Parents' Guide to

I'm Not Here

By Tara McNamara, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 16+

Heavy drama explores alcoholism, possibility of do-overs.

Movie NR 2019 81 minutes
I'm Not Here Poster Image

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This drama may end up having a long shelf life in high school classrooms as the definitive movie that explains Schrödinger's Cat, a quantum mechanics thought experiment embraced by pop culture. I'm Not Here isn't fun to watch, but it sure is fun to discuss, and it will likely put Google and science teachers to work answering questions from curious students trying to understand quantum entanglement and whether it can be applied to our human lives.

Small clues are dropped throughout the movie like random bread crumbs, making it hard to miss a moment -- and it's crucial to keep watching through the credits to the very final frame. Simmons rolls out a wowzer of a performance without uttering a line, but he's just one member of an impressive cast that boasts familiar faces in even the smallest of roles. Don't blink, or you'll miss Lost's Harold Perrineau as a bartender or David Koechner as a divorce lawyer. The film isn't great, but that seems to be the status quo for films that explore different life outcomes. Still, just like The Butterfly Effect or Sliding Doors, it may well become a reference point that holds on through the decades.

Movie Details

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