Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) Review

Q: Is Everything Everywhere All at Once a time-travel movie?

No. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) is a parallel-universe film: verse-jumping moves a person's mind into a parallel self in another universe, never into the past or the future. Wikipedia files it under films about parallel universes, and so does this site.

Trailer

The premise

Evelyn Quan Wang (Michelle Yeoh) runs a family laundromat in Simi Valley, California, with her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). They eloped to the US two decades ago. Their daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), has a girlfriend, Becky (Tallie Medel), whom Evelyn is slow to accept. James Hong plays Evelyn's demanding father, Gong Gong. Waymond, meanwhile, is trying to serve her with divorce papers.

On top of all that, the business is being audited by the IRS, in the person of revenue agent Deirdre Beaubeirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis). At that audit, as Wikipedia puts it, Evelyn "discovers that she must connect with parallel universe versions of herself to prevent a powerful being from destroying the multiverse." The US synopsis on JustWatch names it only as "a mysterious threat known as Jobu Tupaki."

How it handles time

The film's cosmology fits in one line from Wikipedia's summary: many parallel universes exist "because every life choice creates a new alternative universe." Out there are Evelyns who became a kung fu master, a film star, and, per JustWatch's UK synopsis, a "singing chef." None of them travels to the past or the future, which is why the site files the film under parallel universes only.

Getting to them is called verse-jumping, and it moves the mind rather than the body. Wikipedia says the technology "enables people to access the skills, memories, and bodies of their parallel selves." Screen Rant's explainer adds that the jumper takes control of a doppelgänger's mind "for a short time," and that the host doesn't remember it afterward.

The price of a jump is dignity. Scheinert told Vulture the idea was "verse-jumping" where "you have to do something crazy or strange or statistically unlikely to jump." Looper's reading is that the stunt works as "a sort of multiversal slingshot effect," and that "the more divergent variant of oneself a person needs to access, the weirder thing they'll have to do." The second part is Looper's inference.

There's hardware too. Screen Rant describes "headphone-like verse-jumping devices" that have to "turn green" before a safe jump; a jump made too soon "will rattle her mind."

Daniels came to the idea slowly. They started researching the multiverse in 2010, after running into the philosophy of modal realism in Ross McElwee's documentary Sherman's March (1986). Kwan has said he found the release of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) "a little upsetting," because he feared others would get to the multiverse first. Marvel even approached Daniels about the first season of Loki (2021), and they turned it down to make this film.

What works

Yeoh makes the chaos read as a story. She plays version after version of Evelyn, and every one still feels like the same tired woman at the laundromat counter. David Ehrlich of IndieWire, as quoted by Wikipedia, called it the "greatest performance that Michelle Yeoh has ever given," and Marya E. Gates of RogerEbert.com wrote that "Yeoh is the anchor of the film." The script was first written for Jackie Chan, and the character was initially named Michelle Wang, after Yeoh.

Quan matters almost as much. The role was his return to film acting after he retired following Second Time Around (2002), and he plays Waymond's gentleness so straight that his scenes become the emotional spine. The cast won a record four SAG Awards, including Outstanding Performance by a Cast.

Daniels shot it in 38 days, from January to early March 2020, mostly in Simi Valley. Rolling Stone, as quoted by Wikipedia, credited them with keeping "the metaphysical machinations feeling clear and easy to follow," and Paul Rogers's editing won both the Oscar and the BAFTA.

The awards run was historic. At the 95th Academy Awards, the film won seven Oscars from 11 nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and three acting awards, for Yeoh, Quan, and Curtis. According to Wikipedia, it's the first science-fiction film to win Best Picture. It also became A24's highest-grossing film in 2022 and took in more than $140 million worldwide. As of October 17, 2026, Rotten Tomatoes shows 93 percent from 407 reviews, and Metacritic gives it 81.

