeous to look at the entire film. The performances from the supporting cast, specifically Bartlett and Hall as the two mustache twirling villains, were fantastic to watch. Harrison was good, but he didn’t give me what I’ve seen from him in the past, which is emotion. Sink though,I loved! Her singing was pretty good, and I genuinely cared about her character’s  journey throughout the movie. As a whole this was a decent film, just not as great as I hoped it would be. I’m looking forward to Jaspers next film though. He showed me a lot of promise with this one.

3 stars

Dan Skip Allen