As the plasma (oil) fields dry up, dirt farmer O’Dessa longs for something more. And that’s the trouble with knowing your future: You have to wait for it to come.
O’Dessa’s just a 19-year-old woman in a long line of Ramblers, traveling bards who hope to change their world with the power of song. And, based on a prophecy from long ago, O’Dessa’s music may just fix a broken world.
That’s why you’ll find O’Dessa strumming her magical guitar as she wanders closer and closer to Satylite City, one of the few remaining cities on her wasteland of a planet. She’s on her way to “comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
There’s no one more disturbed than Euri, an erotic male dancer forced by his female pimp to sell himself for profit. And there’s no one more comfortable than Plutonovich, a deified gameshow host whose charismatic personality keeps the city under his control and whose gameshow contestants are forced to perform under penalty of death.
Better hope that magical guitar is in tune.
O’Dessa and Euri risk their lives for each other.
Despite various setbacks, O’Dessa longs to rescue people from Plutonovich’s tyranny.
And, while I’m not sure the film intended to deliver this critique, there’s a semblance of a message challenging hedonism. Plutonovich advocates his pleasure-seeking worldview to countless people, all of whom seem entranced by his words. But despite listening to Plutonovich, that way of life clearly hasn’t fulfilled them and has instead left them craving something greater.
The aforementioned prophecy comes from a woman who is described as the Earth Spirit, a woman who has nothing but skin where her eyes should be. She tells a man to carve a guitar from a burning tree, and she says that the Seventh Son will save the dying world with a song.
This Seventh Son is O’Dessa (despite the fact that she’s a young woman), whom the Earth Spirit says has power within her. And the guitar that she’s equipped with glows with a magical light. At one point, O’Dessa and her mother pray, “Thank you, Earth, for this bounty.”
The main antagonist of the film, meanwhile, is Plutonovich, the host of a deadly gameshow. He has enraptured Satylite City with his charismatic sermons about embracing a hedonistic lifestyle. And his popularity is such that most of the city literally worships him as a god. “Praise be to Plutonovich on high,” and “in Plutonovich, the man we trust,” the masses cheer. We even meet some nuns, covered head to toe, doing a prayer ritual before one of Plutonovich’s television broadcasts, in which they describe the man as “salvation.”
Plutonovich, for his part, plays into that messianic idea, calling his show a “mega church of entertainment.” He begins his show by saying, “Let there be lights.” He describes viewing the show as the audience’s “daily bread” and “call to worship.” And on top of his studio is a giant Buddha-like statue of himself.
Plutonovich claims, among other things, that our souls are his. He describes himself as “coming down from on high like a plasma god” and tells people to “bask in the light of the eye, bringing sight to the blind.” And when someone joins his show, he tells the contestant that he’s “on trial for taking my name in vain.”
In these examples and others, the movie appropriates ideas and images from Christianity, even though what we see onscreen largely makes a mockery of that source material. If Plutonovich’s character is intended to be a metaphor for Christianity or religion in general, it’s so far removed from what Christians actually believe that it’d be dishonest to treat it as such.
In her travels, O’Dessa comes across a lapsed priest named Father Walter. He’s an alcoholic who tells her that gin will “put a little heaven in your head and a little hellfire in your belly.” He also says that Satylite City is a sinful place. Then, Father Walter sings a gospel-style song about actively living a life of sin. It includes this lyric: “But when I see Him, He’ll forgive me.” The lyrics directly contradict Romans 6, which sternly cautions us against using God’s grace as a license to sin.
One character describes Satylite City as “hell on earth.” Someone tells his audience that he’ll see them in hell. Another person describes O’Dessa as the “prodigal son.” Plutonovich is called the “devil,” while an announcer more cheerfully describes him as both “the divine comedian” and “showman shaman.” Someone references the New Age belief of manifesting your desires.
A woman sings about being part of the “hot bod God squad” and how “Judgement Day is where we slay.” O’Dessa vaguely sings about how “all is love.”
Given that there’s so much spiritual mumbo-jumbo thrown in here, we’d be remiss to leave out the fact that the dancer Euri’s last name is “Dervish,” which may be a reference to Islamic mystics.
