Soaked in fitting music, contradictions, love, hate, joy, depression, confusion and understanding, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once tells an engaging story following Evelyn. She is talentless and worthless, and she manages to ignore everyone important to her. She is nothing in her universe. However, in a close universe, the alphaverse, she means much more. Alpha Evelyn ended up dying, but her importance there carried onto Evelyn. With many deep underlying themes such as depression, family struggles, love, hate and passion, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, directed and written by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Sheinert, will have you pointing to every face on an emotion poster.
This movie does not make sense in any way, yet it makes sense in every way. Every turn will leave you confused and wondering, “What is next?” Emotionally serious scenes are carried out in heart-dragging ways, but the atmosphere will suddenly switch to comedy: a man’s head exploding into confetti, a bullet turning into a googly eye, a dying person in a baby outfit and even people fighting becoming pinatas. However, these situations never happen consistently, so you will never know if a serious scene will stay serious or not. Even when scenes suddenly have comedic elements, the serious topic still lingers, and it sticks to the back of your mind like fog. You will be left sad, confused and amused.
Within the world of this movie there are separate universes for every single person. Each universe represents a different possibility of what a person’s life could have been depending on their choices. The movie focuses on two: the main one that Evelyn is from, and the alphaverse. In the alphaverse, they learned how to jump between universes, verse jump, to gain the talents of other versions of themselves. Alpha Waymond, Evelyn’s alpha version of her husband, gives Evelyn this knowledge, and in return Evelyn is asked to help take down Jobu Tupaki.
Jobu Tupaki’s mind had been fractured due to pushing her mind too hard by verse jumping. This resulted in her experiencing every single possible universe linked to her at all times. She was seen as a threat and therefore was a force that needed to be defeated. Despite this story sounding insane and unimportant, many heavy topics are represented underneath the chaos.
Depression, family issues, struggles of beliefs and purpose are just some of the many themes that can be taken out of this movie. Anyone who watches this movie will connect to something at some point. There is something for everyone to enjoy.
One very interesting choice made by the directors is that there is no real antagonist. Every single character who seems like a problem at some point redeems themselves, or we are shown how their thinking is logical. That element of Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is what makes its messages all the more impactful. It teaches you what is right, but it also teaches you how there can be more than one “right” in any situation. It teaches you about boundaries of love, accepting help, being kind and listening to others.
The amount of detail included allows for multiple rewatches. Every scene is filled to the brim with artistic choices. From small things such as clothes to the background, major detail is included. The detail, along with the depth of backstories on all characters, will keep you entertained and thinking far past the two hours and 12 minutes of this movie. It is unique in itself because unlike many movies, such as Hallmark love stories, you can never guess the next step. Even if you go into this watch with no intention of analyzing anything, you will be left thinking about everything.
Expect nothing.
