No Escape, Except Death

If you love Ozzy Osbourne, you may want to skip the new documentary Ozzy: No Escape from Now, now streaming on Paramount+. The central theme of the film is the agonizing last six years of Osbourne’s life—and it’s not pretty. Racked with ongoing health challenges from Parkinson’s, a wrecked back, blood clots, and an array of other problems, it’s a miracle Osbourne lived as long as he did.

For eons, we thought of Ozzy as the eponymous “Prince of Darkness,” the guy who did all the drugs, drank all the booze, bit the heads off bats and doves alike. But in No Escape, he’s reduced to a frail old man. The two-hour film, directed by Tania Alexander (Gogglebox, Seven Days), takes its name from a song on Osbourne’s final album, 2022’s Patient Number 9.One thing mentioned throughout is how the power of music kept him going even as he battled with health issues including a pain he describes as “a thumb forever pressed into his eye — or back — creating endless agony.”

As you watch, you see a man trapped inside his failing body, yearning to be back onstage, to be his indestructible Ozzy persona, but forced to endure his crumbling mortality. Over the span of the documentary, the cameras capture him barely making it to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony due to poor health, but somehow pulling it off. There’s a touching moment when an all-star band assembled to play some of his biggest hits needed a singer. Jelly Roll, who was scheduled to sing “Mama, I’m Comin’ Home,” wasn’t there, and as they ran through the song, Ozzy dug deep to provide faint vocals from his chair beside the stage. You could see the joy on the faces of those playing, which gave the moment real weight and emotion.

When it was announced that Black Sabbath would play a last show in their hometown of Birmingham, England in July 2025, the cameras were there again. Like fans all over the world, I watched that Back to the Beginning festival with my family at home. We made a day of it in Chicago and he gave the performance of a lifetime. To see him rock out before dying two weeks later speaks to how, whenever he was feeling down or needed a boost of morale, it came from the music. Music saved him again and again.

Preparing for the show, Osbourne suffered yet another setback — this time, a cracked vertebra. “It’ll be a miracle if I make it. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed,” a wan Osbourne says. “But I gotta be there. I have to be there … It’s got to be the best show in the world, otherwise what’s the point?” After giving absolutely everything in July, it’s little wonder to ask if that performance drained his body. I’d have loved to see No Escape explore that further.

Including Back to the Beginning in the larger documentary meant expanding the scope of No Escape which it was not properly able to achieve. Yes, director Alexander had not intended the movie to be a posthumous appreciation of Ozzy’s life and yes, she was definitely constrained by having to seek the consent and involvement of Sharon Osbourne (who also exec produces), but — having set out to make a film exploring the aftermath of Ozzy’s life-changing fall in 2019, the emotional toll of not performing, and the sad cancellation of his farewell tour — the final context of the film can have come as little surprise to her or Paramount.

The film had to rush or tack on the things on which it could have lingered: the heft and love of all the guest performers at the concert, the acknowledgment of his death, the montage of his life achievements. They did make good use of the footage of the Osbourne family speaking about their love for their husband and father, but if Alexander needed more time, Paramount should’ve given her more to explore this — even if it meant a two-part event.

Generally, celebrity death is a divisive topic: some people mourn hard and others don’t understand being sad about someone you didn’t know. For music heads, I think death means something different; we process art differently. I was lucky enough to see Ozzy solo and with Black Sabbath multiple times, enough to feel I wanted to crawl in their skin and to know their bones. Losing Ozzy Osbourne was a lot for anyone who loves Punk, Heavy Metal, really any kind of underground music. Ozzy remained a central icon to the genre and the ambassador to this thing some of us love and consider a massive part of our lives.

Ozzy Osbourne is a mythical figure in the history of rock and roll and this documentary about the end of his life is a hard watch. If you’re cool with seeing a hero reveal that we’re all human, go ahead and tune in. If you like the image of him ripping through “The Wizard” with deep black eyeliner and out of his skull on whatever feel-good medicine, stick to the lore.