Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) review

The film's central insight is that the multiverse is not a plot device but a metaphor for the infinite ways a person could have disappointed the people who love them. It is the most emotionally direct film ever made about quantum mechanics, which is a sentence that should not work and does.

Maximalism as Method

The film throws everything at the screen: hot dog fingers, a bagel that destroys universes, a raccoon controlling a chef, a universe where everyone has googly eyes. The density is deliberate and it is also a risk — the film's first forty minutes are exhausting, and some viewers never adjust to the register. Those who do find that the chaos is structured, and that each absurd universe is doing specific thematic work.

The Daniels' key structural decision is that the multiverse jumping is powered by doing something statistically improbable, which turns absurdism into a mechanic. The film's most ridiculous gags are therefore also plot-relevant, and the escalation is controlled. That is more sophisticated than the film's reputation as a chaotic comedy suggests.

Read more about sci-fi cinema in our Science Fiction genre hub, explore the work of Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert in our directors section, or see where this film lands in our ranked film lists.

The Real Subject

Underneath the multiverse machinery, the film is about a mother and a daughter who cannot communicate. Evelyn's disappointment in Joy, Joy's resentment of Evelyn's expectations, and the impossibility of either of them articulating what they actually want — these are the film's actual stakes. The multiverse is how the film makes that conflict visible, by showing Evelyn every version of her daughter and every version of herself.

Jobu Tupaki's bagel is the film's central image: a nihilistic void created by a person who has experienced everything and concluded that nothing matters. The film's answer — that kindness in the face of meaninglessness is a choice worth making — is not philosophically sophisticated, and the film knows it. It presents the argument as an emotional position rather than an intellectual one, which is why it lands.

Performances

Michelle Yeoh won Best Actress for a performance that requires her to play dozens of versions of the same person, and the achievement is in the continuity. Every variant is recognisably Evelyn, and the film's emotional climax depends on the audience tracking the same woman across all of them. It is one of the most demanding roles in recent cinema and she is completely in control of it.

Ke Huy Quan's return to acting after two decades away won him Best Supporting Actor, and the performance is genuinely moving for reasons that extend beyond the film. His Waymond is the film's moral centre — a man who has decided that being kind is a strategy, not a weakness — and the film's most quoted speech is his. Stephanie Hsu's Joy is the film's most underrated element, and Jamie Lee Curtis is clearly having the most fun of anyone in the cast.

Craft and Length

The film was made for roughly $14 million and the resourcefulness is visible in the best possible way. The visual effects were produced by a small team of five people, and the film's aesthetic embraces its limitations rather than hiding them. The editing by Paul Rogers is genuinely extraordinary — the film's pacing across 139 minutes is controlled chaos, and the transitions between universes are consistently inventive.

The film's length is its main weakness. The second act is repetitive, and the film returns to the same emotional beat several times before the climax. Some of the multiverse detours are more entertaining than meaningful, and a tighter cut would likely have improved the whole. These are real criticisms of a film that is otherwise one of the most inventive mainstream releases of the decade.

Themes and ideas

• Generational trauma and communication
• Nihilism vs. chosen kindness
• Regret and counterfactuals
• Immigrant family dynamics