50 Essential Sci-Fi Films of the 21st Century (So Far)

3. Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

A24 are known for getting behind niche and thought-provoking films, but even after seeing the trailer for Daniels Kwan and Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All At Once, none of us were prepared for the film they were sending our way.

Dissatisfied, overwhelmed, and undernourished laundry owner Evelyn Quan Wang (Michelle Yeoh) unwittingly finds herself at the epicentre of a multi-dimensional collision, where a dimensional-hopping version of her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu), known as Jobu Tupaki, crashes her world, intent on destroying everything using a giant bagel. What follows is two hours of the bizarre, as we go from reality to reality - including one with hot dog fingers, one where everyone’s a rock, and one with Raccacoonie, the cooking raccoon - borrowing powers from other Evelyns to defeat Jobu’s nihilistic evil.

The cast is an impeccable line-up of classic talents like Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis, alongside forgotten face Ke Huy Quan and newcomer Hsu. And the Daniels and DP Larkin Seiple amaze with a fluid approach to camerawork, editing, and aesthetics that wasn’t given the space to come alive with their only other feature, Daniel Radcliffe's farting corpse film Swiss Army Man.

The first and last word in multiverse moviemaking, Everything Everywhere takes all the sci-fi and none of the explanations, choosing to rapid-fire or bypass its expositional elements, in favour of cramming us straight into the action, and then cramming the action straight into us. And it just keeps escalating, with no reality too impossible, no scenario too extreme.