Courtesy Magnolia Pictures
The pantheon of time-loop films that includes the likes of Groundhog Day and Palm Springs have generally left the concept of the infinite to languish in subtext, but in Omni Loop from writer/director and Los Espookys alum Bernardo Britto places the mundanity of what is essentially immortality front and center.
Here, Weeds star Mary-Louise Parker is Zoya, a woman diagnosed with an unthinkable terminal illness. Luckily, Zoya owns a bottle of seemingly miraculous pills—pills that send her back five days when ingested. Everything reverts around Zoya other than her knowledge, and those around her don’t perceive the time jumps, at least as far as she can tell. The origin of the pills are as mysterious as their properties, but Zoya has taken them her whole life, only aging, presumably, when she so chose. That’s how she earned an advanced degree from Princeton and became a celebrated textbook author—whenever she failed, whenever she faltered, she’d simply go back five days and take another stab.
And though Omni Loop doesn’t say precisely how long Zoya has been looping, we learn it could be eons. Then, the illness and thus the change. Knowing she’ll die mostly highlights for Zoya how rote her existence has become. But she loves her family, so, in a bid to survive, Zoya taps fledgling scientist Paula (Ayo Edebiri of The Bear) to unlock the possibilities of time travel. If the pills can send her back five days, why not five years; why not five decades?
Britto’s sci-fi edge feels particularly thrilling in its everyday nature. When we make leaps and bounds in real life, they’re almost never as sensational as the movies portray them. Here, even an incredible shrinking man or the last surviving rhino are met with lackluster response from the world at large. The menial tasks of the everyday merge with the bright pastels of the fictional Miami in which the film is set, though brutalist architecture pops into the edges of Zoya’s world, perhaps representing the cold and unfeeling nature spurred by a deathless existence.
Parker is at her absolute best as the flawed Zoya, who has certainly used her time-altering pills selfishly. She is entitled and impatient and says as much herself, but heroes need not be above reproach and, often, the best we can do is to try. Edebiri’s Paula is recognizable as a capable but flustered sort, but even she gets into the emotional weeds in a way we’ve yet to see from her in other titles. The real magic is in her chemistry with Parker’s Zoya, whose consternation knows no antidote save Paula’s wide-eyed sincerity.
Omni Loop thus dredges up plenty of emotions, though its messaging feels different from its predecessors’. Groundhog Day and Palm Springs lean into the idea that if you just find you a good partner, everything else will fall into place. Omni Loop, however, feels more hopeful and less reductive. We might not see the good things around the bend, but they’re there; nothing lasts forever; and sometimes letting go is all we can do. That doesn’t make life less scary, but control is often an illusion while hurt is inevitable—maybe love is so much bigger than the romantic.
8
+Fun premise; bittersweet resolution
-Breakneck pacing leaves much unexplained
Omni Loop
Directed by Britto
With Parker and Edebiri
Violet Crown Cinema, NR, 107 min.