O’Dessa intentionally and repeatedly blurs gender lines: O’Dessa appears androgynous; she’s the one who proposes to Euri; and she wears a suit to the wedding. And, as mentioned above, she’s described as the Seventh Son. Meanwhile, Euri, a male erotic dancer, paints his nails and wears lipstick and heels. He comments on O’Dessa’s chivalry, and he wears a red veil to the wedding.
Euri dances and sings for onlookers as they shower him with money. He’s often in a mesh shirt and tight pants, and he thrusts back and forth as he sings. Later, men and women pay for “private dances” with him. A man yells at Euri to shake his rear, and Euri complies.
We see four women flank Plutonovich on his show, dancing in lingerie. Plutonovich grabs his crotch as he dances.
O’Dessa and Euri passionately kiss a couple of times in the film. We later see them lying in bed together under the covers, implying they’ve done more. O’Dessa takes a bath while Euri is in the room, though nothing is seen.
Plutonovich advocates for a hedonistic society, captivating his audience with promises of pleasure and entertainment. “When did pleasure become a dirty word?” He questions. And one nun of his tells O’Dessa that, as a virgin, she should save herself for Plutonovich as they do.
There’s at least one visual reference to bondage gear.
A man attempts to force himself onto Euri. He tells Euri that he’s “ready to go steady” with him, and the man grabs Euri.
A woman falls into water and dies via electrocution. A man hits women wearing bags over their heads with a bat. Someone cuts off a woman’s finger. A pimp slaps Euri, and she threatens to cut O’Dessa open and pull out her entrails. People get tased. Someone gets smacked in the head with a cane.
People throw bottles at O’Dessa to force her offstage. A man briefly admits to thinking about committing suicide. A woman passes away in bed. O’Dessa burns down her childhood home with her mother’s body inside, reminiscent of a Viking funeral.
A dissident of Plultonovich is restrained by authorities and given a “face job” offscreen: He’s forced to have an immense amount of plastic surgery, a procedure that also brainwashes him into submission. We don’t see the actual surgery, but we do see the sickly faces of a couple of people afterwards.
A woman references being bitten by a dog and stabbing the dog through the brain with a stick to kill it. We see a dead fox rotting on the side of the road, its ribs exposed and maggots on its fur. A building collapses.
We hear the f-word once and the s-word about 20 times. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—” and “b–tard.” God’s name is misused three times, including two uses with “d–n.” People also throw around accusations like “slut” and “pedophile.” A couple of people use crude hand gestures.
Characters become intoxicated on unknown drugs that cause their eyes to become clouded. Others trade the stuff in baggies. People drink alcohol.
The underaged O’Dessa is offered gin by a lapsed alcoholic priest, and she drinks enough to pass out. When she wakes up, she suffers from a hangover. A man inhales some sort of gas.
O’Dessa vomits after getting drunk. A woman urinates. Someone steals from O’Dessa.
O’Dessa may very well be the weirdest movie of 2025. At least, so far.
Its plot feels like something out of a young adult dystopian novel, wherein a teenage troubadour finds romance and fights the powers that be by singing about love and stuff. How exactly do her actions fix the broken world in O’Dessa? Unclear. But rest assured, that prophecy tells you to suspend your disbelief.
Admittedly, the songs in this mix between a musical and a music video are composed quite well—and it’s clear that they went into painstaking detail to make Satylite City look as grimy as possible. But my goodness, the only thing I could think while watching this vaguely religious, sci-fi-musical-romance-drama-action movie was: Who is this even for?
O’Dessa tries far too hard to be different, quirky and weird, perhaps hoping to appeal to an audience who’d say, “Yeah, I’m an outcast who loves love, too!” And while it may be true that you love love, you probably won’t love many of the things depicted in this film, including some meanspirited satire of religious themes, blurring of gender lines, sexual content, crude language and light violence.
All in all, O’Dessa is a film that’s about as complex as a singer single-handedly rejuvenating a society by reminding them that love exists can be. And, honestly, it’s about as good as that, too.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
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