A24

Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we’re watching a video essay that looks at how the Daniels’ latest film, ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ tackles the feeling of being Very Online all the time.

Rather fittingly, Everything Everywhere All At Once means a lot of things to a lot of different people. I’ve seen video essays from Asian creators that discuss how the film speaks to everything from the immigrant experience to the role of nihilism in Buddhism. The film’s co-directors — Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheiner, known collectively as Daniels — have confirmed that the film resonating with the experience of having ADHD is no accident (Kwan was diagnosed during the making of the film).

And, if you are Very Online, you might have noticed something familiar about the chaos and exhausting maximalism of Evelyn’s multiverses. If you haven’t seen Everything Everywhere All At Once yet, please do. It’s easily one of the best films of 2022, and seeing it on the biggest screen possible is highly recommended. (There’s a good chance it’s still playing in theaters this baby’s got box office legs for days).

In any case, without giving too much away (not that such a thing is possible), the film follows Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh), an overworked woman whose marriage, business, and relationship with her daughter are fraying at the seams. Then she learns that she is actually the only one who can save the Multiverse.

The internet is a place of endless curiosity and community. But it’s also overwhelming to be bombarded with a constant stream of information, political causes, and entertainment. The internet is silly, stupid, anarchic, tragic, and meaningful. And not all of it can matter equally to you. Our little monkey brains weren’t built for that. And part of what Daniels’ film is saying, as the video essay below underlines, is that determining what does and doesn’t matter to you in an attention economy is a life-saving step for surviving in the world post-Internet.

Watch “The Terror of Everything Everywhere All At Once”:

Who made this?

This video essay on why the Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All At Once is all about the overwhelming chaos of the internet is by Virginia-based filmmaker and video editor Thomas Flight. He runs a YouTube channel under the same name. You can follow Thomas Flight and check out his back catalog of video essays on YouTube here. You can follow him on Twitter here.

More videos like this

Related Topics: Daniels, Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Queue

Meg Shields is the humble farm boy of your dreams and a senior contributor at Film School Rejects. She currently runs three columns at FSR: The Queue, How’d They Do That?, and Horrorscope. She is also a curator for One Perfect Shot and a freelance writer for hire. Meg can be found screaming about John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ on Twitter here: @TheWorstNun. (She/Her).