‘O’Dessa’ Review: Sadie Sink Finds a Few Grace Notes in an Otherwise Discordant Rock Opera

variety.com:

Stephen Saito There are a handful of title cards to explain the fantastical world in which “O’Dessa” takes place, but perhaps it would be more instructive if there were a few more to lead audiences back to a time before the acquisition of Fox by Disney, when Geremy Jasper’s ambitious rock opera first started to be developed at Searchlight with great enthusiasm in the wake of the director’s Sundance hit “Patti Cakes.” Now shredded into ribbons, the story of a girl (Sadie Sink) and her guitar feels like the end product of various executive regimes that couldn’t agree on a single vision, ultimately settling on the simplest of stories inside an ornate setting that’s been rendered largely incomprehensible by studio notes. “O’Dessa” envisions the end of civilization, but when it debuts on Hulu a week after its premiere at SXSW, it’ll seem like the end of a certain era for its studio, where the project was hatched by alumni of “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Call it a relic of a time when Searchlight invested in second features from filmmakers whose bold debuts they’d acquired in Park City during the mid-2010s.

It was an admirable enough plan, though few of those sophomore efforts amounted to much: “Beasts” director Benh Zeitlin’s follow-up “Wendy” barely registered, while another blazingly original pair, “Sound of My Voice” masterminds Zal Batmanglij and Brit Marling, turning their attention to television after “The East.” It’s incredible that “O’Dessa,” which features more than a dozen original songs and Regina Hall as a villain, was greenlit in the first place. (For her part, sporting electrified brass knuckles and no eyebrows, Hall deserves better than the screen time allowed.) But disappointment sets in when it’s clear at.