What doesn't

The middle hour of a 139-minute film piles up universes faster than it develops them, and I think a few gags outstay their welcome. David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter, as quoted by Wikipedia, praised it as "insanely imaginative and often a lot of fun," but found its handling of the underlying theme underwhelming.

The dissenters were loud. As quoted by Wikipedia, Richard Brody of The New Yorker called it a "sickly cynical feature-length directorial pitch reel for a Marvel movie," and Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called it "a formless splurge." Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times argued that the Academy "chose the wrong best picture." Bradshaw has a point about the shape, though I don't share the rest.

Final score

Overall: 9/10. A family drama disguised as a kung fu multiverse comedy, with a career-best Yeoh at its center; a baggy middle hour keeps it from a 10.

Paradox Meter: 3/5. Choices create universes, jumps take a mind and an absurd stunt, and the film keeps those rules. It never explains how the device works, though, and its biggest threat runs on comic logic more than physics.

Frequently asked questions

Is Everything Everywhere All at Once a time-travel movie?

No. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) is a parallel-universe film: verse-jumping moves a person's mind into a parallel self in another universe, never into the past or the future. Wikipedia files it under films about parallel universes, and so does this site.

How does verse-jumping work in Everything Everywhere All at Once?

Through absurd stunts. Verse-jumping moves the mind, not the body: Wikipedia says it lets people access "the skills, memories, and bodies of their parallel selves." To jump, Daniel Scheinert told Vulture, "you have to do something crazy or strange or statistically unlikely," and Screen Rant says the headphone-like device has to "turn green" first.

Is Everything Everywhere All at Once worth watching?

Yes: it gets a 9/10 here, mostly for Michelle Yeoh, who keeps one recognizable woman at the center of all the chaos. It's a multiverse movie that turns out to be about a mother, a marriage, and a tax return. A baggy middle hour, which piles up universes faster than it develops them, keeps it from a 10.

Is Everything Everywhere All at Once confusing?

Busy, but its rules hold. Choices create universes, a jump takes a mind and an absurd stunt, and the film sticks to them. Rolling Stone, as quoted by Wikipedia, said Daniels kept "the metaphysical machinations feeling clear and easy to follow." The device is never explained, and the threat runs on comic logic, so the Paradox Meter is 3/5.

How many Oscars did Everything Everywhere All at Once win?

Seven, from 11 nominations, at the 95th Academy Awards in March 2023: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Michelle Yeoh), Best Supporting Actor (Ke Huy Quan), Best Supporting Actress (Jamie Lee Curtis), Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing (Paul Rogers). According to Wikipedia, it's the first science-fiction film to win Best Picture.

Is Everything Everywhere All at Once a Marvel movie?

No. It's an original A24 film, not based on a comic or any earlier work: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, known together as Daniels, wrote and directed it, and their script won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Marvel Studios did approach Daniels about the first season of Loki (2021), but they turned it down to make this film.

Who is in the cast of Everything Everywhere All at Once?

Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn Quan Wang, a laundromat owner, with Ke Huy Quan as her husband, Waymond; Stephanie Hsu as their daughter, Joy; James Hong as Evelyn's father, Gong Gong; and Jamie Lee Curtis as IRS revenue agent Deirdre Beaubeirdre. Tallie Medel plays Joy's girlfriend, Becky, and Jenny Slate and Harry Shum Jr. also appear.

⚠ Spoilers: the timeline explainedShow spoilersHide spoilers

The man who takes over Waymond's body at the IRS meeting is Alpha-Waymond, a version of Waymond from the "Alphaverse," where the late Alpha-Evelyn developed verse-jumping. He believes this Evelyn, "the greatest 'failure' of all Evelyns," has untapped potential; Looper quotes his line that she's "capable of anything, because [she's] so bad at everything." The jump triggers get specific: shoes on the wrong feet, the IRS trophies. Then come the gags the film is famous for: the hot-dog fingers universe, Raccacoonie (voiced by Randy Newman), and a universe of two rocks.

