“‘Omni Loop’ review: An inventive but lumberingly slow sci-fi drama |” Art

The first scene in “Omni Loop” gets to the point: a black hole is growing in the chest of 55-year-old quantum physicist Zoya Lowe (Mary Louise-Parker) and she only has a week left to live. Given this extraordinary premise, writer-director Bernardo Britto creates an original and existential take on the “time loop” genre – even if the film’s slow pace and overly intellectual approach weaken its emotional impact.

“Omni Loop” is far from the first film to explore the concept of time loops, but it innovates the genre by putting the power of the “loop” directly into the hands of the protagonist. Since childhood, Zoya has used an endless supply of mysterious green pills that allow her to jump back in time exactly one week.

When she was younger, the pills allowed her to retake exams, achieve academic excellence and advance in her career, but after her diagnosis she relies on them to stave off death. Zoya could stop taking her green pills at any time, but that would mean she would succumb to the black hole growing inside her.

Zoya receives her diagnosis in the hospital, goes home, visits her mother (Fern Katz), spends a day at the beach with her family, and throws a “surprise” birthday party before her week repeats itself. She does this over and over again. Britto even shoots these repeated vignettes from the same angles, and the camera’s heavy focus on Zoya visually forces actress Mary Louise-Parker to emphasize the insane limitations of the loop in which she finds herself. Britto embarks on a patient portrayal of Zoya’s impossible predicament in the “loop,” and while the film’s sluggish pace effectively forces the audience to feel the weight of Zoya’s repetitive life, its slowness risks the Viewer is bored.

One possible way out of Zoya’s loop is Paula Campos (Ayo Edebiri), a graduate student studying time – an admittedly strikingly vague detail. Zoya believes that Paula can help her use the pills to travel further back in time – especially to the beginning of her adult life. Zoya is haunted by missed opportunities, and her desire to avoid death is reinforced by a desire to “try life again” – to go back thirty years and make different choices that would maximize her professional potential.

Paula is a clear foil to Zoya, as her youth and intellectual potential painfully embody the possibilities Zoya gave up when she became a mother. Britto attempts to flesh out Paula’s motivations by hinting at a tragic backstory, but this plotline is poorly developed. The result leaves Edebiri, fresh off an Emmy win in 2023 for her acclaimed work on “The Bear,” as a bumbling and superfluous figure in Zoya’s deeply personal journey.

Returning to quantum research to save her own life forces Zoya to confront her abandonment of physics 30 years ago. Britto mixes the film’s darkest moments with the ephemera of Zoya’s youthful ambitions – Polaroids from her childhood, graduation cards and notes from teachers and mentors extolling her limitless potential – now packed in boxes under her bed. These sudden visual intrusions provide a stark contrast to the end of Zoya’s life and underscore “Omni Loop’s” exploration of what we lose when limitless potential disappears into limited reality.

The first two acts of “Omni Loop” are emotionally subdued, with Louise-Parker masterfully portraying a Zoya who approaches her death coldly and clinically. Her sole concern is the matter of death – ensuring that her textbook is published posthumously and finalizing her will – and the science of trying to prevent its occurrence.

Zoya’s stubborn denial develops the allegory of grief that forms the core of the film; However, it also affects Zoya’s emotional connection to her husband (Carlos Jacott) and adult daughter (Hannah Pearl Utt), and these relationships ultimately come off as inauthentic and superficial on screen.

It is only when Zoya returns to Princeton – where she met her husband and made some of the decisions that would later haunt her – that the film reaches its deepest emotional expression. While studying at Princeton, Zoya visits the home of a former classmate who has reached the pinnacle of success in quantum physics, only to discover that he, too, has spent his final days searching in vain for “more time.”

The image of Louise-Parker finally coming to terms with the inevitability of her demise while listening to the grieving voicemails of her family, whom she neglected during her search for a cure, is haunting and explosive.

Certainly, “Omni Loop” is at its best when it allows its characters to emotionally engage with the weighty existential questions the film seeks to explore. During Zoya’s final loop, she experiences the same moments she has experienced dozens, if not hundreds, of times before. But this time she is completely with her family, allowing herself to grieve with them and look at every moment with new eyes.

Britto’s sci-fi drama falls somewhat short of its potential, but still offers a valuable and imaginative meditation on grief and loss.

– Staff writer Evelyn J. Carr can be reached at [email protected].