After Yang
A24 | Release Date: March 4, 2022 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
78
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 44 Critic Reviews
Positive:
35
Mixed:
8
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreMar 4, 2022
After Yang has the structure of a subdued mystery, though at its core it has no answers to these, or any, questions. Instead, it provides a slowly dawning and utterly devastating understanding of the hidden richness of its title character’s existence. Read full review
100
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenMar 4, 2022
In the end, After Yang is less interested in excitedly speculating on the inner life of its title character than it is interested in what we homo sapiens do with the lives we’ve been given. Read full review
100
ObserverEmily ZemlerMar 2, 2022
After Yang is a beautiful film, both in how it looks and in what it evokes. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoJan 27, 2022
So many visions of the future seem distant, but “After Yang” hits home in how it centers connection and experience to which we can all relate. It’s a powerful, moving drama about what it means to be alive. Read full review
100
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezJul 9, 2021
Poignant and poetic, After Yang is a soulful and heartbreaking meditation on impermanence full of poignant wonder and riches of human grace. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubJesse HassengerMar 2, 2022
Despite the sci-fi trimmings—or, really, in perfect sync with them—the anxiety After Yang generates has the gentle, humming pervasiveness of real life. It’s trying its best to tell us about the world. Read full review
91
IndieWireDavid EhrlichJul 9, 2021
Through its hushed portrait of loss and reclamation, After Yang whispers a powerful fable about an all too present tomorrow in which people are more intimate with technology than they are with their own family. Few movies have ever felt so knowing or non-judgmental towards the love that we divert onto material things, and even fewer have so earnestly speculated that those things might be able to love us back. Read full review
90
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzMar 10, 2022
After Yang is a tightly controlled yet tremendously alive film, powered by the beating heart that is Farrell’s performance. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMar 3, 2022
In a tale that touches on such a diversity of subjects—loneliness, mortality, adoption, family ties, the realm of the senses, artificial intelligence—it’s the ineffable things that count. Read full review
90
IGNSiddhant AdlakhaJan 25, 2022
With melancholy performances and an eye for natural beauty, Kogonada’s second feature film draws from masters of the past to create a glowing and moving future. Read full review
90
SlashfilmJason GorberJul 12, 2021
Kogonada’s precision, akin to the blend we witness the master tea maker assembling, prodding gently with a wooden utensil to craft a perfect mix of ingredients, results in a heady brew that’s both intoxicating and delicious. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangJul 10, 2021
The experience of watching it produces readily identifiable flavors and associations: It’s a gentle-toned family drama and a moody futuristic fable, with a faint techno-paranoid aroma, a melancholy mouthfeel and a lingering aftertaste of existential unease. Read full review
90
VarietyPeter DebrugeJul 9, 2021
The movie’s pulse seldom rises above resting, but the director invites audiences to dive as deep as they want to go into the film’s themes, to read subtext into body language, silence and the space between characters. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyJul 9, 2021
This is a film of transporting grace and compassion, cerebral but never cold. It’s no small compliment to say that After Yang seems almost like an American sci-fi movie that Ozu or Kore-eda might have made. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerMar 3, 2022
After Yang will resonate with anyone who has absorbed such emptiness into themselves, and found some comfort there. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMar 3, 2022
There are moments in the second half of After Yang when some of the narrative beats get a little confusing or vague. Kogonada’s steady, often still, but never static compositions may not be enough for some viewers. Whatever. Clearly, actors respond to what he’s after. Read full review
88
TheWrapTodd GilchristJan 23, 2022
The control and confidence of its form, paired with an emotionality that is at once effortless and irresistibly powerful, makes the film feel to the audience the way those pointed and yet somehow ephemeral clips in Yang’s memory feel to Jake. In preying on a sensation that’s only indirectly remembered, the impact it makes becomes unforgettable. Read full review
85
SlashfilmBen PearsonJan 23, 2022
An effective blend of lyrical impressionism and controlled precision, After Yang is another quietly impressive effort from Kogonada. Read full review
83
PolygonTasha RobinsonJan 27, 2022
After Yang is intensely internal and personal, as grief so often is, which guarantees it won’t connect with a wide audience. But as a collection of images and moods, all gently nudging at that central question of what defines a person, it’s gravely hypnotic. It’s an old question, asked in a new way, with deepest gravity and respect. Read full review
80
NMEPaul BradshawSep 28, 2022
Genuinely moving from the very beginning, expect to leave After Yang in a flood of tears. Expect, also, to spend the rest of the night questioning all the things that no one really likes thinking about. And, of course, to want to keep rewatching that dance scene on repeat. Read full review
80
The Irish TimesTara BradySep 26, 2022
Colin Farrell’s central turn, a lovely, soulful study of melancholy, is one of his best performances to date. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreySep 22, 2022
