The story follows eighteen-year-old Maddy (Amandla Stenberg), who’s lived the majority of her life inside due to a disease called SCID—causing her to possess an extremely weak immune system. Maddy lives with her mother (Anika Noni Rose) and is looked after during the day by her nurse Carla (Ana de la Reguera). One day, a teen boy Maddy’s age moves in next door with his family. The boy’s bedroom window just happens to face opposite to Maddy’s and, with the help of a marker and piece of paper, he introduces himself as Olly (Nick Robinson). The two share phone numbers and begin secretly texting each other, beginning a romantic relationship.
Surprisingly, the romantic elements are not what initially drew me into Everything, Everything, but rather its artistic storytelling choices. The film uses a variety of unique, appealing visual styles for telling its story. For example, when Maddy describes her disease, the film uses a fun cartoon-style animation to showcase the serious illness. There’s a cute scene during an initially awkward date where the duo’s inner thoughts are subtitled underneath their nervous dialogue. Maddy and Olly’s texting sequences are showcased through imaginary interactions where the two “talk” face to face in various spots, such as Maddy’s model café, a library, and even outer space. The scenes still play out as if they’re texting, with Olly telling Maddy to “text faster” rather than speak faster, and how they outwardly say “ellipsis”. There’s also an astronaut character that just wanders around during these imaginary segments and occasionally interacts with Maddy (Maddy relates to astronauts as they’re both isolated from society)—it’s bizarre, to say the least, but the astronaut does have a strange charm that makes the scenes slightly more appealing.
As the protagonist, Maddy is an overall appealing character. She’s kindhearted, spontaneously quirky, and not to be personally biased or anything, but she also enjoys writing online reviews about pieces of fiction—her site is called “Life is Short”—as a hobby (for some reason that really appeals to me). She’s a hard-to-hate character—and that's saying something because she ends up doing some really stupid stuff during the film’s second-third—with Amandla Stenberg doing a solid job conveying the right emotions. Olly, on the other hand, is a hit-or-miss character, with more misses than hits, unfortunately. As a character, Olly doesn’t have much going for him besides being the handsome rebel with daddy issues. Olly’s actor, Nick Robinson, is…alright. He does a better acting job here than in Jurassic World and has just enough chemistry with Stenberg to make the romance engaging.
Story-wise, Everything, Everything starts off as a standard, yet enjoyable romance. It’s the film’s second-third where the story ascends into true romantic fantasy, where true love conquers all common sense. The film’s last-third, however, threw me for an absolute loop as the story practically turns into a pseudo-Alfred Hitchcock thriller, with a twist that nearly shakes up the whole story’s foundation. The film ultimately pulls itself back to its original premise and concludes with the expected big, romantic happily-ever-after ending, but for the majority of its last-third, Everything Everything completely caught me off-guard in an unexpectedly thrilling fashion. Everything, Everything is certainly not going to win over any non-romantics. A viewer will either take its faults with a grain of salt and enjoy the fantasy or roll their eyes and gag at the overabundance of cheesy romance tropes. I’m in the former category, with Everything, Everything being an enjoyable popcorn romance.