I’ve been meaning to watch the sci-fi drama Odd Days for a while, but I kept forgetting because, to be honest, I don’t remember the title. I suddenly discovered it on Hulu&nbsp and checked it out, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

Although Odd Days was first released in 1995, it appears and feels like it could have been released today. One of the few old movies that didn’t make the technology of digital truth, or VR, into a gimmick was this one. &nbsp,

In Los Angeles in the final 48 time of the new millennium, Odd Days takes place in 1999. Ralph Fiennes portrays Lenny Nero as a former police officer who is now selling an illegitimate virtual reality encounter called Playback. &nbsp,

Nero’s friend and bodyguard, Mace ( Angela Basset ), tries to keep him grounded in reality and away from trouble. They collaborate to find a terrible murderer and criminal who records his offences from the perspective of a victim using VR Playback discs.

The first scene of the film is an military assault shot from the perspective of the film, with the criminal fleeing from one rooftop to another as the robbery unfolds. I afterwards heard television callers saying the world would end on January 1, 2000 at midnight and witnessed tanks on the streets of Los Angeles. &nbsp,

Strange Days is profoundly disturbing and comfortingly close to the best Black Mirror episodes, which both greatly recollects me. The 1992 LA protests, which producer Kathryn Bigelow influenced, gave her work a dose of racist anxiety and police violence. The end result is a film that is occasionally challenging to see but impossible to turn away from. &nbsp,

Odd Days has an emotional foundation at the same time. For the majority of the film, Nino ( Fiennes ) recalls his failed relationship with the singer Faith ( played by actress-turned-rocker Juliette Lewis ). He is con himself into thinking he’s wheel skating with Faith once while lying in bed watching happier days as the disc stops spinning and he opens his eyes, looking back in time to the past, when he thinks it’s still unhappy.

As he introduces the VR Playback technology to one of his clients, Nero says,” This is not’like TV just better.” ” This is life,” the saying goes.

However, Bassett’s figure Mace, who is sometimes confronting Nero over his devotion to his “used thoughts,” holds the opposite view.

” This is your life,” you say! Mace, he says. Best here! Best now! You hear me, it’s in real time, right? True time, time to become true, no replaying” Playback”!

As I watched Odd Days in 2025, I don’t help but think of the online real products that are currently in use. VR devices like the Meta Quest 3 and Google’s future AR glasses are bringing the Playback technology in the movie closer than previously. Additionally, the engaging geographical videos for the Apple Vision Pro can give you the impression that you are actually experiencing a three-dimensional recording memory. As I pondered the similarities between our latest technology and the Playback discs from Strange Days, I wondered if the recent intended to haunt the future.

Unusual Days’ special effects perform very well despite being 30 years older. Odd Days used a more realistic approach, which is what you’d expect from 1995 sci-fi movies like Hackers and Johnny Mnemonic, to experiment with early computer-generated pictures. Characters move in and out of the playback footage with a straightforward analog distortion effect, similar to what you’d find when watching home videos on VHS tapes. The point-of-view photos were expertly choreographed, and the end resultant images appears to be a picture of the recorder being viewed through its vision.

Additionally, Odd Days features outstanding artistic acts. In on-screen shows that evoke the best of 90s grunge, Juliette Lewis belt out two Desktop Harvey tracks in her role as Faith. In his music video, Rapper Jeriko One ( played by Glenn Plummer ) makes sour social commentary. Additionally, Skunk Anansie, Deee-Lite, and Aphex Twin from today perform at the film’s explosive closing work, a New Year’s Eve rage in downtown Los Angeles. ( It was a true concert with 10,000 people in attendance. )

Unusual Days&nbsp is a wonderful action film that explores technology and memory in a mind-bending way. I wish it had received the reputation it deserved at the time, but I’m surprised it was a box office failure in 1995. I’m also pleased that this sci-fi masterpiece is still streaming right now. Although the title of Odd Days isn’t the simplest to consider, the movie is unmistakable.