[

It’s difficult not to reminisce about a time when director Robert Zemeckis was at his peak. Especially when his latest project is so steeped in nostalgia as to make you sick. He’s always been a tech wiz, often leading teams of VFX artists, setting the standard for the next decade of filmmakers. Personally, I always return to the Back to The Future Trilogy when I’m feeling down. Seeing Marty and Doc occupying the same temporal space as their past and future selves seems like a simple edit job now, but in the Eighties, it would have cost a pretty penny in reshoots, considering the one to two year gap between each sequel. But as boundary pushing as the visuals were for the time, that’s not what made the films so memorable. It was Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s screenplays – the ones with quirky yet deeply interesting characters, with both grand and hellish visions of the future and an earned sentimentality – that truly revolutionised what a time travel story could be.

So, skipping past Zemeckis’ extensive filmography, we arrive Here: a quaint home in which all of human history exists at once. From the early native tribes of America to sixties swingers (one of whom is the inventor of the Lazy Boy), everyone seems to be intrinsically tied to this one magical spot. But what mainly carries us back and forward through the ages is the Young Family. Started by World War II veteran Al (Paul Bettany) and his wife Rose (Kelly Reilly), and carried on by their eldest son Richard (Tom Hanks) and his high school sweetheart, Vanessa (Robin Wright), the Youngs are a focal point onto which all other timelines latch. We pop in and out of Richard and Vanessa’s lives as they marry, have children, grieve the loss of loved ones, seperate and come back together.

Adapted from the graphic novel by Richard McGuire – whose depiction of one plot of land from a primordial stomping ground to a modern day family home spans 304 pages – it never seemed like an impossible idea to condense its essence to 104 minutes of film. Regardless, it was just improbable enough for Zemeckis to prove once again that he, and he alone, is at the forefront of innovative filmmaking. Actors are de-aged, aged up and morphed at breathtaking speeds, trees and plants are reconstructed and torn back down again, while eras are cut out of and into the house; a collage mending time and space into one complete moment.

All this sounds incredible, but with an ideas man like Zemeckis, its all bound to fall apart somewhere along the pipeline. The most glaring issue is the look of the film, best described as a generative mess. You’d think a director neurotically obsessed with computer graphics would use some of Here’s $50 million dollar budget to pay his VFX artists a decent wage. But its clear from the rubber foliage that spurts out of ground and the cartoonish wildlife that would have been laughed at even ten years ago, that Zemeckis would rather treat his A-List buddies to a fat pay check instead of actually making something appealing. And unsurprisingly, despite his team no doubt being aware of all the awful attempts at de-aging over the last few years, it’s the main selling point of the film.

Thanks to the one static shot, characters can be filmed far enough away to save face. However, Zemeckis seems insistent on showing us Hank and Wright’s transformations up close and personal; as if he arrogantly believes his uncanny creations are any better than what we’ve seen before. Unreal Engine is making strides in the gaming sphere, with development teams working harder than ever to balance style with photorealistic faces. But for whatever reason, filmmakers seem hellbent on the engine earning its namesake, rotoscoping the living, and mostly the dead, onto these plastic cadavers that are supposed to immortalise their youth. Some would argue it’s moot to complain about Here’s limitations. After all, it’s no Marvel budget. Nevertheless, the film is five times the size of an A24 indie and, I don’t know, maybe being Robert bloody Zemeckis gives you a bit more sway with the execs than your average director. It’s honestly baffling that he couldn’t even scrounge a little bit more cash for his production team.

I would argue the greatest eyesores in the film are these terrible morphing transitions that appear out of nowhere. We’re treated to several uninterrupted minutes of decent editing – a window into the next time period appears in a scene before completely cutting to it. A simple and effective tool for carrying us through time. But every now and then a cut would have these horrible interpolated splotches appear on screen. It’s jarring the first time it’s vomited up on screen, and only gets worse with each subsequent use. Slow motion scenes also have this awkwardness to them, in one moment, Wright runs towards the camera in a panic and looks like she’s walking through the scene, as if it were made of a thick cream. Zemeckis confirmed that he worked closely with Metaphysic to help produce deepfakes of the actors, so that facial capture could be streamlined. And to the surprise of no one, this is the same company who shamelessly revived Ian Holm in what amounted to nothing more than a cheap cameo in Alien Romulus. But if using it saved Zemeckis the possibility of hiring actual VFX workers for capture, then what’s to stop him from using it to edit as well.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to push the boundaries of technology, but Zemeckis’ obsession has soured any goodwill the audience had for him, as while each production increases in scope, scale and innovation, the quality always decreases. This is largely due to the tech worlds own obsession on automation. So, naturally the more automated the process becomes for him, the less hands on Zemeckis is in the project. When the technology wasn’t there, like in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, he had to work harder to achieve the what he wanted, working closely with animators and nutting out the logistics of scene with Steven Spielberg for hours at a time. Now though, the 72 year old director is more than happy to sit back and let everyone else, man or machine, do the work for him.

As a result, the story has a similar energy, the screenplay coasting along a stream of generic hodgepodge that would have served better as a 30 minute short at Disneyland. Everything boils down to one of three things happening: A lazy observation about different eras repeating history (Influneza was just like COVID), References (Obvious Needle drops and the inventor of the Lazy Boy being a horndog), and people either wanting to be or not be here. The times we do stray away from the Young family – the Native Americans or a modern day African American family – are not only sparse but are quickly whisked away in favour of yet another joke about the white swingers having sex on an Lazy Boy prototype. Yet, even these attempts to be inclusive ring hollow after a while.

The film acknowledges that Native Americans were the original inhabitants, but curiously doesn’t show any hint at colonisation. This suggest, whether implicitly or not, that the colonies just arrived their uncontested; a natural consequence of time moving forward. And while the modern family giving their son ‘the talk’ about police brutality is true to life, it felt empty and little whitewashed. These condescending appeals to a wider demographic outside a white sphere are only made more embarrassing when they service the Youngs. We watch a Native woman die, only for her remains to be dug up in the backyard, her necklace stolen and gawked at by the white people who live their now. Naturally, a family movie is never going to get violent nowadays, but it’s insulting to not at least acknowledge the darker side of history. Broey Deschanel has a brilliant video essay about Forrest Gump and it’s appeal to conservative politicians. And seeing as nothing’s changed for Zemeckis, who may be liberal in his ideas, but whose habit of omitting history in favour of simplicity and sentimentality corrodes Here into a empty form of nostalgia for any time but this one.

Soulless, artless, and unfortunately, heartless, Here is the embodiment of everything wrong with Zemeckis’ later career, and indeed, Hollywood at large.