Odds On review – Dante Or Die’s powerful online gambling drama

Odds On is an exemplar of the way on the internet theatre has produced in the earlier several yrs. Dante Or Die’s interactive creation is equally for and about the virtual world, with a emphasis on its addictions, making use of the tactics of movie and the aesthetics of gaming.

Published and directed by Daphna Attias and Terry O’Donovan, it feels gimmicky at very first: we opt for a user identify and avatar just before clicking to spin the reels in a laptop activity. It is a considerable way to enter the tale of Felicity (Fiona Watson), a retiring GP who gets to be bit by bit dependent on an on the web gambling game. We see her in her final times at the business office followed by a new lifestyle at house, searching following her infant grandson, Noah (Oshy Fuller), although her son (Elan James) and daughter (Bianca Stephens) bustle in the background or dial in for Zoom calls.

All the although, a match identified as Pearls of Fortune is superimposed on the monitor to recommend that it is omnipresent in Felicity’s lifestyle, its tinny Calypso defeat accompanying all that she does. We see how the video game becomes a everyday but compulsive variety of gambling, with a ticker at the top of our screens capturing the points she has scored and the sum of cash she has won or shed.

Shot on a variety of areas utilizing an Iphone, and running 30 minutes, it appears to be tailor-manufactured for a technology of Candy Crushers with attenuated awareness spans. But it carries a punch considerably further than its chunk-sized storyline, partly because of the immersive nature of Felicity’s video game, and also the interludes of animation (directed and edited by John Brannoch) employed to heighten the psychological highs and lows it provides.

As Felicity results in being at any time more addicted, she falls into the sport itself, turning into her octopus avatar. This has a adorable and comforting Discovering Nemo excellent but also shows the insidious simplicity with which the stakes are raised in online games, and its numbing lure to Felicity, who is performed by Watson with convincing vulnerability.

There is an particularly powerful second when she describes how overwhelmed and bewildered her retirement has built her in a conversation with her partner, Joel (Maynard Eziashi), who transforms into an animated dolphin as she talks. It takes a while to realise that this is component of her fantasy world and that confiding in him about her furtive gambling is just wishful contemplating.

The animations and haunting soundtrack – composed by Yaniv Fridel and Ofer (OJ) Shabi, with seem style and design by Ben Kelly – have a naive type of ability and the film’s closing, attractive aerial shot of sea waves and open skies presents us hope for Felicity while leaving the tale open-ended.