Everything Everywhere All at Once

By Emily Hubbard

A24 produce a hilarious, gut-wrenching, and absolutely bonkers trip through the multiverse 

• 5/5 Cameras 🎥🎥🎥🎥🎥
• Directed by: Daniel Kwan, and Daniel Scheniert
• Starring: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, and Jamie Lee Curtis 

No Copyright Infringement Intended 

If you’re a movie fan, you’ll know that Hollywood like to go through phases; The Rom-Com phase, The Western Phase, and more recently, The Superhero Phase. Now it seems, whilst Hollywood is still holding onto the latter, a new phase is emerging, The Multiverse Phase. Evidenced by movie titans Marvel Studios' recent flurry of universe-hopping releases, such as Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, there seems to be a thirst for this type of genre. However, Marvel’s releases may have somewhat lacked in showing a wide range of universes (despite certain films’ titles), whereas Everything Everywhere All At Once grasps the true concept of the multiverse.

The film follows Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) who unexpectedly finds herself in a position where she must travel across worlds as different versions of herself in order to prevent a powerful being from destroying the entire multiverse. It may sound like just another bonkers sci-fi movie, and whilst it is in places, underneath the cover the film is actually a moving story about the lengths a daughter will go to get her mother to see her, a feeling that many viewers will resonate with. What differentiates Everything Everywhere All at Once from other films in its genre is that it doesn’t come across as superficial, but instead like there is true meaning at its core.

Throughout the 2 hours 19 minute run time, the film plummets the audience through a plethora of emotions, from laughter to extreme awe, to floods of tears. These emotions can be, in part explained by the Oscar-winning performance given by Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn, especially during scenes shared with her daughter Joy, played by the Oscar-nominated Stephanie Hsu. It’s also a refreshing touch to see the movie’s heroine being in her 60s, something that is generally scarce in Hollywood due to the archival view that women in their 40s and older and ‘past their prime’. But that’s a topic for another day.

The other emotionally inducing aspect of the film comes in the form of the cinematography and editing that catapults the viewer from one universe to the next at a speed that almost gives the viewer whiplash, in some of the best editing techniques I have ever witnessed.

There’s a lot more I could say about Everything Everywhere All at Once, but I think the less the unsuspecting viewer knows the better. However, what I will say though, is that in a world perhaps over-saturated with sometimes unoriginal films, Everything Everywhere All at Once truly re-invents the wheel, and it’s got 7 Oscars to show for it.