Here

If you stare at a single patch of dirt in New Jersey for a hundred million years, you are either a very patient geologist or Robert Zemeckis trying to reinvent the language of cinema again. In Here, the director who once gave us a world-class ping-pong player and a polar express full of nightmare-eyed children decides to bolt his camera to the floor and never, ever move it. It is a radical formal experiment that feels less like a movie and more like a high-tech screen saver for a very expensive waiting room.

I watched this on my laptop while my neighbor was power-washing his driveway, and the rhythmic drone of the water actually synced up weirdly well with Alan Silvestri’s (the man behind Back to the Future) swelling, sentimental score. There is something almost hypnotic about the stillness, but as the minutes ticked by, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was watching a beautifully rendered PowerPoint presentation about the inevitability of property taxes.

The Digital Fountain of Youth

The big draw here—aside from the fixed perspective—is the massive Forrest Gump reunion. We’ve got Robert Zemeckis directing a script he co-wrote with Eric Roth, starring Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. To make this multi-generational saga work, the production utilized a "generative AI" tool called Metaphysic Live to de-age the actors in real-time.

When we first meet Tom Hanks as a teenager in the 1960s, the effect is... startling. He looks like a shiny, airbrushed version of his Bosom Buddies era self. While the technology is undeniably impressive compared to the rubbery faces in The Irishman, there’s still a lingering "Uncanny Valley" vibe. Tom Hanks is a legendary physical actor, but his de-aged face sometimes struggles to keep up with his actual 67-year-old neck movements. It’s a strange paradox of modern cinema: we have the technology to make actors look young, but we haven't quite figured out how to make them feel young. Robin Wright fares slightly better, bringing a quiet, grounded grace to Margaret, but even she occasionally looks like she’s been trapped behind a permanent Instagram filter.

Life in a Literal Box

The film is based on Richard McGuire’s 2014 graphic novel, which used overlapping panels to show different eras occupying the same space simultaneously. Zemeckis recreates this by having "windows" into the past and future pop up on screen. One moment, we’re watching Paul Bettany (who played Vision in the MCU) as a grumpy post-WWII father named Al; the next, a small box in the corner shows a colonial couple hiding a document under the floorboards or a family of indigenous people trekking through the pre-settlement wilderness.

It’s an ambitious way to tell a story, but it lacks the narrative "crunch" that a drama needs. Because we are stuck in one spot, the drama has to come to us. This leads to a lot of theatrical, stagelike entrances and exits. Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly (of Yellowstone fame) do a lot of the heavy lifting in the mid-century segments, portraying a marriage strained by the typical "Greatest Generation" stoicism and the claustrophobia of suburban life. Their performances feel authentic, even when the script veers into a "greatest hits" of 20th-century clichés. You’ve got the arrival of the television, the fear of the Vietnam draft, and the eventual rise of the digital age, all happening in the same corner of the living room.

A Brave, Expensive Misfire

There is a certain bravery in making a $40 million movie that refuses to use a close-up or a tracking shot. In an era dominated by the hyper-kinetic editing of the Spider-Verse films or the sprawling spectacle of Dune, Here feels like a stubborn holdout from a director who refuses to stop tinkering with his toys. But the "fixed camera" gimmick eventually becomes a cage. By the third act, I found myself desperately wanting to see what was happening in the kitchen or just down the street.

The film struggled at the box office, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a "prestige" film that feels like a tech demo. In the post-pandemic theatrical landscape, audiences are looking for either massive spectacle or raw, undeniable intimacy. Here provides a digital version of intimacy that feels a bit too processed. It’s a movie that wants to be about the "tide of time," but it often feels like it’s just stuck in the mud. Still, for those of us who follow the career of Robert Zemeckis, it’s a fascinating curiosity—a "what if" that proves even the most advanced AI can't quite replicate the soul of a moving camera.

Ultimately, this is a film for the completists and the tech-heads. I appreciated the ambition more than the execution, finding the technical wizardry more distracting than immersive. It’s a unique viewing experience that I’m glad exists, but I doubt I’ll ever feel the need to revisit this specific New Jersey living room again. If you’re a fan of the Gump crew, give it a look, but keep your expectations as fixed as the camera.