You’ll know exactly what kind of movie O’Dessa is within the first five minutes. Geremy Jasper’s follow-up to his charming rap dramedy Patti Cake$ could not be more different. With blaring guitar strums, bright neon lights flooding the screen, and an ominous fascistic illusionist played by Murray Bartlett, there’s almost too much to take in. For all the faults O’Dessa has, it’s clearly a film made with an abundance of passion and creativity. It’s a gender-swapped, punk rock, post-apocalyptic reinvention of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. It’s also a movie that largely doesn’t work and trips over its own ambition.
What Is ‘O’Dessa’ About?

O’Dessa (Sadie Sink) is a young guitar-strumming drifter. After her terminally ill mother passes away, she ventures out from her farm home and into the city, hoping to find her father. Her father’s prized guitar, named Willa, is quickly stolen upon leaving home, which sends our heroine to Satylite City. While O’Dessa finds Willa quite easily, the merchant to whom it has been sold stands firm in demanding her pay for what has been wrongfully stolen from her.
With her options limited, O’Dessa falls prey to the local crime lord, Neon Dion (Regina Hall), and begins to fall in love with male sex worker Euri Dervish (Kelvin Harrison Jr.). O’Dessa is able to create a new guitar from garbage scraps, and her music takes hold of Satylite City, which catches the attention of Plutonovich (Bartlett), a fascist celebrity illusionist who hosts game shows that often result in on-screen murder and abuse of the underprivileged. O’Dessa is a whole lot of movie, including a queer allegory. The gender roles of O’Dessa and Euri are swapped, with Sink playing a more butch character and Harrison playing someone more feminine. It’s creative, however, if you want to make a queer movie, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to present a straight relationship at the center of the film.
‘O’Dessa’ Gets Lost In Its Ambition

Jasper pours his heart and soul into O’Dessa, but it’s a movie that feels as if it was made solely for him and a select few other people. Even those who are fans of punk rock might find the music in the film to be a bit too much. Not a single song is memorable, and most of the characters feel one-dimensional and flat. Barlett’s Plutonovich is fascinating, but the film doesn’t seem to know what to do with him until the very end. Sink and Harrison Jr. lack any sort of romantic chemistry. Despite romance being front and center, it’s hard to care about the love O’Dessa and Euri have for each other. We know because we see them making out, but their conversations with each other feel alien. That may be intentional, but any sort of emotional impact is lost in the process.
It’s Hall’s Neon Dion that stands out the most. It’s debatable whether her performance is actually great, but damn if she isn’t entertaining as Euri’s pimp. The movie springs to life when Hall steps onto the screen, touting her character’s laser-crested fisticuffs. Individually, Sink and Harrison Jr are decent, but their characters feel far too flat to make any sort of impact.
While there are some similarities in terms of their whimsical nature, O’Dessa couldn’t be more different than Jasper’s previous film Patti Cake$. Because of Patti Cake$’s more grounded setting, the characters felt more real and down-to-earth, even if they were a bit eccentric. In O’Dessa, every single character is intentionally exaggerated. While it wants to portray its love story as a tragedy, the trippy visuals and outlandish effects make it increasingly difficult to take seriously. Jasper has already proved he has a knack for telling underdog stories, but with O’Dessa, he just forgot how to make it feel remotely human.
‘O’Dessa’s Pretty Visuals Aren’t Enough To Save It

Image via Searchlight Pictures

Despite all of its glaring flaws, O’Dessa is not a forgettable movie. The neon-lit cities and apocalyptic wastelands feel as if the film is set in a cross between The Hunger Games and Blade Runner. The production design is impressive, especially as we see O’Dessa stroll past unhoused civilians under a bridge, all being hypnotized by a series of TVs with Plutonovich. The colors are initially overwhelming, and the editing style feels abrasive, but you do get used to it soon enough.
While the world itself is interesting, the color scheme will inevitably give you a migraine, especially paired with the loud and basic musical numbers. This clearly wants to be a cult classic or the kind of movie that will be re-examined in the years to come. Sure, switching around the gender roles is intriguing, but it never does anything with it. Euri is still a walking stereotype of many female characters in movies, while O’Dessa herself just isn’t a captivating hero by any stretch of the imagination. It also just feels as if A24 and Baz Luhrmann made Divergent, and while that may sound cool at first, trust me, it’s not.
O’Dessa is a big swing-and-miss for Jasper. Sink is a very talented actress, and she proved that she might be the best of the young actors on Stranger Things with her role in Season 4. In fact, every actor in a key role in O’Dessa has proven themselves to be of great talent. But O’Dessa clearly doesn’t know how to use them, and in the end, it’s a movie that never once hits the right notes.
O’Dessa premiered at the 2025 SXSW Film Festival and streams on Hulu on March 20.

O’Dessa

O’Dessa gets carried away in its own ambition resulting in an emotionally flat and obnoxious rock opera.

Release Date

March 13, 2025

Runtime

106 Minutes

Writers

Geremy Jasper

Producers

Dan Janvey, Jonathan Montepare, Michael Gottwald, Rodrigo Teixeira, Lourenço Sant’Anna

Pros & Cons

Regina Hall gives a fun performance. Although it’s debatable whether or not she’s actually good.
The production design is nice in some scenes.

Feels weird to have a straight relationship at the center of a movie that’s clearly a queer allegory.
Sadie Sink and Kelvin Harrison Jr. lack any sort of chemistry with one another.
None of the songs are remotely memorable.