“There’s something kind of beautiful in the chaos and the meaninglessness”: Daniels on Everything Everywhere All at Once

It seems the idea of the multiverse is everywhere one looks these days. Certainly, writer-director duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert – aka Daniels – noticed: it was the notion that sparked the premise for their latest film Everything Everywhere All at Once. It follows in the wake of their 2016 debut, surreal black comedy Swiss Army Man, responsible not only for reinventing Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe but for introducing the filmmakers’ aptitude for traversing the absurd and profound in innovative ways, having cut their teeth creating YouTube and music videos.

Those same sensibilities flow through their newest sci-fi adventure, which follows Chinese-American Evelyn Quan Wang, the disillusioned owner of a laundromat who is behind on her taxes, has an increasingly tense relationship with her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), and feels disconnected from her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu). Before long, though, things take a turn for the chaotic when she discovers there are parallel universes she can hop between and the future fate of the world is in her hands.

Deliberately resisting genre definitions and conventional narrative forms, this wild ride of a film is many things – a showcase for the wonder that is Michelle Yeoh, a fascinating study on what the Internet has done to our brains and its impact of generational divides, a satisfyingly silly chance to wonder what it would be like to have hotdogs for fingers – but most importantly, is a solidly original, imaginative and surprisingly poignant piece of cinema.

The Upcoming had the chance to speak with Daniels about the links with Swiss Army Man, the inspiration behind the story centring on the recent obsession with the multiverse and what they hope people will take away from the film in terms of finding meaning in the seemingly meaningless.

Sarah Bradbury

Everything Everywhere All at Once is released nationwide on 13^th May 2022. Read our five-star review here.

Watch the trailer for Everything Everywhere All at Once here: