Here (2024) Review: Robert Zemeckis’ Latest Experiment Reunites with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in a Bland, Visually Off-Putting Drama

Here is unbelievable. As in unbelievably bad I find it hard to imagine this is the work of the once-revered director Robert Zemeckis. Sure, his movies have been wildly erratic post-Cast Away era but Here simply hits rock bottom, easily his worst directorial effort to date. Arriving on PVOD and digital platforms today following a muted theatrical release earlier this month, Here actually has a lot going for it. The movie marks the highly-anticipated reunion of Zemeckis, Tom Hanks, Robin Wright and screenwriter Eric Roth — both on and off-screen team behind the award-winning Forrest Gump, which remains the director’s biggest hit so far.

Here even boasts a fascinating concept: a drama told in a predominantly fixed-camera position within the corner of the living room of a house. That means the camera stays there as we, the viewers, watch the events unfold right from the dinosaur era, where the prehistoric animals roamed the Earth before an asteroid wiped out their existence. Times come and gone since then from the Ice Age era to the land for the indigenous people. A house is eventually built over time and Zemeckis tries to make things more interesting by telling his story in a non-linear fashion. We learn that different tenants have occupied the very house since the early 20th century.

But the main story zeroes in on the Young family, beginning with the partially deaf World War II soldier Al (Paul Bettany) and his wife Rose (Kelly Reilly) owning the place. The couple has since raised three children, one of which would be the subsequent introduction of a young man named Richard (Tom Hanks), who is an aspiring artist. He brings home his girlfriend Margaret (Robin Wright) one day and they end up married. Based on Richard McGuire’s 2014 graphic novel of the same name, the story may have been conceptually fascinating on paper. But the execution tells a different story altogether. Zemeckis is always known for pushing the boundaries in his filmmaking, mixing technological innovation with storytelling.

But his approach in Here, combining AI-assisted de-aging & ageing technology to depict the characters’ ages with rear projections and green screens used to depict how things have changed within the confines of a living room and the outside environment seen from the window, is visually atrocious. The problem lies in the ever-present uncanny valley in its location and the characters, specifically Tom Hanks and Robin Wright’s younger appearances through the de-aging process. For a movie that takes place over a century from the dinosaur era to the COVID-19 era, where the latter introduces the Harris couple Devon (Nicholas Pinnock) and Helen (Nikki Amuka-Bird) alongside their son (Cache Vanderpuye) and housekeeper Raquel (Anya Marco Harris), the could-have-been-interesting long history of time in a single setting looks glaringly artificial.

Even enlisting veteran cinematographer Don Burgess, who lensed some of Zemeckis’ movies including Forrest Gump, barely helps much. The lighting, the interior and Zemeckis’ penchant for framing the scene transition to a different period via an outlined box in white falls flat. It’s overly digital-looking that the movie hardly immerses me in its multiple-era setting. The fixed-camera gimmick is, well, a mere gimmick that gets tedious pretty fast.

It doesn’t help either when the story, which covers familiar themes of love, joy, sadness, marital problems, death and more, is shockingly bland and even uninvolving. This is especially true with the superficial way Zemeckis chooses to jump back and forth to a different era. How I wish he would have focused his movie primarily on the Young family rather than sprawling over unrelated subplots by presenting different inhabitants, which in turn, resulted in an overcrowded storytelling that undermines each other.

Zemeckis’ attempt to inject emotion into the drama is disappointingly saccharine and too manufactured that I have tough time caring about these characters. The recurring story of Richard and Margaret constantly arguing over getting a place of their own, taxes and financial challenges is the least resonant part of the movie. Still, the overall acting is nothing to write home about with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright clearly deserved better than this and it’s a pity to see their performances often get distracted by the de-aging technology.