Knock on Wood

Genre conventions are made to be broken. How interesting would they be otherwise? You’d be stuck in the same revolving door of premises, midpoints, and third act reveals, while original storytelling stands on the sidelines waiting for its turn. It’s like a time loop – we must figure out the most compelling ways to break out of those conventions, while using them as a basis for all the exciting stories we want to tell.

We’ve seen plenty of time loops in modern cinema, but never quite like the one in Omni Loop – physicist Zoya Lowe (played by former Weeds star Mary-Louise Parker) has a black hole growing inside of her chest, as a doctor delicately explains to her family with the help of a chart, and she’s stuck re-living the last week of her life before she takes a pill that brings her back to her diagnosis. It’s a riveting premise, and one that promises existentialism and excellence – but that’s only the beginning.

See, Zoya has had these pills almost her entire life, and she uses them periodically to redo the parts she’d rather have another go at. But now she’s unhappy – the black hole is, in a way, the emptiness eclipsing her hopes and dreams for her own life – so she recruits physics student Paula (The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri) to perfect time travel so Zoya can go back and become the person she always wanted to be.

Omni Loop is not, as that summary might promise, strictly a buddy story between Parker and Edebiri. That takes up much of the second act, but the film is a character study; a rarity when it comes to “time loop” movies, where the premise and narrative device drive the character arc. Here, it’s the opposite. Zoya feels trapped, and is literally confined by the mundanity of the last week of her life, even though she is the one perpetuating the loop. If she chooses not to reset, she will die, and that’s not an option. She is determined to spend as many loops as possible figuring out how to refashion her entire life, or die trying. And in a situation like this, that’s not out of the question.

What I was most fascinated by was the vaguely futuristic, fantastical alternative world that Omni Loop takes place in. It’s a world where the black hole diagnosis needs no further explanation, where characters don’t bat an eye at that sort of thing. It’s a world where a man has been shrunk, but is unable to stop, and remains in a box in a research lab communicating with students through his transmitter. It’s a world where a professor casually drops that he’s 107 years old, and that’s an entirely normal thing. I’m a sucker for worldbuilding, and Omni Loop’s is very well-done.

This might feel like a lot for one movie to adequately cover, and you would be correct. From its opening scene, it established a janky juxtaposition of drama and deadpan comedy, but the further the film gets into philosophizing about how to enjoy life and navigating complex interpersonal relationships, the more it struggles to maintain that tone. Its concepts are more fascinating than the eventual execution, and I continually found myself thinking it should be funnier, given the absurd quirks and sci-fi affectations that keep surfacing. Otherwise, it’s your standard drama sundae drawing in fantastical sauce, and it gets more abstract and artistic the deeper you delve.

Despite biting off more than it can chew, I could see Omni Loop becoming an underground hit. Mary-Louise Parker is very good, and Ayo Edebiri plays to her awkward, charming strengths. The film’s biggest success is not necessarily its overt theme, but the subtextual nuance that underlines both main characters’ arcs; the struggle of being a woman in a male-dominated field is not an easy one, but the hardships don’t define a career. It’s what happens afterward where an impact is most likely to land, and if you make careful, compassionate decisions, you don’t have to choose life over your work – or your passion. It’s possible to do what you love and have a fulfilling life with those whose company you enjoy. And regrets are okay – as long as you don’t allow them to swallow you whole.

Omni Loop opens in select theaters and will be available on digital on September 20.