Review of Here
Here (2025) Dir. Robert Zemeckis
After huge hits in the 80s and 90s, director Zemeckis has a patchy record of releases of late, but here he combines aspects of previous films to create a gentle piece exploring our regular lives and interactions with others over time.
Reuniting with his Forrest Gump stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, Here tells its story in a unique non-linear narrative that jumps between different time periods during the lives of a number of people in the same house.
As well as this criss-crossing of stories, the conceit is all this is presented from a single static camera position in the corner of one room. “Here” we see snippets of each life spent in the house (and even just on the land many eras ago before the home itself was built) and how these people spend their time in the same space.
Describing the film is difficult as Zemeckis’ film jumps time every 5 minutes (or sometimes less), but as it is based on a graphic novel he has been influenced by comic ‘panes’ to overlay some actions taking place simultaneously across time.
I’ll describe the main stories in chronological order which begins back in the dinosaur era (it’s no Tree of Life though) and then forwards to native Americans. It leaps once again to Benjamin Franklin and the colonial era before we get an eccentric 1940s pin-up and inventor couple. However, the bulk of Here follows the Young family (Paul Bettany & Kelly Reilly) and their children. One is Tom Hanks and he meets Robin Wright and the couple begin to live in the home as well. Finally in the 2020s, the Harris’s arrive and deal with a Covid-19 tragedy before moving out. Phew!
Jumping between these can be a little exhausting but it’s never not fascinating. Whilst the narrative is pretty minimal and Alan Silvestri’s old fashioned score is overly sentimental, I warmed to its subtle urban charms and a great cast of actors providing those small moments of memory we easily forget in our busy environments.
In the negative column is Zemeckis’ heavy-handedness. The characters are trinkets with the director placing them around his doll house like his playthings. The repetition of household objects - "it’s like poetry, it rhymes" - is on the nose to a fault but I was pretty consistently engaged by its very distinctive style choice.
From pandemics to wars, events are remixed like living memes and we see the “circle of life” playout as each scene pops in for a moment before disappearing like seconds on a clock.
Ceiling water leaks lead to waters-breaking as babies come and go but audiences beware, it can get a bit tiring. It’s like constantly switching through TV channels - or swiping through Tik Toks for our younger readers. The CGI de-aging is mostly pretty good, although there are some strange tonal switches which again, felt awkward as comedy and drama flip quickly.
With divorce, death and days going by, Here is a window on the world and a decent exploration of those snapshots of time we all experience. Despite some minor flaws, I enjoyed its random puzzle of moments - much akin to fragments that make up memory itself. Life is often like that - full of glimpses and fleeting instances.
Whilst Here is too cloying to win any awards, it's touching to see Zemeckis successfully blending some of his greatest hits as Forrest Gump sentimentality and its talented cast combine with a Back to the Future focus on repeating moments and our relationships with time itself.
★★★½
3.5 / 5
Michael Sales