Jobu Tupaki is Alpha-Joy, the Alphaverse version of Evelyn's daughter, "whose mind was splintered after Alpha-Evelyn pushed her to verse-jump beyond her endurance." Stephanie Hsu plays both. That is the one rule with a cost: jump too much and a mind splinters. Jobu now "experiences all universes at once and can verse-jump and manipulate reality at will."

Alpha-Gong Gong takes over Gong Gong and tells Evelyn to kill Joy so that Jobu can't use her to reach this universe. Evelyn refuses and starts verse-jumping to gain power. Jobu kills Alpha-Waymond, and Evelyn's mind begins to splinter as well.

Jobu doesn't want to fight. She has been looking for an Evelyn who sees, as she does, "that nothing matters" (Wikipedia's paraphrase). She has built "a black hole-like 'Everything Bagel' that forms a toroid singularity that could destroy the multiverse," and she wants to use it so that she and Evelyn can "truly die." Kwan told Vulture the bagel "started as just a throwaway joke," and explained it through the Schwarzschild radius: "at a certain density, anything will become a black hole."

Evelyn is persuaded at first and turns cruel across her universes. Then Waymond's plea to stop fighting and be kind even when life is senseless gets through. She fights with empathy instead, repairs the damage, and disarms Alpha-Gong Gong and Jobu's fighters. At home she reconciles with Waymond, accepts Joy and Becky's relationship and tells Gong Gong about it; Waymond talks Deirdre into letting them redo their taxes. When Joy asks to be let go, Evelyn says that of everywhere in the multiverse she could be, she will always want to be with Joy. The family pulls Jobu out of the Bagel, and mother and daughter embrace. In the last scene they return to the IRS building, Evelyn's attention drifts to her other selves, and she grounds herself back home.

Wikipedia's summary calls Evelyn's turn an "existentialist epiphany" and Waymond's advice "absurdist." Charles Bramesco of The Guardian, as quoted by Wikipedia, read the bagel's grip on Joy as a rejection of the nihilism "so trendy with the next generation." Armond White of National Review, also quoted by Wikipedia, dismissed the message, "'Be Kind', spoken by two rocks," as "a childish palliative."

Spoiler questions

Who is Jobu Tupaki in Everything Everywhere All at Once?

Alpha-Joy, the Alphaverse version of Evelyn's daughter; Stephanie Hsu plays both. According to Wikipedia, her mind "was splintered after Alpha-Evelyn pushed her to verse-jump beyond her endurance," and she now "experiences all universes at once and can verse-jump and manipulate reality at will."

What is the bagel in Everything Everywhere All at Once?

Jobu Tupaki's creation. Wikipedia describes "a black hole-like 'Everything Bagel' that forms a toroid singularity that could destroy the multiverse," and Jobu wants to use it so that she and Evelyn can "truly die." Daniel Kwan told Vulture the bagel "started as just a throwaway joke."

How does Everything Everywhere All at Once end?

With kindness. Waymond's plea to be kind even when life is senseless gets through, and Evelyn fights with empathy. She reconciles with Waymond and accepts Joy and Becky's relationship; she and the others pull Jobu out of the Bagel, and mother and daughter embrace. Back at the IRS building, Evelyn's attention drifts to her other selves before she grounds herself.

What does the ending of Everything Everywhere All at Once mean?

Readings differ. Wikipedia's summary calls Evelyn's turn an "existentialist epiphany" and Waymond's advice "absurdist." As quoted by Wikipedia, Charles Bramesco of The Guardian saw a rejection of the nihilism "so trendy with the next generation," and Armond White of National Review dismissed the message, "'Be Kind', spoken by two rocks," as "a childish palliative."

Sources

Catalogue entry

Research dossier behind this review (28 sources)

Poster and trailer

Official poster: The Movie Database (TMDB)
Official trailer: “Everything Everywhere All At Once | Official Trailer HD | A24”, A24 on YouTube

Review by Loop & Branch Editorial. Published October 18, 2026. Scores explained in How we review.

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Verdict