Review- A24’s Film After Yang Is A Sci-Fi Masterpiece That Explores What It Means To Be Truly Alive Through The Memories Of A Synthetic Cultural Caregiver

You’ll need a drink with this one. And a tissue. Maybe multiples of both. All photos courtesy of After Yang’s IMDb.

The harder we try to define what constitutes something as being alive, the more ways nature finds to poke holes in our theories, even when it comes to synthetic humans, which sends us back to the drawing board of our thoughts, feelings, biases and rationales to try again and After Yang is just that journey.

The film revolves around a small family with a synthetic human “cultural caregiver” named Yang whose sole purpose was to care for the couple’s Chinese daughter Mika (played by Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) that is until, unexpectedly, Yang shuts down and cannot be re-started. Parents Jake (Colin Farrell) and Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) specifically bought Yang because he was created of the same ethnicity as their daughter and was someone Mika could learn about their shared culture from and help her feel less alone since neither Jake nor Kyra were Chinese. The third-party store where Yang was purchased was no longer open, and since Yang was a refurbished model the original manufacturer would not fix his problem, a catastrophic core malfunction. It’s an uneasy way to talk about someone that you treat as family as being a something which becomes the honest but painful backbone of the story.

Jake and Kyra’s neighbor George (played by Clifton Collins Jr.) offers to help them get Yang fixed, but that help turned out to be shadier than expected and trying to find the right person to either fix Yang or at least dispose of him in the kindest way possible was proving far more time consuming and difficult than anticipated, causing Mika to become angry and depressed which was impacting Jake and Kyra’s marriage. When that right person to do the job was found, they were also able to help Jake access Yang’s memory bank, the contents of which was both a breach of their family’s privacy (Yang was not supposed to record the family) and a digital window into Yang’s interactions over the years with them, a mysterious blonde girl named Ada, and numerous other families that Yang had cared for other the years.

Yang’s memories showed a synthetic being gently evolving, growing, caring, and emotionally reaching out, almost indistinguishable from an actual human, something that was thought possible but not on this scale. Without Yang, it was up to Jake and Kyra to care for their daughter full time, to learn and understand her cultural heritage and bridge the gap between them while helping each other grieve a loss they didn’t realize they would miss.

Haley Lu Richardson as Ada

After Yang is a poignant movie that is an undeniably sad but compelling movie whose storyline is deeply embedded in love, sacrifice, renewal, truth and hope and absolutely worth your precious time.

After Yang premieres on March 4th, 2022, and will be duel released in theaters and on Showtime.