SXSW '25: O’Dessa signifies nothing, and doesn’t even offer sound or fury

The world has gone sour. Society has collapsed, save for the grotesque haven of Satylite City, whose residents live under the thrall of their dictator/god/variety-talent show host, Plutonovich (Murray Bartlett). They spend their days ambling about in a haze, punctuated only by Plutonovich’s enforcer Neon Dion (Regina Hall) executing dissenters, Plutonovich brutally terrorizing dissenters on his depraved talent show, or sex worker/singer Euri Dervish (Kelvin Harrison Jr.)’s furious, sensual performances at Dion’s nightclub. Humanity looks set for a slow, gaudily-lit fade-out until SXSW-premiering post-apocalyptic musical O’Dessa’s titular heroine, O’Dessa Galloway (Sadie Sink) arrives in Satylite City, hoping to reclaim her late father’s stolen magical guitar. O’Dessa is the last of the Ramblers, country-rock troubadours whose magic music can set a fire in the hearts of the broken, the beaten, and the damned. O’Dessa and Euri meet, fall for each other, and become each other’s light in the neon darkness. But Dion will not stand for Euri being free, and Plutonovich will not stand for anyone challenging his power. Thus, the stage is set for a showdown between life-giving love and soul-devouring apathy, songs from the heart, and a game show from hell.

I will give O’Dessa this: it isn’t colorless “content.” It’s clearly a passion project for writer/director/songwriter/co-composer Geremy Jasper (Patti Cake$), and Sink, Harrison, Bartlett, and the ensemble give it their all. I salute them for their ambition and for completing O’Dessa in this form. With due respect paid, O’Dessa is awful. It’s a musical with terrible music, a romance with no feeling, a post-apocalypse with no thought paid to its world. It starts messily, swiftly decays into a dull muddle, and closes with a climax best described as “actively infuriating.” Creatively, it is a misconceived misfire whose only virtue is that it’s a solid reminder of how many good movies work with the tools O’Dessa tries to deploy and the spaces it tries to occupy.

Credit: Photo courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

O’Dessa’s driving theory as a musical is that the titular heroine’s music, accompanied first by her guitar and eventually by musicians moved by her work to join in, is pure and healing in its realness compared to the cruel artificiality of Satylite City. Acknowledging that I’m not a musicologist, Sink is a talented singer with an impressive vocal range. O’Dessa sticks her with songs that range from the leadenly expository to the emptily inane. The film’s best song, its showstopping 11 o’clock number, speaks about love and its power in language so generic that without Sink’s committed performance, it would say nothing. Most damningly, though, is the fact that O’Dessa shoots its core idea in the foot—that O’Dessa’s music stands out as genuine and powerful for its simplicity and purity in a world that’s been numbed by Plutonovich’s constant screeching and its attendant light show. O’Dessa’s guitar invariably summons an aggressive studio sound, and her singing reliably conjures an unseen backup band. This actively undermines the story O’Dessa is trying to tell with its music by undercutting the supposed power of O’Dessa’s performances with soundscapes that are not bad per se but aren’t a voice and a guitar. If O’Dessa’s music is powerful, let it sing for itself. Instead, O’Dessa opts for the most sound, rather than an authentic sound, and in the process, produces a soundtrack that doesn’t match the story it’s trying to tell. Moreover, by repeatedly opting for an intense, studio-centric sound, O’Dessa flattens its score. Most of its tunes sound similar to the point that monotony sets in. The result is a musical whose music drags—a fatal error for the form, especially when the story told is ostensibly about the power of song.

What motivates O’Dessa to sing? Love. First for her late father and her ailing mother and then for Euri. O’Dessa’s parents cease to matter within the first twenty minutes of the film, outside of a spiel about her destiny as the seventh generation of her Rambler family’s line. Euri is consistently more present. But while Sink and Harrison do what they can with what they have, O’Dessa never manages to make their romance blossom. O’Dessa’s a Down Home Farm Girl with a Destiny, and that destiny never gives her the space to become a person. Euri exists to suffer and tell O’Dessa how wonderful she is. There’ve been plenty of players from all across the gender spectrum who’ve been stuck with thankless roles like Euri, but O’Dessa’s poor writing curdles what could be frustrating into something sour. Euri is a gender-nonconforming Black man who suffers at the hands of a vicious, evil Black woman; a grotesque, evil gay man; and finally, a sneering, power-crazed, gameshow host. He finds salvation in the arms of a lightly gender-nonconforming white woman, only to suffer more so that she can suffer and be motivated to save him. O’Dessa prioritizes its leads’ suffering over their characters and connection. It insists that O’Dessa and Euri’s love can turn Plutonovich’s rotten realm to rust but never convincingly shows that. All they have is loaded, thoughtlessly deployed anguish.

Where O’Dessa’s core romance is dragged down by monotonous misery, its world is so overstuffed and disconnected that it amounts to an empty jumble. The post-apocalypse, done well, is an exceptionally thematically rich setting, a place where beauty and ruin can be built in equal measure and reflect on their builders. Satylite City is, in theory, the world, according to Plutonovich. He’s the sole master of the wonder-fuel Plazma. He’s plastered his third-eye sigil on every bit of blank wall. He has a legion of veiled nuns. His enforcers can brutalize and disappear people unopposed. His game show, The One, is the only thing on TV beyond his hypnotic propaganda, and his favorite punishment for contestants who disappoint him is horrific, mind-breaking plastic surgery. 

None of this adds up. Plutonovich explicitly shapes O’Dessa’s world, but the world doesn’t reveal anything about him, and he doesn’t reveal anything about it. His control of Plazma ruined the Earth and built his empire, but how his power over Plazma translates into power over all goes unanswered. His emblem suggests that Satylite City is a panopticon, but surveillance gets passing attention at best. He has religious devotees but treats himself more like a secular demagogue than a god or redeemer. His minions, outside of Dion—whose interest in menacing O’Dessa and Eurie is personal rather than professional—are generic goons. Even The One, the most distinct part of O’Dessa’s post-apocalypse and Plutonovich’s power, doesn’t match Bartlett’s performance. The game show and its brutalization of its victims suggest a Trump or Joe Rogan-type who won hearts and minds through addictive bluster and cruel charisma. Bartlett plays Plutonovich as closer to a burnt-out Immortan Russell Brand (complete with a much younger Katy Perry-esque white rapper consort), one whose forced pomp never sells him as a villain who could rule a wasteland, let alone build a giant statue of himself to live in. It’s a hollow, boring world with a hollow, boring king.

I do not doubt that O’Dessa’s creative team wanted to make a striking, powerful movie whose songs could reverse the world's end. They failed. O’Dessa sabotages its music, swamps its romance in thoughtlessly deployed misery, and binds its world to its villain without giving either substance. It’s 106 minutes better spent on a better movie. If you want a film with spectacular music that delves into the power of song and the conflict between the genuine and the artificial with a thorny, compelling romance, try Shoji Kawamori, Shinichirō Watanabe, and Keiko Nobumoto’s Macross Plus. If you want a post-apocalypse that engages with how people might try to write the world after its end, George Miller and crew’s Mad Max films earned their legendary status road war by road war. They’re well worth your time. O’Dessa isn’t.

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