Odyssey begins with a close-up of a knowledge tooth being pulled out. This uncomfortable process is an apt introduction to the immense stress that affected person Natasha Flynn (the superb Polly Maberly) is beneath, as she struggles to take care of appearances and preserve her North London firm within the black and on the up. With its workers of simply two others (Kellie Shirley, Charley Palmer Rothwell), Flynn’s Property Company is modest, however Natasha – all the time plugged in, usually coked up, and dwelling alone in a stupendous London penthouse method past her means – is nothing if not formidable, with plans to launch a pioneering ‘world extensive letting app’, and to merge with the a lot larger realty enterprise owned by Dom (Daniel De Bourg). But regardless of all her efforts to hide it, Natasha is massively in debt – not simply to the financial institution, and to prosperous private lender Sophie (Rebecca Calder), but additionally to extensive boy Dan Hayter (Man Burnet) – and now even to the dental agency which she was too bancrupt to pay for her costly extraction.
Briefly, Natasha is determined. She might spend the remainder of today displaying keen intern Dylan Rose (Jasmine Blackborrow) the methods of the commerce, in order that at the very least the start of Gerard Johnson’s newest characteristic operates as a satire of letting brokers’ work-hard play-hard unscrupulousness – however as the remainder of this week from hell unfolds, calibrated with an intertitle for every successive day, the tensions construct to make Natasha’s predicament really feel extra akin to one thing out of the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems (2019). Dan and his menacingly aggressive brother Will Hayter (Ryan Hayes) make Natasha a ‘enterprise proposal’: in trade for having her money owed to them cancelled, she should preserve bound-and-beaten fellow property agent Douglas Kelly (Ben Shafik) captive in a distant ‘downside property’ on her books. Understanding that the brothers are going to kill Douglas – and doubtless her too – she lastly reaches out to household acquaintance the Viking (Mikael Persbrandt) – old school and gentlemanly, however to not be underestimated – to assist her deal with enterprise.
Carved into the picket ground beneath the carpet of the lounge at Calypso Farm – the place the ultraviolent climax of Odyssey unfolds – is a pentagram, suggestive of the occult and hell-rasing devilry afoot. But as this ‘creepy’ previous property’s very title, to not point out the title of Johnson’s movie, suggests, there may be one other mythic frameworks at play right here. For that is the not-quite-epic story of Natasha’s Ulyssean voyage into the night time, and her eventual bloody return to reclaim her beleaguered actual property crown. A lot because the Viking, knowledgeable of Natasha’s monetary woes, will console her, “We’re all in debt a method or one other”, Johnson’s screenplay, co-written with Austin Collings, will equally universalise criminality. For right here, exchanges of property and cash are all tainted with deception, cutthroat techniques and sociopathic energy play.
Odyssey is an odd if all the time participating movie concerning the satan’s enterprise, be it housing leases or profit-driven homicide, the place finally, whilst the newest tech is embraced, there’ll all the time be no faculty like the old fashioned, and cruel massacres nonetheless deliver an finish to fashionable as a lot as historical legends.
