Omni Loop | Film Review

 

When Zoya (Mary-Louise Parker), a quantum physicist becomes stuck in a time loop with only a week to live, she enlists the help of student Paula (Ayo Edebiri). Together, they try to solve the mystery of time travel. 

I have to admit, I only put this film on in the first place because it starred Ayo Edebiri. It's not a premise that necessarily stuck out to me, and I'm not sure it was one I would have watched otherwise.

Ultimately, while I did go from not liking the film at all to liking it, the overall product wasn't really for me.

It had an agonisingly slow start. It never tried to make me care about the characters or their world, and for a film that's mainly focused on one character, it does help if we actually care about her.

It took a really long time for anything meaningful to happen, and by the time things did start happening, you just don't care because you haven't built a connection with any of the characters.

Time loop movies are no longer original, but this one didn't even try to at least be entertaining. I was bored for a lot of the film and just didn't feel what the filmmakers clearly wanted me to feel.

But then for some reason, the ending was great! It was beautiful, emotional, heart-breaking, everything that I wanted the first 2/3 of the movie to be. If the relationships had been developed better, some of the dialogue would have been truly magical - even now some of the lines have stayed with me.

Ultimately an ending like that just makes everything else feel disappointing. Because what was stopping the rest of the movie from holding those emotions? Why weren't the character relationships better established before that point? Why wasn't the writing that good throughout?

So overall, the film gets an extra star for its ending but the entire thing just wasn't great. It had some interesting ideas, but just ended up being a bit boring when it had the capability to be so much more.

4/10