‘Here’ Review: This Old House Has Bad Bones and Creaky, Questionable Foundation | AFI FEST

Near the end of Robert Zemeckis’ saccharine, Oscar-winning classic, Forrest Gump, Forrest finally stops running and declares, “I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll go home now.” Zemeckis’ latest cinematic experiment, Here, finds the director settling right into that sentiment, crafting a film that is adventurous in concept only and maudlin in practice. With the camera confined to a single corner of an 1800-square-foot home, Zemeckis reunites the cast and crew of Forrest Gump thirty years later, only to box them into his treacly, tedious exercise.  

Based on Richard McGuire’s graphic novel of the same name, Here begins at the dawn of time, taking us through 65 million years of history in rapid fire–the age of the dinosaurs and their inevitable extinction, the relationship between the Native Americans and nature, and a silly interlude about Benjamin Franklin–dissolving and transforming in quick succession. But unlike the meteorite and the dinosaurs in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, this montage declines to use these historical moments to unveil deeper truths about the beauty of motherhood or the contradicting violence found in nature. Instead, cinematographer Don Burgess (Academy Award nominee for Forrest Gump) seems solely committed to the execution of the single vantage point, creating a sequence that feels like a digital picture frame or a Windows screensaver, lifelessly pulling us through a CGI-laden series of images where location is the only connective tissue between the events of history and the present-day family at the film’s center. 

As construction begins on the home where the camera will be parked for the film’s duration (save a highly predictable final moment), Zemeckis and co-writer Eric Roth (another Forrest Gump veteran) introduce the film’s stilted dialogue and a cast of characters that quickly make this feel like a community theater production. The inhabitants of the home include the Harter Family (Gwilym Lee and Michelle Dockery) in the early 1900s who moved in just after the film’s construction; Lee (David Fynn) and Stella (Ophelia Ovibond), a vivacious couple in the 1940s; the Harris Family (Nicholas Pinnock, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Cache Vanderpuye) in the 2020s, and the film’s central subjects, the Young Family. Al Young (an over-the-top Paul Bettany) and his wife Rose (Kelly Reilly) move into what seems to be a dream home for the newlyweds. Soon, they have three kids and are struggling with Al’s alcoholism connected to his time served in the war, his job loss, and Rose’s realization that her dreams of being more than just a housewife may have faded away. “I would’ve been a good bookkeeper,” she laments in a scene that acts like the final moment of a stage play just before the lights fade for an intermission. One of their children grows up to be Richard (Tom Hanks) and soon, he and his girlfriend Margaret (Robin Wright) are unexpectedly expecting their first child. Suddenly, they’re living under one roof with the Youngs, and the events of the past seem to repeat in obvious, expected ways. Once a (questionably talented) young artist, Richard has given up that dream to pursue a steady job to support Margaret and their daughter Vanessa. Margaret, naturally, wants to leave Richard’s family’s nest, but he’s too preoccupied with taxes (this is never explained) and his aging parents to pull the trigger on purchasing a new home. 

Here is far from Zemeckis’ first foray into de-aging technology or experimentation with visual effects. Some of his most successful projects (Death Becomes Her) use visual effects related to the body to creatively connect to the film’s subject matter, while his most recent works (the remakes of The Witches and Pinocchio) resemble artistically bankrupt science projects. Here, unfortunately, is more like the latter, with its moments of aging and de-aging working only in small doses. Even with the technology, Hanks and Wright are not believable as high school students or as aged-up senior citizens, their mouths moving like deepfake creations, their body movements conflicting with the ages of their characters. Hanks and Wright can’t make up for this with their performances either, as they both overact to try to bring these flat, paper doll characters to life. Unfortunately, this is true for nearly every other actor in the film, too, with Fynn and Ovibond as the only exceptions.  

While the story of the Young family is the film’s main focus, Zemeckis and editor Jesse Goldsmith (The Witches, Welcome to Marwen) weave in and out of different time periods and stages within the characters’ lives, often via a panel that acts as an obvious illustration of a window into another time. Actions among the characters in the past and the present connect individual scenes, often in comical ways; the funniest moment occurs when Margaret’s water breaks and the film immediately cuts to Lee and Stella’s leaky ceiling in the same spot in the living room. It’s also unfortunate for Zemeckis that a far superior film that experiments with perspective is releasing this year, RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys. In Nickel Boys, Ross and editor Nicholas Monsour introduce images that recall the simplest memories of life, staying away from the obvious events in Zemeckis’ family album (holidays, weddings, births, funerals). Often, our most potent memories aren’t tied to moments of significance on a calendar but rather subtle experiences that we can’t explain. They simply evoke a feeling. Nothing about the events of Here are evocative for anyone outside of the world of the film, and even then, they’re a shallow recreation at best, void of any creativity. 

While it may seem that Zemeckis and Roth turned over every stone in Forrest Gump (Elvis, Vietnam, Watergate, Apple Inc.) they’re even more committed to running down an extensive list of historical and pop cultural events in Here. The cultural symbols and references are on-the-nose and aplenty, as Zemeckis tries to cram in every possible detail, from the Jane Fonda Workout to Beatlemania to the invention of the La-Z-Boy. It’s actually shocking that they neglect to include 9/11 and the Iraq War, given the film’s need to introduce every possible pandemic, war, and tragedy–the television and radio as the only window to the outside world. The most frustrating inclusion, though, comes when Zemeckis and Roth pontificate on police brutality and racism in America when the Harris family has a sit-down with their son after he gets his driver’s license. It’s not explored thoughtfully, and instead, it feels like the film is scrolling through a 2020 Facebook timeline. It’s also odd that Zemeckis and Roth don’t attempt to take advantage of what can be seen and unseen in the American family home. The strongest family dramas (Ordinary People comes to mind) know that this is rich territory to mine, so it’s particularly frustrating that Here neglects to explore that potential secrecy when the film’s limited framework would actually make it easier to do so.   

Despite the clear commitment to depicting every historical event possible, Here is reduced to an intergenerational family drama, an expensive sitcom where characters from the past and present wander on and off stage in front of a live studio audience. These characters are thinly drawn, seeming to exist only to experience Zemeckis’ World Almanac of the Earth’s greatest hits, not actually to interact with or feel any of them. When Alan Silvestri’s cloying, overbearing score plays, it’s easy to envision Zemeckis creating Here as his own modern take on a Frank Capra picture, an exploration of the American family and the peaks and valleys of being alive; but It’s A Wonderful Life this is not. When the word “here” is muttered for the umpteenth time, it becomes abundantly clear that, like the camera in the corner, Zemeckis and his mawkish gimmick have overstayed their welcome. You’ll want to be anywhere but Here. 

Grade: D

Sony Pictures/Tri-Star will release Here only in theaters on November 1.