As After Yang gently suggests, there’s no longer a way to conceive of ourselves that’s entirely detached from technology. Nerves and circuits, inevitably, all work towards the same goals. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 21, 2022
The action of After Yang, bizarre and exotic as it is, meditates on what it is to be human and how that may in the future be modified, but it also addresses loss in the present day: our anguished and futile human instinct that death must surely be fixable. Read full review
80
TimeStephanie ZacharekMar 4, 2022
After Yang invites us to think about big questions that might normally invite melancholy. Yet somehow, Kogonada pulls off the opposite effect. His movie makes us feel less alone, part of a network we can’t fully comprehend from our place on Earth. Read full review
80
Rolling StoneDavid FearMar 4, 2022
As you find yourself instinctively reviewing those own seemingly insignificant moments in your own life, the ones that you hold so dear, while following this cyber-compassionate movie to its conclusion, it’s almost impossible not to be moved by the long game that the film’s creator is playing. Read full review
80
Paste MagazineNatalia KeoganMar 4, 2022
Though it might meander at times, After Yang—based on Alexander Weinstein’s short story “Saying Goodbye to Yang”—is always emotionally intelligent and artfully prescient, showcasing Kogonada’s penchant for sparse storytelling even if the narrative throughlines don’t always feel as rewarding as the film’s aesthetic splendors. Read full review
80
The TelegraphTim RobeyJul 10, 2021
It’s a real tea-drinker’s piece, wanting you to sit down and let its hushed insights, like some earthy infusion, linger on the palate. The incentive is strong to see it again – not immediately, perhaps, but just when it’s just starting to fade on you. The second time, the flavours here can only deepen and unfurl. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleJul 10, 2021
After Yang is a moving, subtle and grounded piece of science fiction that doesn’t necessarily get to the core, but certainly hits the heart. Read full review
80
Screen DailyJonathan RomneyJul 9, 2021
A beautifully executed, intellectually searching and sometimes droll futuristic drama. Read full review
75
Original-CinKaren GordonMar 9, 2022
Lifted by a deep and thoughtful performance by Colin Farrell, After Yang is a poetic and subtle meditation about the aftermath of unexpected sadness over the loss of “someone” who is technically not human. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattMar 3, 2022
Like its muse, the movie feels a little like a black-box experiment, one that can be both frustratingly opaque and achingly lovely: a still-waters mystery whose ripples, even up to the last frame, only hint at what lies beneath. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMar 1, 2022
This is a movie that raises questions that get to the heart of the matter in more ways than one, challenges our perceptions of what it means to be human — and has a wonderfully strange vibe while doing so. It’s unsettling, in the best possible way. Read full review
70
The New YorkerRichard BrodyMar 7, 2022
After Yang shows how easily the taste for beauty can be tainted, subverted, distorted, and abused by the powers that be. Read full review
70
The New York TimesManohla DargisMar 3, 2022
With eyebrow flicks, tiny physical modulations and shifts in pitch, Farrell movingly turns a shadow into a recognizable person, while also bringing much-needed humor to the movie. Read full review
63
The Associated PressJake CoyleMar 2, 2022
After Yang may not reach the heights it’s seeking, but it’s easy to respect it for trying to tackle profound questions and reach a register of high-minded reflection. Read full review
60
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeSep 26, 2022
I’m not convinced that the picture carries quite the philosophical weight that it thinks it does. Still, it’s an undeniably gorgeous place to lose yourself for a while. Read full review
60
Film ThreatAlan NgJan 23, 2022
After Yang is a good-looking movie, especially for one that’s mostly talking and conversations, the acting is good — an easy feat for seasoned actor Colin Farrell and Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja is adorable as hell. But unfortunately, it misses its storytelling potential by focusing too much of our attention on the wrong story elements. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayMar 2, 2022
After Yang again demonstrates Kogonada’s mastery of form, framing and composition. But audiences will be forgiven for wanting to reach through the screen to mess it up a little, if only to inject some recognizable warmth and spontaneity. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyMar 2, 2022
The situation provides a framework for the writer-director, Kogonada (“Columbus,” 2017), to dwell on the workings of memory and the various meanings of mortality and family. This is rich and challenging material. “After Yang,” while pleasant enough and certainly distinctive, isn’t altogether up to the challenge. Read full review
50
The New YorkerAnthony LaneFeb 28, 2022
You may start to wish you’d gone to see the new “Jackass” movie instead. Read full review
50
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiJan 25, 2022
With such a slow and empty buildup, After Yang often feels as disconnected as most everyone is in the film. Read full review
50
The Film StageRory O'ConnorJul 11, 2021
Though ambitious in reach, its tone is one-note, stilted, and saccharine sweet; its ideas as disjointed as they are ultimately unsatisfying. Read full review
50
Slant MagazinePat BrownJul 10, 2021
Kogonada’s film doesn’t trust us to recognize the legitimacy of the other’s being without filtering it solely through the lenses of the ruling class. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonMar 2, 2022
With “After Yang,” the distinctive filmmaker Kogonada has made a movie that is at once ambitious yet timid, asking big questions but providing no answers, not even clues. It’s a thought experiment, but a thought that meanders. Read full review
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