Everything Everywhere All At Once Review

Easily the better multiverse movie to come out this year, Everything Everywhere All At Once mixes Kung-Fu with an incredibly creative take on the multiverse to craft a once-in-a-lifetime cinematic experience. It might just be the best movie to come out this year, and I know this might be saying a lot since we aren’t even halfway through the year yet, but it’s just that good. The movie hardly misses a beat, and although the premise may be run-of-the-mill, the execution is refreshingly original. I was constantly in awe of the camera work and how imaginative the shot transitions were, not to mention the inventive story that constantly subverted my expectations.

We join Evelyn Quan Wang at her household as she’s fretting over finances and receipts scattered throughout her apartment. It’s not just that, as we learn in the next minutes, she’s handling a seemingly innumerable number of tasks. You see, the family runs a laundromat, and Evelyn is so caught up in the woes of business that she’s become incredibly disconnected from her husband and daughter. Even when she does manage to talk to them, she’s unable to articulate her feelings. Her troubles take priority over theirs, and by the time we enter the picture both husband and daughter are already seeking to separate themselves from the matriarch.

Just as you think you’re in for a family drama, the movie shifts its tone entirely. Evelyn receives a visitor in an elevator who claims they’re from a different universe. She has a choice to make – she can either walk into her scheduled appointment with her tax officer, or follow a bunch of instructions given to her by the mysterious traveler. If you’ve ever been through the hell administrative offices put you through, you’ll understand why Evelyn does eventually choose to follow the instructions. The traveler turns out to be her husband but from an entirely different life path and universe, who warns Evelyn of a great danger that threatens the multiverse. As it turns out, from all over the multiverse, our Evelyn has fared the worst and lacks the potential to rise to the occasion.

The stakes get higher, but the movie remains ever-focused on the dysfunctional family. Amidst a crisis greater than anything she’s endured before, Evelyn finally takes the room to breathe and understand the people around her better. There’s plenty of action, but there’s a lot of emotional back and forth as well. When her world as she knows it turns upside down, Evelyn at long last finds the time to sit down and listen. Michelle Yeoh is the star of the show, channeling multiple Evelyns as she verse–jumps from one universe to another. She manages to walk the thin line between accurately portraying each of their personas, while also preserving a unifying ‘Evelyn’ among every one of them. Her performance is brilliantly complemented by Ke Huy Quan’s Waymond Wang, who shares a pretty similar assignment.

Filmmakers Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert claim that they wanted to embrace the nihilistic nature of the multiverse in their narrative for the film, but also wanted it to strike a chord with the lives of their audiences. Their vision for the movie only becomes clear after you’ve watched it in its entirety. The film takes complete creative freedom with some of its ideas, and while these may seem meaningless in the beginning, they manage to click at the right parts of the movie, eventually contributing something to both the narrative and the characters. If Swiss Army Man is anything to go by on, we know that both these guys love absurdist humor. There’s a lot of that to be seen in this movie as well, the biggest running joke being the fact that the multiverse–ending threat is nothing more than a donut that’s been topped with everything (yes, I mean EVERYTHING).

If you’re thinking, this sounds like a confusing movie, you’re absolutely right, it is. But there’s also a clarity beneath the chaos. When you’re fiddling with the concept of the multiverse and trying to get it as original as these guys were, there’s a huge possibility you’ll end up going off the deep end and lose any connection with your audiences. Here’s where the film’s characters come in. Most importantly, the beginning of the movie where we get to see the family in the most mundane we’ll ever see them. These scenes are great for the audience’s emotional attachment to the characters, and they sort of become our tether as we explore the film’s otherwise difficult narrative.

The experience climaxes at the absolute end when mother and daughter finally talk their hearts out to each other. After I’d been through the chaos of the entire movie, it’s here where every sentence pulled at my heartstrings and I found myself desperately holding my tears back. It’s something that makes the difficult journey worth it, and you walk out of the experience having known a little more about yourself and the world around you as well. Ultimately, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a must-watch for anyone and everyone.

Rating the Film:

Visuals: 5/5

Plot: 5/5

Characters: 4/5

Music: 4/5

Originality: 5/5

Seater Score: 4.6/5