OMNI LOOP (2024) (Film review by Mark R. Leeper and Evelyn C. Leeper)

[Philip De Parto]

The following commentary is reprinted with permission from:

THE MT VOID
01/03/25 -- Vol. 43, No. 27, Whole Number 2361

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OMNI LOOP (2024) [with SPOILERS]

Film review by Mark R. Leeper and
Evelyn C. Leeper:

We meet Zoya in the hospital,

where the doctor is explaining that she has a black hole inside
her which is slowly growing and will kill her in about a week.  
(Plot hole #1: Why won't it keep growing and absorb the whole
Earth?)

But Zoya has some magic pills, which when she takes on, she jumps
back to a week earlier.  (Plot hole #2: This reeks of "Star Trek"
and "tech-tech-tech".)  So the basic plot is GROUNDHOG DAY, but
with a week instead of a day.  (It's *not* a plot hole in
GROUNDHOG DAY, because that is a fantasy, not science fiction.)

Zoya finds herself wishing she had made different decisions in her
life and wanting to extend the range of the pills so that she can
go back further.  She happens to (literally) run into Paula, who
is working on questions of time at the local community college
(really?) under Zoya's old professor (really?) and they steal the
nanoscopic man that was created when the professor was working on
shrinking people (really?).  (This is like THE INCREDIBLE
SHRINKING MAN ... well, sort of.)

Plot hole #3: The pills regenerate, so they never get used up.  
Actually, it's not clear why there is more than one pill--Zoya
says taking multiple pills doesn't make a difference.

So they are working to solve the problem of how to increase the
time span.  Plot hole #4: Paula claims they have all the time in
the world, but after a week of work, Paula "resets", so Zoya has
to re-convince her and also bring her up to speed each time.  Plot
hole #5: How do they keep all the knowledge--which seems to
involve complex equations and diagrams filling a notebook--that
they have gained during reset?  How does the notebook with their
work stay in existence?  Why is the nanoman still in the lab each
time?

We eventually find out that Zoya found these pills when she was
twelve, and used them to do well in school (after she knew the
answers on a test, she would jump back to take the test again).  
And in fact, Zoya did not like the work of science--she liked the
solutions.  She claimed her husband disparaged her work and made
her decide to become a wife and mother (and textbook writer)
rather than a research scientist.  But we find out that memory is
not reliable as we see the discussion and realize that he was
actually very supportive.  So we also learn that basing the
reasons for time travel on one's memory is a risky proposition.  
In spite of this, we discover that everyone wants to go back;
everyone has regrets.

At one point Zoya tries to find someone she had worked with before
who turned out to be "successful", and discovers that ultimately
he was not satisfied, and his son did not think his father was a
success in what mattered.  The father also seems to have kept
(stolen?) Zoya's work that supposedly Zoya's mother had.  Plot
hole #6: How did he get it?

Eventually, Zoya realizes that she is wishing for what the son
discounts as unimportant, but that she has what the son sees as
success.  And that she would lose a lot of the good along with the
bad if she is successful.

Or as Billy Rose and Mort Dixon wrote in 1928, "If you want the
rainbow, you must have the rain."

Paula asks Zoya what happens when she loops back, but this assumes
that that particular time line goes on even when she loops back.  
This clearly involves some deep discussion of the nature of time.

The casting is a good example of diversity without a sledge
hammer, just as John Carpenter did it forty years ago.

(The title seems to refer to the constant looping Zoya is doing,
and perhaps it does, but the Omni Loop is an actual part of the
Miami Metromover system.  However, there is no 1209 University
Drive, Princeton, NJ.)  [-ecl]

Released streaming 20 September 2024.

Film Credits:
<https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28150132/reference>

What others are saying:
<https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/omni_loop>