Odd/Even
2022 · 13m · USA
Directed by Ya-Ting "Itchy" Yang
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tense
In a near-future Los Angeles, humanity has been split into two cohorts who only wake during odd- or even-numbered years and hibernate in 'The Capsule' the rest of the time. A young actress uses the system to engineer an escape from her devoted but increasingly abusive partner on the last day of 2043.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Yang takes the most exhausted premise in cinema—abusive relationship, desperate escape—and literalizes it into a sci-fi hibernation gimmick that somehow makes the whole thing *weirder* and more unsettling than any kitchen-sink drama could manage; nobody else would've had the nerve to weaponize year-based bifurcation into a metaphor for temporal evasion.
The film's formal restraint—its refusal to sensationalize either the sci-fi apparatus or the domestic horror—situates it thoughtfully within the lineage of speculative drama that uses world-building as emotional precision, recalling works like *Arrival* in how it lets premise do the emotional labor of language.
The decision to play the final 24 hours in real time, with the Capsule's hum growing almost unbearably present in the sound design as the protagonist counts down to her vanishing, transforms a $200k indie into something that *feels* like it cost ten times that—it's all about what Yang chose to keep in the mix and what she let drain away.
Reviews
A seemingly pleasant future created by the division of humanity into two groups that alternate between living their lives and basically going into storage, serving as a backdrop for an intimate story about a young couple, primarily told in increasingly disturbing flashbacks.
A defining moment during her time in graduate school — a pastel futuristic aesthetic built despite limited resources, anchored by Yang's distinctive vision.
Festivals
- Atlanta Sci-Fi Film Festival 2022
- Vancouver Asian Film Festival 2022